.jpg?w=1)
拍品专文
Painted in 1959, the same year which celebrated Indonesian modern artist S. Sudjojono married the mezzo-soprano Rose Pandanwangi, Jalan di Muka Rumah Kami or The Road in Front of our House is one of the Sudjojono's earliest and most personal paintings to come up for auction. Part personal biography in chronicling the beginning of an important phase in the artist's life; and part historical document for the way the painting vividly captures the environment of its times, Jalan di Muka Rumah Kami spans the personal and the historical, a characteristic trait of the best of Sudjojono works.
Sudjojono is best known for developing a theory and philosophy of modern Indonesian art as opposed to the Dutch-trained "Mooi Indie" style of naturalistic painting, which was tainted by its association with colonialism. As Sudjojono matured as an artist, he developed a loose, expressionistic style akin to that of Van Gogh. Painters, according to Sudjojono, must only resort to their own souls. To him, painting was the visualization of the soul. True artists should be free of conventional standards, artistic tradition, and the conventional pictorial grouping of people. The soul of a painter which becomes visible in a painting is what, in essence, gives value to that painting. In this way painters could truly paint anything and bring forth works of quality as long as they guarded the quality of thei soul.
Through the 1950s, Sudjojono became more heavily involved in politics than at any other time in his life. The time he was politically active saw a distinct transformation in the underlying aesthetic value of his paintings. His works from the 1940s onwards, of figures and landscapes, were increasingly dedicated to reflecting a realist view of Indonesian life and culture. By the 1950s, Sudjojono was profoundly influenced by social realism. The subject matters in his paintings shifted in response to events in his personal life. Sudjojono joined the Indonesian Communist Party in 1950 and was made the director of the League of People's Culture (Lekra), the cultural arm of the party in the same year. In 1955, he was elected as a member of the house of representatives in Indonesia's first election as an independent country. During this time, his paintings were devoted to the subjects and depictions sanctioned by the political and left-leaning artist friends surrounding him, for instance, portraits of commoners, seemingly unremarkable, engaged in their daily activities.
In Jalan di Muka Rumah Kami, the viewer is privileged with a view of the street from the home of Sudjojono, at once stepping into his life and seeing the world through the artist's eyes. Sudjojono married Rose Pandanwangi in 1959, after having met with the disapproval of his peers in the Indonesian Communist Party in the preceding three years of their relationship. Disillusioned with politics and forsaken by the artistic fraternity, Sudjojono and Rose Pandanwangi moved to the cheap area of Pasar Minggu (a district in Jakarta) to set up their new lives together, building their house room by room. Occasionally the construction had to be halted due to lack of financial resources. This was a period of great sacrifice for Sudjojono, fuelled only by his determination to seize the day and live with the person he loved.
In order to make ends meet, Rose used her substantial musical gifts to teach piano and perform in radio concerts. Sudjojono received commissions for portraits, particularly from Adam Malik, ambassador to the Soviet Union and Poland at that time, and a close friend of his. Despite his tight financial straits, Sudjojono retained his pride and refused to let Adam Malik provide any sort of monetary aid - unless it was in the form of payment for the purchase of paintings, such as the portrait of Malik's wife, Nelly Malik. Many important works by Sudjojono, including Jalan di Muka Rumah Kami thus found their way into Adam Malik's personal collection.
The scene depicted is one of a typical unkempt Indonesian roadside, where tropical trees and shrubs grow exuberantly, and quickly overlay any human presence. The trees, each distinctly marked with a band of white paint, jogs the memory of the city's older inhabitants who can recall a past era when the city's trees were painted as such, serving as street markers. The long shadows of the trees in the late afternoon cut across the road, which forms the diagonal axis in the painting, accentuating a particular moment in just another ordinary day, but one no longer found in the present-day sprawling metropolis that is Jakarta.
Jalan di Muka Rumah Kami harks back to simpler days; a visual record of the change in the urban evolution of a city, and a tender record of Sudjojono's own life. In this regard, painting, for Sudjojono, becomes an act of inscribing the story of his own life on paper or canvas. Perhaps more so than any other modern Indonesian artist, Sudjojono was best known to regard painting as an autobiographical act. A sole figure - likely a soldier, clad in khaki fatigues, black boots and belt, his back facing the viewer - is the only human figure in the painting which bears an unmistakable quietude. Headed away from the viewer, the solider departs from the scene, away from the home that Sudjojono and Rose were beginning to build. If the solider can be read figuratively as a symbol of the Indonesia Communist Party's dominance in Indonesian politics in the 1950s, the painting could very well be an indication of Sudjojono's ideological shift, away from the communist doctrine, and a strand of social realism in painting which he upheld througout the 1950s. In this regard, Jalan di Muka Rumah Kami is a quintessential Sudjojono picture.
