Lot Essay

Considered as Indonesia's most renowned artist of the expressionist movement in the 1950s and 1960s, Affandi acclaimed praises from Indonesia as well as international art enthusiasts. Herbert Read, a famous art critic, once stated him as a painter who had succeeded in 'developing a new course of Expressionism'. The artist's life and career documented the daily life of a young nation in transition from colony to a republic.

Affandi's works display the artist's fervent brush strokes, inundating his subjects with such emotions that every work screams out the true personality of the artist. His original rather conventional and realistic style gradually morphed into one of the distortion and deformation in the 1950s and since then his works of the 1960s showed the artist's love of vitality and movement, often with forceful subject matters painted in dynamism of his brushstrokes.

Through present lot titled "Nyeleret (Nyêret)" (in Indonesia: 'nyandu', or English: drugs addiction) dated 1968, Affandi tried to record a lifestyle that existed during and post-Dutch colonial era in Java.

In those days Javanese people did 'nyêret' for the purpose to resist sleepiness, for example a puppeteer who would perform a whole-night wayang performance. However, other parts of the communities such as Chinese traders and local Javanese people did nyêret for recreational purpose, social standing or as catharsis (escaping from the reality or problem). Back then it was reported that there was a special place that provided people to buy and enjoy the drug. At the rental place, wooden beds, tea pot, drinking water and some sugar cubes were provided so the addicts can enjoy their time while taking drugs. Levels of addiction is very high, so there were addicts who died in emaciated state.

Affandi documented very well how such lifestyle existed in the Javanese culture in the 1960s. In the present lot Affandi injected his own take on it. He cleverly warned people how hazardous this practice to one's health. His portrayal of human skull behind the sitter says it all. Executed in 1968, this probably the only piece of Nyêret by the artist portraying in great details the practice of smoking opium in the old Java. As in all his favourite paintings, Affandi also added his signature sign of joy : the sun and his feet. This painting surely rates among the best of Affandi's works and shows the artist at his prime back in the 1960s. Moreover, the present lot originated from the legendary Santi Gallery, whose owner was responsible for bringing Indonesia's old masters to international prominence.