TheJakartaPost
Please Update your browser
Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below.
Just click on the icons to get to the download page.
BookWORM: Amir Sidharta: Amid art, history books and playing detectives
Courtesy of Amir SidhartaCurator and owner of Sidharta Auctioneer auction house Amir Sidharta claims he does not like reading because it makes him fall asleep easily, especially if the books donât arouse his curiosity
Change text size
Gift Premium Articles
to Anyone
Share the best of The Jakarta Post with friends, family, or colleagues. As a subscriber, you can gift 3 to 5 articles each month that anyone can read—no subscription needed!
Courtesy of Amir Sidharta
Curator and owner of Sidharta Auctioneer auction house Amir Sidharta claims he does not like reading because it makes him fall asleep easily, especially if the books don't arouse his curiosity.
'I don't read that much, but when I need to know about things, I will dig it out. The book has to be really interesting so that I can enjoy it,' he said.
Amir said that when he was a kid, he enjoyed reading children's novel Emil and The Detective, written by German author Erich Kästner with Walter Trier as the illustrator. As he grew up, he preferred to read comics, such as The Adventures of Tintin and The Adventures of Asterix.
'I like Tintin because he travels to many places and does investigations, while Asterix is interesting because the story plays with history in such a clever way,' he said.
One time Amir read novels and books on architecture, such as Body Memory and Architecture by Kent C. Bloomer and The Place of Houses by Charles Moore, Gerald Allen and Donlyn Lyndon.
Another time, he immersed himself in books about archaeology, including In Small Things Forgotten by James Deetz.
Amir, who is the author of art book S. Sudjojono: Visible Soul, has plans to write more books on art. Currently, he is conducting research for his next book about several lesser-known artists. He also dreams of publishing a book about masterpieces of Indonesian art.
____________________________________
'Making the Mummies Dance'
by Thomas Hoving
Deborah Iskandar, former country manager of Sotheby's Indonesia, lent this book to me. It is closely related to what I do; Hoving talks about his experience hunting for artworks for his museum, requiring him to be brave enough to pay huge amounts of money for one piece of work and to be confident about the authenticity of the art.
'Dan Perang Pun Usai (The War is Over)'
by Ismail Marahimin
I really like British-Japanese war drama film Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence. Instead of reading The Seed and The Sower that became the inspiration for the movie, I read this notable work from Marahimin.
'Blink'
by Malcolm Gladwell
I first knew Gladwell from his book Tipping Point and I like him because his way of looking at things excited me. Then I read Blink, which also talks about how curators examine the authenticity of artworks using the intuition they have developed by observing art.
