.jpg?w=1)
拍品专文
Affandi and the Asia Foundation
As recounted by the art historian Astri Wright, Affandi's recollection and memory of America is encapsulated boldly in these words - 'I have many friends in America'. The present lot, Balinese Fisherman (Lot 16), a gift of the artist in 1958 to the Asia Foundation, head-quartered in San Francisco, United States of America, is a perfect example of the friendship and cultural ties between Indonesia and the United States stretching back to the early 1950s, when Affandi made the first of six trips to the US. As a guest of the State Department of the United States, Affandi was recognised as one of the leading Indonesian artist of the 1950s - his self-taught expressionist style of painting, oftentimes compared to the works of Oskar Koshchaka and Vincent Van Gogh, and hailed as a leading example of modernity in the East.
In 1957, Affandi arrived in the US to study methods of art education in 1957. He held an exhibition at the World House Galleries of the New York Press Club in 1958 where this present lot was exhibited. After the exhibition, the work was then gifted to the Asia Foundation by Affandi, arranged through Mr. Philip A Bruno, the owner of the gallery. The painting has been in the collection of the Foundation ever since.
The Asia Foundation is a non-profit international development organization committed to improving lives across a dynamic and developing Asia. The program of the Foundation addresses critical issues affecting Asia within the 21st Century-governance and law, economic development, women's empowerment, environmental issues, and regional cooperation. With its headquarters in San Francisco and a network of offices in 17 Asian countries and in Washington, DC, the foundation works with public and private partners, receiving funding from a diverse group of bilateral and multilateral development agencies, foundations, corporations, and individuals. In 2012, the Foundation disbursed US$100 million in direct program support and distributed textbooks and other educational materials valued at over US$30 million.
In Indonesia, the Asia Foundation has supported initiatives to consolidate democracy, strengthen the role of civil society, promote economic growth, and improve government services. The foundation works with innovative leaders to build partnerships and advance pathbreaking reforms to strengthen judicial systems, promote economic growth in blanance with environmental protection, support free and fair elections, engage civil society and address gender issues.
In Indonesia, the Foundation has multi-year development partnerships with the bilateral assistance agencies of Australia, Canada, Denmark, Netherlands, Norway, United Kingdom, and the United States. Additionally, the World Bank, Indonesian government-led multi-donor trust funds, private foundations and corporations contribute to a range of ongoing development partnerships. Fund raising takes place over different platforms. The proceeds from the sale of Balinese Fisherman will directly go towards support for various Asia Foundation initiatives that contribute to imporving lives in the region.
A Heroic Expressionism
While in America in 1958, Affandi's works received critical acclaim for their powerful expressionistic quality, particularly outstanding in depicting the emotion and personality of his subjects. Balinese Fisherman, alongside other single figure works of the artist from the late 1950s, is particularly revealing of this quality. The fisherman in the painting is a man of significant proportions; at once comfortable with, and in command of, Nature and its elements. Depicting the fisherman returning to shore after a day out at sea, with the oars of his boat easily draped over his left shoulder and a water vessel in his right, the fisherman is master of his trade and commander of his destiny. His towering presence is emphasised by Affandi's very typical compositional treatment for paintings of single figures in the 1950s, where he frames the figure tightly within the height of his canvas, very fractionally cropped at the top and bottom edges to suggest concealed height. The figure is situated in the vertical centre of the painting, and the background heavily worked over.
In Balinese Fisherman, the skin of the fisherman is a glowing orange-red, with complementary yellow and green tones in Affandi's characteristic undulating, swirling and spiralling application of paint directly from the tube onto the canvas, in the ultimate gesture of expressionistic abandon. Hailed as a "towering figure in the history of Indonesian modern art." Affandi's paintings often display his emotional responses to the lives of a people struggling to move out of poverty towards dignity. A fisherman in Bali is not a typical hero or revered painting subject, but in Affandi's oeuvre, he enjoys a central place of significance. Proportion is ignored as Affandi deliberately exaggerates the scale between humans and inanimate objects. In Balinese Fisherman, two jukung boats, one on the shore and the other out at sea, are reduced to a mere tenth of the gigantic fisherman, while a frenzy of white and blue paint suggests a wave breaking near shore. The scene is simple, straightforward, and its dramatic quality emphasised by the primacy of the figure, in his near-heroic stance.
Affandi's art was rooted in the direct observation of the world around him, which he transformed to express his personal inner vision. His commitment to painting daily scenes of Indonesian life was a life-long passion; depicting, in his perception, the best and most beautiful aspects of his homeland. To capture the essence of each situation or object, he developed and continually replayed a group of subjects, such as rice terraces, Indonesian festivities, the sun, his self-portrait, and of course the dynamic energy of the village cockfight - a common meeting ground for men from the same walk of life coming together to share the unity, brotherhood and adventure of this traditional sporting event. These localised inspirations resulted in a painting which danced with a dynamic energy and a distinct rhythm full of emotional intensity - a perfect recording of the social emotions of the period in tune with the painter's own feelings and sentiments.
Affandi has been quoted saying: "If the color is good then it's okay." He advocated looking at paintings with his eyes and heart, rather than the intellect. Emotion is the essential element in the artist's work, as Astri Wright remarked: 'Affandi's style has been called expressionistic but to him his works were more true to the subject than any degree of photorealism could have been - an honesty which had more to do with emotional experience than with intellectual analysis. As he said in the 1992 film by Yasir Marzuki, Hungry to Paint, Affandi did not see himself as a clever man, 'not like Picasso'. He was more like van Gogh - a man of strong emotion, which in turn gave rise to works of art, the stylistic similarity between himself and van Gogh that people always point to was a matter of emotional affinity.
