Affandi Exhibition: Jakarta, West Java

An intriguing group exhibition opened on June 7 in a centennial celebration of Affandi, considered Indonesia’s greatest artist. Held at the Arsip Nasional (National Archives) building through June 14, Affandi Imagined shows the works of over 60 contemporary artists.

Of course, there are those works that express great respect and admiration for the great master. Aku, Affandi dan Dia (Me, Affandi and He) by Budi Kustarto, for instance, shows Budi standing solemnly before Affandi’s tomb.

Others tried to be inspired by the themes found in Affandi’s oeuvre. Ivan Haryanto depicts Affandi after a cock fight while Hayatudin focuses on the sun.

The sun was a favorite theme of Affandi, who once explained that to him, the sun was like life itself. But Hayatudin’s fantasies go beyond the sun itself, taking only its shape as a setting for human activities drawn against a background of green grass.

Meanwhile, David Armi Putra’s painting Affandi Tidak Takut Matahari (Affandi doesn’t fear the sun) shows the aged artist, his sunglasses propped on his head and looking straight into the sun.

The pipe is another trademark Affandi feature seen in several works: the realistic paintings of Dede Eri Supria, Saftari’s Fetish, Testimoni, a fine painting by Bayu Yuliansyah, Sugiyo Dwiarso’s The Smoking Pipe, Pande Ktut Taman’s Thanks, and Didik Nurhadi’s Affandi, depicting the master among white clouds looking at his winged pipe flying away.

But what comes as a surprise is the many frank commentaries on Affandi’s “hidden” personal life.

Ugo Untoro provides one in a plain blue canvas filled with only a single sentence: “Rubiyem, how are you?” Tisna Sanjaya, on the other hand, paints a skeletal Affandi with two smaller faces of women scratched through with the names of his two wives, Maryati and Rubiyem.

Putut Wahyu Widodo paints a female figure with Affandi’s head popping out of her naked waist, and Hari Budione shows a woman lying over a prone man, massaging him. Titled Bung, Ayo Bung (Brother, hey brother), it evokes sexual stimulation, not to mention Agapetus A Kristiandana’s painting showing a stallion in the act of intercourse.

Eddie Hara adds text to his painting of Affandi, which is quite harsh: “The hero is dead, Affandi was Punk,” it says.

Astari Rasjid’s sculpture of a painted-bronze bag with Affandi’s pipe has the word Holy carved in between sunflowers, another feature of Affandi’s works. Those familiar with her other bag sculpture, with “holy” carved in front and “sh**” at back, immediately looked behind the Affandi-sunflower bag. The word wasn’t there, but it might have been in the mind.

It is the works by Wara Anindya that were perhaps the most controversial. While one painting retains her usual style of eerie faces in featuring two women and one man, Puisi Tanpa Kata, Musik Tanpa Bunyi (Poetry without words, music without sound), another painting is plain sarcastic. Titled Bocah Tua yang Nakal (A naughty old lad), it shows a reclining nude and an old man delightedly taking a bite of a piece of watermelon, while cacti raise their thorns in the background.

But Sunaryo, who is among the senior artists in the exhibition, shows the wisdom of age in painting himself seated before a laptop in garish red, and Affandi as a split-screen image with his eternal sun and pipe, adorned with a text taken from Mahatma Gandhi: “The past is indeed with us, but it wasn’t in the past, we are with the present, we do make the future, but we are not in the future.”

In this, Sunaryo reminds us that we must honor the past, but we should not remain stuck there, for we live in the present and must act accordingly. Kembali ke Laptop (Back to the laptop) has been put up for a silent auction.

This is perhaps the first exhibition honoring Affandi wherein negative comments of the younger generation reveal the changing tides of artistic appreciation.

Even so, his fame — and real accomplishments — as a master painter remains unaffected.

Affandi Imagined was organized by Chris Darmawan, the owner of Galeri Semarang, with the support of American Express Bank.

Affandi Imagined
Gedung Arsip Nasional
Jl. Hayam Wuruk, Central Jakarta
June 7-14

Carla Bianpoen