Paintings are everywhere in Bali. Either masterpieces and junk, modern and traditional. This is understandable since both Balinese nature and culture are highly picturesque. Bali’s beauty and exoticism have naturally encouraged artists from everywhere to demonstrate their imagination and creativity. At the top of it the tourism itself also provides a ready made market for these art products.
Paintings as so other forms of arts were different in the very old days, prior to the arrival of the Dutch colonialism. The time when all aspects of life had a religious implication and were given a religious meaning. Paintings, statues, relief, masks, etc. not only had a religious use, but were designed following symbolic rules and attributed a place reflecting their religious function. The pratima statues, the visiting god’s effigy, were to be made from appropriate materials, with specific iconographic features and kept in the inner sanctuary shrines; on the contrary reliefs telling the stories of Man’s descent to hell were made with an altogether different iconography and positioned in the “lowest” and most impure part of the temple.
Even jewels were filled with religious significance. Kris (Bali’s daggers), as symbols of one’s line of descent, were made by people of the “Pande” clan, who had to go through peculiar ordainment rituals to exercise their craft. Other associative groups would specialize in other trades: the sangings in painting, the undagi with architecture and so on. And the making of all objects was regulated by a calendar of prohibitions and rituals. Some days and hours were auspicious, others not, and there were complex sets of ceremonies those meant to ‘bring to life’ or or endow (uripanga) the lontars, masks or weapons with magical power (kepasupatian).
Within this era, instead of being means of individual arts expressions, paintings were a reflection of one’s responsibility towards one’s community. The artist was the conveyor of traditional symbols, values, teachings and story-telling. Thus the text of the lontars, the sacred palm leaf books of Bali, is often accompanied by beautiful drawings. These illustrated lontars (the ‘Prasi’), still exist today and can be found in places like in Singaraja, Sukawati in Gianyar regency, or Tenganan in Karangasern regency.
Paintings made of native cotton would contain narratives which had a religious function and be assigned a place according to this function. The ‘Parba’ panels in temples would be decorated with godly figures, while cloth painting would contain illustrations such as love stories and would be unrolled during ceremonies such as wedding.
Classical painting was also closely related to wayang kulit or the shadow puppet show theater, which usually performed until the morning hours. paintings’ most popular themes stories are taken from the Indian epics the Mahabrata and the Ramayana. The narrative of the paintings are inspired by that of the puppet show. Both convey identical traditional teachings, they are made by the same craftsmen and follow the same iconographical principles. Each characters have thus to be depicted very precisely to enable its identification. This requires a high level of skills, either to carve leather or to paint on cloth. In their function as carriers of traditional values, the Balinese artists were for centuries supported by traditional rulers, who gave them protection at their court. The results are still visible in many Balinese houses, temples and palaces all around Bali. The most famous are the ceiling paintings of the Kertagosa in Klungkung, previously the kingdom’s traditional high court of justice. Therein the paintings were painted by artisans from the village of Kamasan, who had followers all over the island. The village currently houses the Kamasan Paintings school, which still carries on the tradition of wayang painting based on Indian epics. It is also famous for its painting of Balinese calendars.
Not until the beginning of previous 20th century, when the collapse of the traditional powers throughout the island and the establishment of Dutch colonial rule. Western cultural influence followed suit. Dealing with this presence imposed upon them, the Balinese artists showed their ability to feel blessings in disguise. Paramount in this cultural encounter between Bali and the West was the roles of Walter Spies, a German painter who came to Ubud in 1927. He was invited there by the head of the noble house of Ubud, Cokorda Raka Sukawati, who was the first of his time to comprehend that the future of his community lay in the arts and tourism. Upon Spies’s initiative, the Balinese painters from Ubud and the surrounding area were soon experiencing new techniques and looking for inspiration in new themes, the artistic revolution of the 30’s was launched. Another European, a Dutch painter Rudolf Bonnet settled in Ubud in 1929, further strengthening European artistic influences. These expatriate artists captured Balinese landscapes, daily life as well as everyday faces into canvas. They induced the Balinese to do the same, distributing paper, Chinese ink, paint, and canvas. The rest was marketing. Until then the Balinese artists painted on a cloth from Nusa Penida, taken their colors from natural materials such as soil and plant substances. Their consumers were merely the nobility. Spies and Bonnet, instead, marketed paintings mainly to tourists and Dutch colonials.
