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Lot Essay
The nude is an extremely intriguing subject in Indonesian modern painter Affandi's oeuvre, having taken manifest form in the artist's early full-length nude self-portraits to nudes of his closest family members and finally to nudes set within a specific social and historical context like in the present lot, Nude Girl in Baltimore.
Even today, but more so during Affandi's lifetime, overcoming the conventional attitudes of society towards nudity, even in art, was not easy, and Affandi oftentimes found painting nudes particularly challenging in Indonesia, from finding models to fixing the locale of painting to the exhibition and reception of these works. In the 1940s and 50s, he painted a number of nudes of his wife and daughter but it was really when Affandi travelled that he found a more liberal and more liberating environment to paint nude subjects.
In 1962, Affandi accepted an invitation from the Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio to be a painting lecturer. He took the opportunity to travel in the US and toured Baltimore in Maryland. Affandi visited a bar in Baltimore, depicted in the background of the present lot, Nude Girl in Baltimore. Affandi paints a vivid picture of a few figures sitting at the bar counter, consuming the revelry of the night. In the background too is the flashing green light of the stage lights which Affandi depicts almost like the rays of the sun, diffused through the background into the room where the artist observes a reclining nude. She is the epitome of brazeness, with her legs provocatively spread open, her womanhood sensationally exposed to the wildest and sickest fantasies of a monstrous looking bar-goer with a pipe in his mouth, his hands inching close to the nude girl, ready to inflict pleasure both ways.
The nude girl is spread monumentally within the pictorial frame, her sexual organs rendered visible in an overflowing application of the paint straight from the paint tube. Here, Affandi as a painter is at his expressionist best, tracing the phenomenological experience of painting in an overtly sexual encounter with a nude. The girl's nipples are swiftly applied impasto swirls, as is the scrawl of red and black of her genitalia. The painting is an unmistakable celebration of the universal debauchery of nightlife, where the gratification of sexual pleasure is inseparably from a primordial quest for nudity, coming together in a heady vortex of drinking, smoking and gambling. As a humanist painter, Affandi couldn not help but be profoundly stimulated by the scene presented before him. How could he depart from the heightened sensation of the night without having traced and re-lived the stupor of the moment through his painting? Thence emerged Nude Girl in Baltimore, arguably the boldest and the most articulate nude painting Affandi has ever painted, and one that he hung with a measurable degree of pride in his living room in Yogyakarta, as seen in this photo dates to 1963 (Fig.1).
Nude Girl in Baltimore expresses the American society's sexual mores, albeit a more extreme form, shared between denizens of the night. In the graphic depiction of the scene, Affandi immerses himself as participant-observer in this sub-culture, liberating himself of any pre-conceived shyness or embarrassment about the body nude to partake in the orgasmic rituals of the night.
The strong narrative quality in the painting belies a definite fervor and eloquence, which immediately sets Nude Girl in Baltimore apart from other of Affandi's nude paintings. Supremely well-executed, as one of the most complete and memorable scenes of the cockfight in the artist's oeuvre; a viewer is able to observe the formation of aesthetic attitudes and appreciate Affandi's expressionism in its dramatised entirety. As a painting, Nude Girl in Baltimore marks the length to which Affandi extends himself as a humanist painter, dealing not only with the holy, or even the ordinary, but also the base and the primordial. It is this wide spectrum of Affandi's interests as a painter of life that continually draw him admirers.
One of Affandi's key collectors was the former ambassador of Brazil to Indonesia, Ambassador Josias Leo, who was also one of the foremost modern art collectors in Brazil from the 1940s to the 1970s. Ambassador Leo spent the first five years of the 1960s as Brazil's ambassador to Indonesia. It is no surprise that he kept a special place for Indonesian art in his collection which also has works of key modern painters Picasso, Renoir, Soutine and Vlaminck. After his term of service in Indonesia ended, Ambassador Leo went back to Rio de Janeiro with more than 200 paintings, including more than 20 works of Affandi, who was one of his closest artist friends.
Ambassador Leo collected Indonesian art during a time of great vibrancy in the contemporary art scene in the 1960s. Bandung and Yogyakarta-based artists were embroiled in intense discourses on the nature and function of art, and the first generation of pioneer modern painters such as Affandi, Hendra Gunawan and S. Sudjojono were just commanding greater visibility and respect by their contemporaries. Ambassador Leo collected widely, including the abstract lyrical works of Srihadi Soedarsono, the modern cubist works of But Mochtar and of course the expressionistic works of Affandi.
The present lot was acquired by Ambassador Leo from Affandi as part of an acquisition of four works of the artist before the former departed Indonesia back to Brazil after his term of service in Indonesia. Soon after he returned to Rio de Janeiro, Ambassador Leo organised a retrospective exhibition of Affandi's work of which Nude Girl in Baltimore was exhibited. In the mid-1960s, the exhibition of a modern Indonesian artist in Brazil formed part of the cultural discourse of the transcontinental Non-Aligned Movement that had been conceived in Bandung, Indonesia in 1955 and cut across the non-dominant nations of Asia, Africa, Europe, and Latin
America that did not subscribe to the Cold War's seemingly hegemonic capitalist/socialist binary. While the political and economic resonances of the Non-Aligned Movement
are by now well known, its art historical traces are lesser studied although it is obvious that the individual efforts of art patrons like Ambassador Leo played a major role in the internationalization of art in the 1960s and Affandi was certainly a key beneficiary Asian artist.
