February/March, 1998
No. 033/VI/98
cover story
The boom in
contemporary Balinese
art
A Matter of Taste
Why bourgeois Balinese
are collecting art
beyond
bali
From Toraja to the
Togians
Sulawesi's most seductive
parts
Treading Lightly in
Lombok
Tips to being a green
tourist
regular
features
Weekender
The Saltmakers of Amed
Home Grown
Legian's Legend,
Made Kasim
Health and Beauty
The Ubud-based
Bali Utama Spice
Books
The search for the Great
Bali Novel continues
Cuisine
Bumbu Bali cooking
school
Fiction
Marni's Ride by
K. Landras Syaelendra
Jungle Drums
Sika
Gallery
The avant garde of
Balinese art
Komaneka
The second generation
The
Artist Cafe
Art for everyone
Darga
Gallery
Bali's
house of masters
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In tradition-bound Bali, modern art and galleries committed to exhibiting it are blooming. Putu Wirata looks at some of the artistic transitions that have led up to this contemporary trend.
"Once upon a time, the only reward I received for my labours was the
joy I felt to see my works in the temple." Gusti Kobot, a painter from Pengosekan,
Ubud who is now in his seventies is reminiscing about a Bali of yesteryear, when painting
was either a metaphysical pursuit or a political gesture. "Some of my paintings were
forms of religious devotion, others were tributes to the rulers. I never would have
imagined that they could be sold for money," he remembers.
But that all finished in the 1930s when European painters
Rudolf Bonnet and Walter Spies settled in Ubud, sparking technical and thematic
revolutions in Balinese painting, and catalysing a shift in the function of art as a form
of devotion to a saleable product. "Bonnet was always giving pencils and pieces of
paper to local kids," remembers the 82-year old painter from Tebasaya,
Ubud, Ida Bagus Made. "Then he'd collect the drawings they did and take them
back to Holland. On his return he'd give us the money he had got for the sale of the
paintings."
After Bonnet's exhibitions in Holland, Balinese paintings quickly became fashionable on the international art market, drawing the attention and wallets of many art collectors. Among such collectors was Indonesia's first President Sukarno, whose penchant for all things Balinese drove him to order large-scale purchases of Balinese paintings by the state. Interestingly though, as Gusti Ketut Kobot asserts, this did not have the effect of "luring Balinese artists from their duty of devoting art to the temple." Ida Bagus Made, for example, as his works increased in value began donating considerable funds for temple restoration, and continued to make barong masks for free. "I don't carve barong masks for money, I make them for God." It is a conviction he maintains to this day.
Above:
A scene from Nyoman Erawan's ground breaking happening art, 'Cak Seni Rupa Latta
Mahosadi', which he staged at Denpasar's art centre in mid - 1997
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