Subodh Gupta elegantly and ironically interlinks aspects of his Indian identity with references to Western art history in his works. The “idol thief,” as he likes to call himself, quotes icons of European art and recontextualizes them.

With his bronze sculpture Et tu, Duchamp? Gupta entered into an imaginary dialogue with Marcel Duchamp, the prime mover of Conceptual Art. Gupta based his work on Duchamp’s Mona Lisa disfigured by a moustache and a goatee which the French avant-garde artist had presented as an example of his ironic attitude toward the canon of art under the title L.H.O.O.Q. quite early on in 1919. By translating Duchamp’s work into a three-dimensional piece and executing it in an oversized format, Gupta created a new work of art to be viewed from all sides. His comment on Et tu, Duchamp?: “I love Duchamp’s Mona Lisa, sometimes more than that of da Vinci. I salute [da Vinci] from far off, he is a genius. Yet I feel more affiliated with Duchamp in a way . . . I saw his Mona Lisa and said, ‘Incredible, what a work!’ I found it really funny, I like this kind of humor.”