Fadjar Sidik: Expressive Design

2020     19×24cm    256pages  USD 100

This book is jointly edited and published by Asia Art Center and Art Agenda, S.E.A. Written in English and translated into Chinese and Bahasa, this trilingual catalogue includes Fadjar Sidik’s documentary photos, plates from his early 1960s to 2000s paintings and the newly updated exhibition history.

The author, Ian Tee spent nearly 2 years collating and studying the historical materials about Fadjar Sidik and the history of Indonesian modern art, together with the field trip interviews in Yogyakarta, Indonesia and finally accomplished this comprehensive book about Fadjar Sidik’s art and life. This book is composed of five chapters in a two-pronged approach: the first three chapters situate Sidik in the Indonesian art canon while the final two examine the discourse around abstraction.

Chapter 1 maps Sidik’s relationships with key figures in the first generation of modern Indonesian artists, as well as important institutions such as Sanggar Pelukis Rakyat and Indonesia’s first art academy (ASRI). After laying out the socio-political situation around Indonesian art in the 1940s, Chapter 2 delves into the Jogja-Bandung debate and its implications on the development and reception of abstract art. With escalating tensions under Sukarno’s rule and the infiltration of Cold War politics, Chapter 3 looks into the 1960s as a decade of momentous change, which ended with Suharto’s New Order regime and abstraction’s day in the sun. Chapter 4 is dedicated to Sidik’s groundbreaking body of work ‘Dinamika Keruangan’, focusing on his creative processes and painting techniques. Lastly, Chapter 5 examines how traditional culture was absorbed and transformed in the works of Fadjar Sidik and his peers, as well as proposing a theoretical framework to consider their innovations within the discourse of formalism.


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