DENPASAR (indo.com): As Putu Wirata Dwikora explained, the tradition of a single, dominant style of Balinese painting is slowly disappearing, as the local art world accommodates a variety of styles in local culture and society.

Like it or not, Balinese art is undergoing significant change. Those who were once part of the mainstream are now finding themselves faced with a multiplicity of views and varied lifestyles - a reality with which sponsors of Balinese art have been facing for the past five years.

For more than a quarter of a century, art critics and commentators of Balinese art could barely avoid mentioning Sanggar Dewata Indonesia - the association of Balinese artists who had studied at Yogyakarta's Art Institute - as a reference and a barometer for the development of contemporary Balinese art. Sanggar Dewata was established in Yogyakarta in the 1970's by Nyoman Gunarsa, Made Wianta, Pande Supada and Wayan Arsana.

Nyoman Gunarsa, with his sketches around the theme of death, drew on Balinese offerings, and thereafter on Balinese dancers and the Kamasan shadow puppets, for inspiration for his paintings. Gunarsa used a 'western' method that he had learnt at Art school. Recently, Nyoman Erawan has emerged, with his Hindu-Balinese icons and experiments with Hindu philosophy to enhance appreciation of his work.

The emergence of Balinese tradition in contemporary visual media began in the early 1980s. It exploded thereafter, resonating for another 25 years, and spawning the likes of Erawan and his numerous works, each of which has proven that he is serious about an expressive form that is true to him. Poleng (black and white checks), Chinese coins, cakra circles, temples, offerings and the use of strongly contrasting colors, have been central features of the young Balinese artists to emerge over the last 25 years. Many of them have reconstituted familiar themes such as the crematorial fire, the barong dance, rangda, masks, the baris dance, rejang dance and the like.

Reconstructing (1995); acrylic on canvas by Made Wianta

This specifically Balinese Hindu abstract expressionism represented a phenomenal challenge to the collective culture of Bali, itself extremely strong. Up until the emergence of the contemporary Sanggar Dewata Indonesia in the nineteen seventies, Balinese painting was dominated by a traditional agrarian style which was a remnant of the Klungkung kingdom and was exemplified by the Kamasan Wayang style of Klungkung, the Ubud and Batuan styles, and so forth. Up until the formation of the Pita Maha in the 1950s, by Rudolf Bonnet, Spies and Tjokorde Gde Agung Sukawati, innovations in painting were bound by the frame of traditional limitations. Prior to the Pita Maha, painting was understood as a form of prayer, if not to the Gods, then to the local palace, perceived as an embodiment of the holy. Artists would thus labor at the palace to demonstrate their loyalty to the king, or work at the temple to demonstrate their loyalty to the religious community. The late Gusti Ketut Kobot, a wayang painter from Pengosekan, Ubud, remembered his happy childhood years, helping to paint the ritual cloth in the Ubud Palace. "I am really grateful to have had that opportunity. The palace only paid us in food which we ate while working," he said.

The theme of these traditional Ubud paintings was around the wayang, including stories of the gods and popular folk stories. Most importantly, this art was an expression of the community. Artists never signed their work, and they were always proud if their students copied their work. To have their work imitated meant they had attained the status of a guru, the highest honor for a Balinese.

Following the loss of its mentor, Walter Spies, in 1942, who was killed when the ship he was traveling on was bombed by the Japanese, and the return of Rudolf Bonnet to Holland, the Pita Maha association broke up. But the collective spirit embodied by the organization did not die, for its artists, such as Gusti Ketut Kobot, Anak Agung Gde Sobrat, Ida Bagus Made, among others continued the Pita Maha tradition. In fact, the Pita Maha's influence remains evident in a number of young artists today. Wiranata, for example, displays Spies influence in his very poetic paintings of Balinese landscapes, which depict the rays of the dawn light touching on foliage and the bodies of farmers in their rice paddies.

After the Pita Maha period, in the 1950s and 1960s, a naïve style emerged, and was heavily influenced by the Dutch painter Arie Smit. This style became known as the Young Artists style, and made use of primary colors, strong contours and heavy strokes to depict the human form and other objects. Based in Penestanan, a village in the Ubud area, the Pengosekan style, which featured close-up depictions of birds and leaves, and also contained collective nuances, emerged too during this period.

Wherever we look, therefore, we see a community of artists whose works display a collective spirit from the point of view of theme, technique and even use of color. This collective spirit can be read as an expression of the collective will embodies in the banjar, the smallest community unit in Bali, which ties together the religious, traditional and emotional affiliations of the community.