The basic concepts of art and painting in Bali are the opposite of that existing in Europe. The Balinese have a different concept of space. They keep it full, crowded and without perspective. Altogether different from that of the European tradition, in which space is open, and composition structured to translate more realistically, in particular with perspective, the forms and movements of the subject matter. Further more, the visual narration underlying Balinese paintings is irrelevant to Europeans. Balinese painters, instead of freezing a moment of a narrative, put several of its episodes together, thus blending time and space in a single representation unit. Spies and Bonnet introduced a new approach to space and representation, although it never reached the analytical stage Bonnet in particular was dreaming about.
Perhaps more importantly, the Europeans had led the Balinese artists to see themselves as individuals. Balinese painters started to put their names onto their paintings, becoming “artists” in the European sense of the word, i.e. individual creators. This new development spread across Bali. Balinese painters would come to Ubud and show their works to Spies or Bonnet who would then give them advice and materials. Inspired by this enthusiasm, Spies and Cokorda Raka Sukawati, together with Bonnet, established the Pitamaha Association in 1936. Run as a cooperative, it distributed materials, selected works and organized exhibitions in Java, Bali and abroad. Pitamaha also became a kind of academy for Balinese painters. Owing to the colonial spirit of the time and the traditional respect towards one’s guru, the. Balinese considered sacred the words and style of the Western masters. Thus a Bonnet and a Spies-style appeared, the First with anatomical torsos of Balinese men and women in their daily activities, the second with a lush environment of shades and light.
Some painters started developing their own style. The anatomical presentation of mythological subjects against an elaborate background first appeared in Pengosekan and nearby Padangtegal, with I Gusti Ketut Kobot, Meregeg and Sobrat. But the most gifted artist of that time was arguably I Gusti Nyoman Lempad, whose expressive and stylized drawings of daily scene make him the most creative artist of his generation.
Meanwhile, in Batuan, a center of Balinese dance and drama in Bali, many artists stuck to the traditional wayang stories and Hindu mythology, but a humanized form, and against a scenery background showing depth and a primitive perspective. The color showed dark hues and deep shading. The noted painters of Batuan were Ida Bagus Togog and I Ngendon.
After a period of crisis during the Second World War and the post independence period, Bali underwent a new creative surge in the 60’s and 70’s. In 1956 Arie Smit, another Dutch painter, settled in Penestanan, and distributed color to the local youth. A new style soon came into being: “The Young artist of Penestanan”, characterized by the coloring of thickly outlined figures and objects with extravagant though flat colors. In Batuan though, artists were competing as to who would have the smallest and most sophisticated detailing. This gave birth to the Batuan miniature school of painting. Whereas, in Pengosekan, the influence of photography led to the apparition of close-up painting of wildlife.
After the War, two important developments took place. First Bali, which had until then been the exotic favourite of Western artists, became that of the “national” painters. Some of the most famous painters from Java and elsewhere came and worked among the Balmese: Affandi, Srihadi and others. Following them, hundreds of painters from Java, Sumatra and elsewhere moved to Ubud and the surrounding area. Their production, made along the lines of Western academism, now dominates much of the local market. Perhaps more important yet is the apparition of a new generation of Balinese painters, educated not in the villages, but by the national academies of Java and, more recently, Denpasar. Some of them have refused to fall into the exotic trap and have been able to trans- late Balinese perception of space, color or themes into modern and even contemporary arts. Tusan uses Balinese offering to create Balinese Cubism, Gunarsa translates into ‘action painting’ Balinese dance and puppet characters, while Wianta, perhaps the most creative of his generation, reinvents abstraction with dot colored surfaces and structures taken from his deep Balinese consciousness.