As recounted by the art historian Astri Wright, Affandi's recollection and memory of America is encapsulated boldly in these words - 'I have many friends in America'. The present lot, Balinese Fisherman (Lot 16), a gift of the artist in 1958 to the Asia Foundation, head-quartered in San Francisco, United States of America, is a perfect example of the friendship and cultural ties between Indonesia and the United States stretching back to the early 1950s, when Affandi made the first of six trips to the US. As a guest of the State Department of the United States, Affandi was recognised as one of the leading Indonesian artist of the 1950s - his self-taught expressionist style of painting, oftentimes compared to the works of Oskar Koshchaka and Vincent Van Gogh, and hailed as a leading example of modernity in the East.
In 1957, Affandi arrived in the US to study methods of art education in 1957. He held an exhibition at the World House Galleries of the New York Press Club in 1958 where this present lot was exhibited. After the exhibition, the work was then gifted to the Asia Foundation by Affandi, arranged through Mr. Philip A Bruno, the owner of the gallery. The painting has been in the collection of the Foundation ever since.
The Asia Foundation is a non-profit international development organization committed to improving lives across a dynamic and developing Asia. The program of the Foundation addresses critical issues affecting Asia within the 21st Century-governance and law, economic development, women's empowerment, environmental issues, and regional cooperation. With its headquarters in San Francisco and a network of offices in 17 Asian countries and in Washington, DC, the foundation works with public and private partners, receiving funding from a diverse group of bilateral and multilateral development agencies, foundations, corporations, and individuals. In 2012, the Foundation disbursed US$100 million in direct program support and distributed textbooks and other educational materials valued at over US$30 million.
In Indonesia, the Asia Foundation has supported initiatives to consolidate democracy, strengthen the role of civil society, promote economic growth, and improve government services. The foundation works with innovative leaders to build partnerships and advance pathbreaking reforms to strengthen judicial systems, promote economic growth in blanance with environmental protection, support free and fair elections, engage civil society and address gender issues.
In Indonesia, the Foundation has multi-year development partnerships with the bilateral assistance agencies of Australia, Canada, Denmark, Netherlands, Norway, United Kingdom, and the United States. Additionally, the World Bank, Indonesian government-led multi-donor trust funds, private foundations and corporations contribute to a range of ongoing development partnerships. Fund raising takes place over different platforms. The proceeds from the sale of Balinese Fisherman will directly go towards support for various Asia Foundation initiatives that contribute to imporving lives in the region.
A Heroic Expressionism
While in America in 1958, Affandi's works received critical acclaim for their powerful expressionistic quality, particularly outstanding in depicting the emotion and personality of his subjects. Balinese Fisherman, alongside other single figure works of the artist from the late 1950s, is particularly revealing of this quality. The fisherman in the painting is a man of significant proportions; at once comfortable with, and in command of, Nature and its elements. Depicting the fisherman returning to shore after a day out at sea, with the oars of his boat easily draped over his left shoulder and a water vessel in his right, the fisherman is master of his trade and commander of his destiny. His towering presence is emphasised by Affandi's very typical compositional treatment for paintings of single figures in the 1950s, where he frames the figure tightly within the height of his canvas, very fractionally cropped at the top and bottom edges to suggest concealed height. The figure is situated in the vertical centre of the painting, and the background heavily worked over.
In Balinese Fisherman, the skin of the fisherman is a glowing orange-red, with complementary yellow and green tones in Affandi's characteristic undulating, swirling and spiralling application of paint directly from the tube onto the canvas, in the ultimate gesture of expressionistic abandon. Hailed as a "towering figure in the history of Indonesian modern art." Affandi's paintings often display his emotional responses to the lives of a people struggling to move out of poverty towards dignity. A fisherman in Bali is not a typical hero or revered painting subject, but in Affandi's oeuvre, he enjoys a central place of significance. Proportion is ignored as Affandi deliberately exaggerates the scale between humans and inanimate objects. In Balinese Fisherman, two jukung boats, one on the shore and the other out at sea, are reduced to a mere tenth of the gigantic fisherman, while a frenzy of white and blue paint suggests a wave breaking near shore. The scene is simple, straightforward, and its dramatic quality emphasised by the primacy of the figure, in his near-heroic stance.
Affandi's art was rooted in the direct observation of the world around him, which he transformed to express his personal inner vision. His commitment to painting daily scenes of Indonesian life was a life-long passion; depicting, in his perception, the best and most beautiful aspects of his homeland. To capture the essence of each situation or object, he developed and continually replayed a group of subjects, such as rice terraces, Indonesian festivities, the sun, his self-portrait, and of course the dynamic energy of the village cockfight - a common meeting ground for men from the same walk of life coming together to share the unity, brotherhood and adventure of this traditional sporting event. These localised inspirations resulted in a painting which danced with a dynamic energy and a distinct rhythm full of emotional intensity - a perfect recording of the social emotions of the period in tune with the painter's own feelings and sentiments.
Affandi has been quoted saying: "If the color is good then it's okay." He advocated looking at paintings with his eyes and heart, rather than the intellect. Emotion is the essential element in the artist's work, as Astri Wright remarked: 'Affandi's style has been called expressionistic but to him his works were more true to the subject than any degree of photorealism could have been - an honesty which had more to do with emotional experience than with intellectual analysis. As he said in the 1992 film by Yasir Marzuki, Hungry to Paint, Affandi did not see himself as a clever man, 'not like Picasso'. He was more like van Gogh - a man of strong emotion, which in turn gave rise to works of art, the stylistic similarity between himself and van Gogh that people always point to was a matter of emotional affinity.