Ayam Jago (Man with a Fighting Rooster)

Affandi painted this present work in 1968; and it was during the decade of the 60s, in a career that lasted more than sixty years, that he produced his most fluid and mature work. The image of the artist himself and the image of a man holding a rooster came from an extensive repertoire of imageries created by the artist which could arguably be called iconic. Fiercely expressionistic, Affandi rendered this work in pure, unmixed colours that do not transcribe natural appearances, but rather suggest the painter's emotions and sensations before nature. Although he distinctly delineated his subjects with forms and shapes so that his sitters are always decipherable, however the actual painting technique which involves the "squeezing and smearing paint from the tubes on to the canvas, working it with his fingers, palms, wrists, and the back of his hands" (Astri Wright, Soul, Spirit, and Mountain: Preoccupations of Contemporary Indonesian Painters, Oxford University Press, Kuala Lumpur, p. 112) inevitably rendered his subjects spontaneous and raw, pulsing with a life of its own, hence making every work of Affandi a transposition that is almost the passionate equivalent of a sensation received.

Emotion is the essential element in the artist's work, as Astri Wright wrote: "Affandi's style has been called expressionistic but to him his works were more true to the subject than any degree of photo-realisim 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. In all of Affandi's work, including his self-portraits, his aim was to capture the very essence of the life-force which suffuses the universe." (ibid, p. 112) And a life-force he did capture, as one could see from the paint work, the swirling of arms and the animated dripping of paint. In this aspect, it is not unlike the gestural work of American abstract-expressionist such as the celebrated Jackson Pollock. Yet the work of Affandi is unique in its own even though he shares both emotional and technical affinity with the giants of Western art movements, a uniqueness that is deeply rooted in the artist's own perception of identity, culture and art. His choice of subject and his preoccupation with the common people were founded on his Javanese roots and formulated in the colonial and post-colonial context of the Dutch East Indies and subsequently by 1949 as the Independent Indonesia. His empathy towards the poor common folks whom he frequently depicts in his work inevitably took up a socialistic stance during the period of the fight of Independence against the Dutch that is often overly highlighted; in fact it is not as much a socialist tendency than Affandi's Javanese belief in keeping in line with the cosmological balance of the people, the society and the nature which fires him on with his celebration of the common people on his canvas.

Man with a Fighting Rooster superbly exemplifies the quintessential elements of what constitutes the best oeuvres of Affandi. Technically, it demonstrates the artist at his spontaneous best with the seemingly disarrayed strokes of paint finding its order on the flat surface on the canvas and the generous presence of impasto in bright hues, which render a three-dimensional quality evocative of a sculptural work. Nevertheless the defining quality of this present work lies in the choice of subject: a proud owner of the feisty rooster which won most of its fights. Cock fighting was and is a favourite recreational activity for the many Southeast Asian communities and is predominantly a masculine activity for its symbolic allusion to machismo and manhood. To paint the subject allows the artist to identify with the sense of pride and the overwhelming confidence that the owner has over his rooster's skill; which was how Affandi felt with his own mastery over his craft. In this regard, whilst Affandi deftly painted the man with the rooster, he was also unabashedly presenting his own ingenious quality as a painter. It is this synergy of subject and intent that renders Man with a Fighting Rooster an iconic imagery not just for the artist but also for the ensuing decade that ushered in the Modernist era in Indonesian art.