This collective nuance has thus become a kind of mainstream within the local art world, the point from which local artists depart and the point at which they converge. It is also the cause for lack of change and innovation among Balinese painters. Ida Bagus Made, Gusti Ketut Kobot, Anak Agung Gde Sobrat, Ngurah Kresna Kepakisan, Made Meja, and others, have remained loyal to their collective styles, in spite of the input of scores of foreign artists from Java, Lombok, Europe and America upon their works. Together, they have held to a single value that has been responsible for their style.

	Pitamaha's member in Puri Saren, Ubud.

Towards the end of the 1970s, Professor Ida Bagus Mantra, a local academic and cultural critic who became governor in 1979, introduced the idea of holding the Balinese Arts Festival. A graduate of India's Chanti Niketan University, Mantra's idea was to use the Festival as an important step in the process of seeking the Balinese identity, feared by many as endangered in the face of the island's growing tourism industry. Many Balinese, it was argued were influenced by the culture of the tourists who came from afar to holiday in Bali often only for just a few weeks. Dr Agung Made Jelantik remembers how, in the 1970s, as increasing numbers of young Balinese wore their hair long and listened to rock or pop music, gamelan sets on the island were rapidly disappearing. One instrument, the gong gede, was practically non-existent on the island, and pop music cassettes were becoming an increasingly predominant phenomenon, according to Jelantik, and pop songs were beginning to be played in preference to local music at ritual events.

Young Balinese who had undertaken their education at the Yogyakarta Arts Institute, such as Made Wianta, Nyoman Gunarsa, Pande Supada, Wayan Sika, Arsana, Nyoman Erawan, Made Djirna, Made Budhiana, and others, found themselves in an artistic dilemma. The discourse of Balinese-ness among Balinese people had escalated to the level of polemic, which continued for five years from the beginning of the 1980s. What people feared was the loss of the philosophical underpinnings of the Balinese identity, and the specter of Bali becoming no more than the cultural ruins of a spiritless people, reduced to being the servants of tourism.

During Mantra's period as Governor, Denpasar's Udayana University began offering a visual arts study program. The PSSRD (Program Studi Seni Rupa dan Desain: Program for the Study of Art and Design) served as a kind of gatekeeper for the preservation of tradition. Both Prof. Rai Kalam and Drs. Gung Wayan Cidera, graduates of the esteemed Bandung Institute of Technology, and a number of other lecturers, upheld local artistic traditions by presenting them to students relatively free of scholarly interpretation.

The collective expressions of the Pita Maha, Batuan, Young Artists, Pengosekan and Kamasan Klungkung schools continued with few changes, in spite of the fact that foreign artists continued to come to the island and settle around Ubud. Artists such as Affandi, Abdul Aziz, Srihadi, Arie Smit, Antonio Blanco, were among those who migrated to the Ubud area, bringing with them styles that differed vastly from those of the local Balinese. The seemingly impervious nature of local painting traditions may well have been a form of local resistance to foreign intervention. The late Ida Bagus Made said, for example, that the styles and themes to which his paintings refer make them as valid and as important as works from other places in the world.

Such personal conviction, such belief in their Balinese-ness, is also evident among the artists of Sanggar Dewata Indonesia. In that context, these artists are not content with being merely the inheritors of a great tradition.

This Sanggar Dewata style has now become the dominant style, the barometer, of contemporary Balinese painting, and it is this style that is emerging most visibly in Bali's art schools today. For more than quarter of a century, therefore, the Sanggar Dewata style has attracted much attention. What is it about abstract expressionism that has made it so popular among art students and gallery owners and curators? Does it possibly represent the Balinese neo-collective, the collective that finds social expression in the banjar? It could also be read as a form of social resistance from those who are opposed to foreign intervention via the overwhelming power of the electronic media, or via the growing tourism industry.

In spite of the predominance of the Sanggar Dewata style, younger artists are now beginning to express their own challenges to the SDI position. Why must every work of art refer to the Balinese essence? And what are the relevancies and the implications of that essence for day-to-day life, in particular in the realm of art? At the root of the will to strengthen the Balinese spirit, is cultural resistance. The tourism industry, since its beginning in the 70s, has had certain implications in terms of changing the ethnic make-up of the island, its culture and even its economy. The social space of Balinese communities has undergone significant change, such that everywhere there are Balinese who feel the specter of alienation from their own culture. Architecture, ways of dressing, cuisine and also ways of communicating, to name a few, has undergone immense change. Bali is currently experiencing culture shock.

So, it is understandable that contemporary Balinese artists are concerned about maintaining the essentials of their own culture. And that concern is present in the paintings of the Sanggar Dewata artists and their influence on contemporary Balinese painting to this day. This movement, this collective aim on the part of young Balinese artists to preserve Balinese identity, has moved into the mainstream.


*This article is taken from Bali Echo.