Sudjojono is best known for developing a theory and philosophy of modern Indonesian art as opposed to the Dutch-trained "Mooi Indie" style of naturalistic painting, which was tainted by its association with colonialism. As Sudjojono matured as an artist, he developed a loose, expressionistic style akin to that of Van Gogh. Painters, according to Sudjojono, must only resort to their own souls. To him, painting was the visualization of the soul. True artists should be free of conventional standards, artistic tradition, and the conventional pictorial grouping of people. The soul of a painter which becomes visible in a painting is what, in essence, gives value to that painting. In this way painters could truly paint anything and bring forth works of quality as long as they guarded the quality of thei soul.
Through the 1950s, Sudjojono became more heavily involved in politics than at any other time in his life. The time he was politically active saw a distinct transformation in the underlying aesthetic value of his paintings. His works from the 1940s onwards, of figures and landscapes, were increasingly dedicated to reflecting a realist view of Indonesian life and culture. By the 1950s, Sudjojono was profoundly influenced by social realism. The subject matters in his paintings shifted in response to events in his personal life. Sudjojono joined the Indonesian Communist Party in 1950 and was made the director of the League of People's Culture (Lekra), the cultural arm of the party in the same year. In 1955, he was elected as a member of the house of representatives in Indonesia's first election as an independent country. During this time, his paintings were devoted to the subjects and depictions sanctioned by the political and left-leaning artist friends surrounding him, for instance, portraits of commoners, seemingly unremarkable, engaged in their daily activities.
In Jalan di Muka Rumah Kami, the viewer is privileged with a view of the street from the home of Sudjojono, at once stepping into his life and seeing the world through the artist's eyes. Sudjojono married Rose Pandanwangi in 1959, after having met with the disapproval of his peers in the Indonesian Communist Party in the preceding three years of their relationship. Disillusioned with politics and forsaken by the artistic fraternity, Sudjojono and Rose Pandanwangi moved to the cheap area of Pasar Minggu (a district in Jakarta) to set up their new lives together, building their house room by room. Occasionally the construction had to be halted due to lack of financial resources. This was a period of great sacrifice for Sudjojono, fuelled only by his determination to seize the day and live with the person he loved.
In order to make ends meet, Rose used her substantial musical gifts to teach piano and perform in radio concerts. Sudjojono received commissions for portraits, particularly from Adam Malik, ambassador to the Soviet Union and Poland at that time, and a close friend of his. Despite his tight financial straits, Sudjojono retained his pride and refused to let Adam Malik provide any sort of monetary aid - unless it was in the form of payment for the purchase of paintings, such as the portrait of Malik's wife, Nelly Malik. Many important works by Sudjojono, including Jalan di Muka Rumah Kami thus found their way into Adam Malik's personal collection.
The scene depicted is one of a typical unkempt Indonesian roadside, where tropical trees and shrubs grow exuberantly, and quickly overlay any human presence. The trees, each distinctly marked with a band of white paint, jogs the memory of the city's older inhabitants who can recall a past era when the city's trees were painted as such, serving as street markers. The long shadows of the trees in the late afternoon cut across the road, which forms the diagonal axis in the painting, accentuating a particular moment in just another ordinary day, but one no longer found in the present-day sprawling metropolis that is Jakarta.
Jalan di Muka Rumah Kami harks back to simpler days; a visual record of the change in the urban evolution of a city, and a tender record of Sudjojono's own life. In this regard, painting, for Sudjojono, becomes an act of inscribing the story of his own life on paper or canvas. Perhaps more so than any other modern Indonesian artist, Sudjojono was best known to regard painting as an autobiographical act. A sole figure - likely a soldier, clad in khaki fatigues, black boots and belt, his back facing the viewer - is the only human figure in the painting which bears an unmistakable quietude. Headed away from the viewer, the solider departs from the scene, away from the home that Sudjojono and Rose were beginning to build. If the solider can be read figuratively as a symbol of the Indonesia Communist Party's dominance in Indonesian politics in the 1950s, the painting could very well be an indication of Sudjojono's ideological shift, away from the communist doctrine, and a strand of social realism in painting which he upheld througout the 1950s. In this regard, Jalan di Muka Rumah Kami is a quintessential Sudjojono picture.