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Lot Essay
"Affandi would spend a long time looking for painting subjects, and then a long time studying the subject, probing into its being, until he felt he had become part of it. Only then would he start squeezing and smearing paint from the tubes on to the canvas, working it with his fingers, palms, wrists, and the back of his hands. Painting for Affandi was a process of fixing into colour and form the storm of energy from his emotions which had arisen through concentrating on something which had initially inspired him." (Astri Wright, Soul, Spirit, and Mountain: Preoccupations of Contemporary Indonesian Painters, Oxford University Press, Kuala Lumpur, 1994, 112).
Astri Wright described the process after the interview with the artist when the writer saw a work of the artist, of which the creating process related to him. "Against the wall near us, up on a ledge, the canvas he had painted that very morning sat drying. It depicted a man selling balloons, a playful cloud of coloured spheres above his head. Affandi had seen him at the Sekaten night fair and had become so enamoured with the sight that he had asked this man to come to the gallery the next day. After spending a couple of hours painting him, he had bought all his balloons as recompense for the trouble" (Ibid, p. 111-112)
It is no doubt that Affandi painted from Life. The familiarity he has with his subjects endowed his works with a sense of intimacy and passion that overwhelm the viewers. Man with a rooster is a recurring theme with the artist and yet the unique personality of the sitter never fails to captivate the viewers. Very often, despite the artist's apparent focus on the sitter, Affandi is very fond of creating a sense of spontaneity by adding the idiosyncratic details such as a pair of feet of an onlooker on the upper right corner of the work. By doing that, he creates a sense of immediacy, that is equivalent to a sense of a snapshot and yet capturing the lasting emotion and personality for eternity.
Astri Wright described the process after the interview with the artist when the writer saw a work of the artist, of which the creating process related to him. "Against the wall near us, up on a ledge, the canvas he had painted that very morning sat drying. It depicted a man selling balloons, a playful cloud of coloured spheres above his head. Affandi had seen him at the Sekaten night fair and had become so enamoured with the sight that he had asked this man to come to the gallery the next day. After spending a couple of hours painting him, he had bought all his balloons as recompense for the trouble" (Ibid, p. 111-112)
It is no doubt that Affandi painted from Life. The familiarity he has with his subjects endowed his works with a sense of intimacy and passion that overwhelm the viewers. Man with a rooster is a recurring theme with the artist and yet the unique personality of the sitter never fails to captivate the viewers. Very often, despite the artist's apparent focus on the sitter, Affandi is very fond of creating a sense of spontaneity by adding the idiosyncratic details such as a pair of feet of an onlooker on the upper right corner of the work. By doing that, he creates a sense of immediacy, that is equivalent to a sense of a snapshot and yet capturing the lasting emotion and personality for eternity.