Eiffel
By Men Sagan
Men Sagan is one of the artists who are continuing Affandi's legacy with his style of painting. Affandi himself was undoubtedly one of the greatest artists in Indonesia's history. Men Sagan learned to paint under him in 1969 during his time in Bali. He has mastered his teacher's craft so well that most would often mistake his paintings for his teacher's. From style, technique, to the objects he paints, everything is almost exactly the same. However, in this painting of the Eiffel Tower, Men Sagan painted something that even Affandi himself never did.
The Eiffel Tower is one of the most iconic landmarks in France, other than the Arc de Triomphe and the Muśse de Louvre. The tower, which took two years to build (1887-1889), is the work of one called Alexander Gustave Eiffel, the same man who designed the Statue of Liberty. Some say that, at first, Eiffel wanted to build his tower for the 1888 Barcelona Universal Exposition. When they rejected him, he pitched the idea again for the 1889 Exposition Universelle in Paris and received an approval. The construction of the Eiffel Tower involved 300 workers, 18,038 metallic parts, and 2.5 million nails. The finished work was not a darling among the critiques of the time. Now, ironically, most would think of the Eiffel Tower when they think of France.