Even today, but more so during Affandi's lifetime, overcoming the conventional attitudes of society towards nudity, even in art, was not easy, and Affandi oftentimes found painting nudes particularly challenging in Indonesia, from finding models to fixing the locale of painting to the exhibition and reception of these works. In the 1940s and 50s, he painted a number of nudes of his wife and daughter but it was really when Affandi travelled that he found a more liberal and more liberating environment to paint nude subjects.
In 1962, Affandi accepted an invitation from the Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio to be a painting lecturer. He took the opportunity to travel in the US and toured Baltimore in Maryland. Affandi visited a bar in Baltimore, depicted in the background of the present lot, Nude Girl in Baltimore. Affandi paints a vivid picture of a few figures sitting at the bar counter, consuming the revelry of the night. In the background too is the flashing green light of the stage lights which Affandi depicts almost like the rays of the sun, diffused through the background into the room where the artist observes a reclining nude. She is the epitome of brazeness, with her legs provocatively spread open, her womanhood sensationally exposed to the wildest and sickest fantasies of a monstrous looking bar-goer with a pipe in his mouth, his hands inching close to the nude girl, ready to inflict pleasure both ways.
The nude girl is spread monumentally within the pictorial frame, her sexual organs rendered visible in an overflowing application of the paint straight from the paint tube. Here, Affandi as a painter is at his expressionist best, tracing the phenomenological experience of painting in an overtly sexual encounter with a nude. The girl's nipples are swiftly applied impasto swirls, as is the scrawl of red and black of her genitalia. The painting is an unmistakable celebration of the universal debauchery of nightlife, where the gratification of sexual pleasure is inseparably from a primordial quest for nudity, coming together in a heady vortex of drinking, smoking and gambling. As a humanist painter, Affandi couldn not help but be profoundly stimulated by the scene presented before him. How could he depart from the heightened sensation of the night without having traced and re-lived the stupor of the moment through his painting? Thence emerged Nude Girl in Baltimore, arguably the boldest and the most articulate nude painting Affandi has ever painted, and one that he hung with a measurable degree of pride in his living room in Yogyakarta, as seen in this photo dates to 1963 (Fig.1).
Nude Girl in Baltimore expresses the American society's sexual mores, albeit a more extreme form, shared between denizens of the night. In the graphic depiction of the scene, Affandi immerses himself as participant-observer in this sub-culture, liberating himself of any pre-conceived shyness or embarrassment about the body nude to partake in the orgasmic rituals of the night.
The strong narrative quality in the painting belies a definite fervor and eloquence, which immediately sets Nude Girl in Baltimore apart from other of Affandi's nude paintings. Supremely well-executed, as one of the most complete and memorable scenes of the cockfight in the artist's oeuvre; a viewer is able to observe the formation of aesthetic attitudes and appreciate Affandi's expressionism in its dramatised entirety. As a painting, Nude Girl in Baltimore marks the length to which Affandi extends himself as a humanist painter, dealing not only with the holy, or even the ordinary, but also the base and the primordial. It is this wide spectrum of Affandi's interests as a painter of life that continually draw him admirers.
One of Affandi's key collectors was the former ambassador of Brazil to Indonesia, Ambassador Josias Leo, who was also one of the foremost modern art collectors in Brazil from the 1940s to the 1970s. Ambassador Leo spent the first five years of the 1960s as Brazil's ambassador to Indonesia. It is no surprise that he kept a special place for Indonesian art in his collection which also has works of key modern painters Picasso, Renoir, Soutine and Vlaminck. After his term of service in Indonesia ended, Ambassador Leo went back to Rio de Janeiro with more than 200 paintings, including more than 20 works of Affandi, who was one of his closest artist friends.
Ambassador Leo collected Indonesian art during a time of great vibrancy in the contemporary art scene in the 1960s. Bandung and Yogyakarta-based artists were embroiled in intense discourses on the nature and function of art, and the first generation of pioneer modern painters such as Affandi, Hendra Gunawan and S. Sudjojono were just commanding greater visibility and respect by their contemporaries. Ambassador Leo collected widely, including the abstract lyrical works of Srihadi Soedarsono, the modern cubist works of But Mochtar and of course the expressionistic works of Affandi.
The present lot was acquired by Ambassador Leo from Affandi as part of an acquisition of four works of the artist before the former departed Indonesia back to Brazil after his term of service in Indonesia. Soon after he returned to Rio de Janeiro, Ambassador Leo organised a retrospective exhibition of Affandi's work of which Nude Girl in Baltimore was exhibited. In the mid-1960s, the exhibition of a modern Indonesian artist in Brazil formed part of the cultural discourse of the transcontinental Non-Aligned Movement that had been conceived in Bandung, Indonesia in 1955 and cut across the non-dominant nations of Asia, Africa, Europe, and Latin
America that did not subscribe to the Cold War's seemingly hegemonic capitalist/socialist binary. While the political and economic resonances of the Non-Aligned Movement
are by now well known, its art historical traces are lesser studied although it is obvious that the individual efforts of art patrons like Ambassador Leo played a major role in the internationalization of art in the 1960s and Affandi was certainly a key beneficiary Asian artist.