'Affandi and Family' to display 100 paintings

'Affandi and Family' to display 100 paintings

By Parvathi Nayar Narayan

JAKARTA (JP): Among contemporary artistes, it is rare for a
painter to be a household name -- that is a privilege usually
reserved for movie stars and musicians. Affandi, however, is an
exception, a name familiar to most Indonesians. His death in 1990
was widely mourned, even an exhibition was held posthumously at
the Smithsonian Institute, Washington D.C. Since then, the next
significant Affandi exhibition is arguably the one beginning in
June 1996 at The Regent, Jakarta.

There have been many exhibitions of the Affandi family, but
this will be the first one to bring together the paintings of
Affandi, his wife Maryati and both his daughters Kartika and
Rukmini.

Affandi was born in Cirebon in 1907. His artistic career seems
almost more colorful than his paintings -- he began by painting
billboards, sometimes even houses, in Bandung, but by the time he
died in 1990, he was considered one of the most influential
painters of modern Indonesian art. Affandi is remembered as an
expressionist painter, who eschewed the use of brushes, painting
instead with his fingers or squeezing the paint directly on to
the canvas. The results were paintings created of dramatic,
swirling swathes of paint and color.

Kartika Affandi, the artist's eldest daughter, has achieved
recognition in her own right as one of Indonesia's important
contemporary artists. She was taught by her father to paint in
his special and distinctive style. It was somewhat in the nature
of an experiment she says, for unlike her father she was not
first tutored in the ways of classical art. However Affandi was
not a rigid teacher, and kept emphasizing that she would discover
her own mistakes from her own experience. Actually, the most
interesting part of the press conference held to promote the
upcoming Affandi and Family exhibition was a painting
demonstration by Kartika Affandi. By hand gesture -- and spoken
word -- she showed how similar her style was to Affandi's, but
yet was different. And not just because she is left-handed, while
her father was right-handed.

The subject she chose to paint was a mixed bouquet of flowers
in whites, yellows, maroon and of course, green. First she coated
the canvas with linseed oil to allow the paint -- applied
straight from the tube very thickly or in thin transparent
strokes with her fingers -- to be manipulated with greater ease
on the surface of the canvas. The shapes of the flowers were
translated by the expressive movement of her hands into vibrant
strokes of paint. They conveyed something of the character of the
woman herself, strong energetic and outspoken. Color mixing was
done directly on the canvas too, sometimes by allowing the
underpainting to mix with the freshly applied color. It was a
frenzied process that produced a painting in about 20 minutes.

Kartika Affandi's finishing touch constituted of strong black
outlines in acrylic paint, obtained from a special tube. This she
said was her own addition to her father's technique. She says
that in terms of "feel", her pictures are happier, lighter while
her father's were darker, more dramatic. She further explains how
their individual personalities determined the way the painting
would shape up, even if the starting point was the same. She
humorously illustrated this by an example of how a similar
subject, a pig, was treated so differently by the two of them --
in Affandi's work it was from a man's perspective with dramatic,
indeed sexual overtones; in her's it was a woman's perspective
with a strong maternal accent.

Kartika Affandi is an artist who likes painting on the spot.
Her favorite subjects are human beings and animals. She says that
the forthcoming exhibition will also have a lot of landscapes and
subjects that are easy to sell; "... the paintings for my
kitchen," she smiles, that are more commercial and bring in
money. She also does a lot of restoration work especially of her
father's paintings, which are another source of revenue for her.

Part of the exhibit will also be a series of prints done by
Affandi, using techniques that he mastered while visiting Helfi,
his granddaughter, and her diplomat-journalist husband Dirix
Urbain in Belgium. It was Urbain who arranged the
opportunity for Affandi to study the various techniques of
printmaking. Urbain's eyes light up with affection when talking
about his grandfather-in-law, saying "...he (Affandi) was a
wonderful human being, who painted not for beauty but for
humanity".

Urbain explains that the prints consist of lithographs,
etchings and serigraphs, all limited edition prints signed by
Affandi. The subjects are as varied as self portraits, Indian
street scenes and atmospheric Parisian cafes. Affandi drew his
inspiration for the Indian work from the two years he spent in
India (1949 to 1951), having received a scholarship from the
government of India. Affandi traveled extensively in India,
drawing and sketching, and many of the images even have
explanatory notes jotted in the artist's hand. This was followed
by an exhibition tour of European cities like London, Rome and
Paris, the last providing the inspiration for the Parisian
scenes. It was probably in this time that he also studied Van
Gogh's work, whose influence is very visible in Affandi's
whirling colors and compositions.

Urbain's warm sentiments about Affandi were echoed by his
wife Helfi Dirix, both of whom had come from Yogyakarta to
Jakarta for the press conference. Both she and her husband will
also speak at the seminar on Affandi, planned to be held prior to
the exhibition. Helfi herself is not a painter but a dancer, and
has established the River Castle dance and cultural center in
Yogyakarta. When she tried painting, she says, she found she was
unable to express what she felt; her paintings were far removed
from her real feelings. However when she turned to dancing, she
found a satisfying unity of form, feeling and expression. She
credits her mother for allowing her the space to grow, and for
not forcing things upon her.

The exhibition will also have paintings and embroidery by
Maryati Affandi, the late painter's wife, who passed away in
1991. During the last years of her life she was increasingly more
interested in her embroidery works. About these, Affandi himself
is quoted as saying, "My wife's embroideries are unique because
while it is the hand of a grandmother, the result is that of a
child's." The fourth artist in the upcoming show is Rukmini, who
studied art with her father Affandi from 1982 to 1988, and later
under the tutelage of Barli S., at the Rangga Gempol Studio. She
has exhibited several times in Jakarta and Yogyakarta.

The exhibition will showcase around 100 works of the Affandi
family; all the works will be for sale. Thus it promises to be of
interest to both art lovers and investors; for the latter
obviously, it is a chance to invest in Affandi art, while for the
former it will be an opportunity to see under one roof the
artist's work and influence, and the ways in which his styles
have been utilized and interpreted by the painters closest to
him, in his own family.

* The Seminar on Affandi will be at The Regent on June 18.
Tickets at Rp 40,000 are available from The Regent Business
Center.

*The exhibition Affandi and Family will be held at The Regent,
Jakarta, from June 20 to July 7, 1996. Admission is free.