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Lot Essay
The self-portrait is one of the most challenging and deeply important genres of painting in modern art. Affandi is particularly known within 20th century Asian art to be one of the most prolific self-portraitist, receiving not only popular acceptance during his lifetime but also posthumously in the affirmation by critics and collectors alike for his paintings of himself.
In modern art from the West, Vincent van Gogh's body of more than 30 self-portraits completed between the years 1886-1889 is often cited as one of the most prolific and significant attempt by an artist to seek artistic breakthrough, negotiate the imperatives of self-expression and market demand and seek introspection. Like Van Gogh, Affandi's self-portraits serve this purpose. But in a significant way, Affandi departed from Van Gogh-his engagement with the self portrait as a pictorial format was life long and sustained throughout his entire painting career. To Affandi, age and the verisimilitude of appearance do not matter; what matters most is how the individual personality, confidence and passion comes true and is being seen by the viewer through the self portrait.
In Self-Portrait I (Lot 337), this excellent painting is indicative of Affandi and his distinctive style of painting using his fingers, hands and wrists. The painting is imbued with the characteristic energetic fervent swirl of his expressionistic strokes. The accent is on the strength of the strokes, the way hair is depicted, the adorning colours of red, yellow and green on the face which give life to the painting and the emotions expressed. Always autobiographical in nature, his self-portrait paintings reveal the present emotions the artist is feeling, staying true to his belief that self-portraits were the windows to the artist's soul. It displays a remarkable understanding of not-as some may commonly mistake-a preoccupation with the self, but more a visual meditation of the physical world that he inhabits, and which he has seen change along with changes in his physical and psychological self.
In modern art from the West, Vincent van Gogh's body of more than 30 self-portraits completed between the years 1886-1889 is often cited as one of the most prolific and significant attempt by an artist to seek artistic breakthrough, negotiate the imperatives of self-expression and market demand and seek introspection. Like Van Gogh, Affandi's self-portraits serve this purpose. But in a significant way, Affandi departed from Van Gogh-his engagement with the self portrait as a pictorial format was life long and sustained throughout his entire painting career. To Affandi, age and the verisimilitude of appearance do not matter; what matters most is how the individual personality, confidence and passion comes true and is being seen by the viewer through the self portrait.
In Self-Portrait I (Lot 337), this excellent painting is indicative of Affandi and his distinctive style of painting using his fingers, hands and wrists. The painting is imbued with the characteristic energetic fervent swirl of his expressionistic strokes. The accent is on the strength of the strokes, the way hair is depicted, the adorning colours of red, yellow and green on the face which give life to the painting and the emotions expressed. Always autobiographical in nature, his self-portrait paintings reveal the present emotions the artist is feeling, staying true to his belief that self-portraits were the windows to the artist's soul. It displays a remarkable understanding of not-as some may commonly mistake-a preoccupation with the self, but more a visual meditation of the physical world that he inhabits, and which he has seen change along with changes in his physical and psychological self.