examples from works by leading painters from Bali at the turn of the twenty-first century help viewers unfamiliar with this art to understand the principles from which painters work, how the formal and narrative elements come together to amaze the senses of their audiences. The first example is the leading Indonesian contemporary painter I Nyoman Masriadi (1973–), whose works are bizarre and confronting, cartoon-like reflections on human nature and society. The second is an artist more senior by thirty-three years, I Nyoman Mandra (1946–), whose works are the acme of refinement, and whose village lifestyle is far removed from the modern urban and cosmopolitan world in which Masriadi works (Fig. 1).
Southeast Asia’s most expensive contemporary painter, Bali-born Nyoman Masriadi, challenges his viewers with striking figurative works. These images have a strong linearity and sense of proportion that is quite alien to Western traditions of perspective. They draw on the story-telling and the two-dimensional format of the famous shadow puppet (wayang) tradition. The figures, rendered like stiff icons, typify the rougher aspect of Balinese painting. In works such as his Awakening Kumbakarna, Masriadi demonstrates his connections to the foundations of Balinese painting in narrative, in this case specifically to the ancient Hindu epic, the Ramayana, in which the demon Kumbakarna is the last great weapon to use against the hero, Rama (Fig. 3). Produced in 1999 after Indonesia’s most important awakening in Masriadi’s life, the fall of the dictator Suharto, the work gives a contemporary context to mythology, something most Balinese artists do. This painting is ambiguous, since Kumbakarna is a demon to be fought off, and the democratic reawakening of the nation in 1998 also awoke demons of violence and destruction.
Fig. 1 I Nyoman Mandra, 2009 (photo Gustra).
Masriadi’s works impress us with their combinations of line, flatness and dense narrative. The purest expressions of these artistic foundations are still practised in the village of Kamasan, in Klungkung, southeast Bali. The art of Kamasan is regarded not just as the high point of tradition but also as the epitome of the classical form of Balinese painting that connects directly to the wayang or shadow puppet theatre. Today, one artist stands out as an advocate of that tradition. I Nyoman Mandra is acknowledged throughout Indonesia as the master painter and teacher of Kamasan painting. Mandra’s work is a demonstration of how artistic accomplishment is the product of long craft training.
Mandra’s painting of the semi-divine bird Garuda from the Hindu Mahabharata epic, exemplifies the ‘classic’ form (Fig. 2). The figures are directly based on shadow puppets, displaying a different type of conflict, one between the central figure of the anthropomorphic Garuda eagle and the gods of the directions. This is a conflict to obtain the divine liquid of immortality, and thus the scene mirrors aspects of Balinese ceremonies in which holy water occupies a central position.
While Balinese paintings are nowadays found primarily in galleries and museums, traditional works were originally placed in temples and palaces. Mandra’s village of Kamasan is one of the few villages that still brings out paintings for temple festivals, to hang around the eaves of pavilions or on backing boards of offering places. This ceremonial context tells us something about the religious basis of Balinese art. Paintings are meant to convey meanings that bridge communication between the material world humans inhabit and the immaterial world of divine and demonic forces.
Balinese painters often have experience in the other arts. For example, Nyoman Mandra is also a musician in the refined Semar Pagulingan musical ensemble of his village. In the past, Kamasan village had as many as twelve puppeteers in residence. Other painters are also sculptors. This practical interrelationship between the arts means that each draws on the other—paintings have aspects of performance—and that the sense of plastic form realized in sculpture carries over into the two-dimensional arts. This interdependence of art forms allows us to talk about generalized Balinese aesthetic principles, even though each form has unique elements, and there is astonishing variation between villages and areas in each of the arts.
Fig. 2 I Nyoman Mandra, Kamasan, Garuda Nawasanga, Garuda and the Gods of the Directions. Garuda fights the gods as he claims the elixir of life: North (top): Wisnu with his weapon, the cakra or discus; Northwest (clockwise, to the right of Wisnu): Sangkara, angkus or elephant goad; West: Mahadewa, nagapasa or snake arrow; Southwest: Rudra, moksala or mace; South: Brahma, danda or club; Southeast: Maheswara, dupa or fire weapon; East: Iswara, bajra or thunderbolt weapon; Northeast: Sambu, trisula or trident (arrow), 1993, natural paint on cotton, 252 x 227 cm, Gunarsa Museum, USA (photo Gustra).
The painting tradition has a repertoire of images and forms that are integral to even the most contemporary works of art, but while many contemporary works have a universal audience, there are other aspects of Balinese painting that remain strange and inaccessible to outside viewers. What do such viewers need to know in order to appreciate Balinese works?
Fig. 3 I Nyoman Masriadi, Yogyakarta, Awakening Kumbakarna, 1999, acrylic on canvas, 140 x 200 cm, OHD Museum Collection, Magelang (photo Gajah Gallery).
Balinese Aesthetics
The exquisite flow of line and pure, flat figuration in Mandra’s work is the key to the sense of beauty that Balinese appreciate in painting. Part of that beauty, the way a painting can move the viewer, comes from a canon of proportions and forms. Tradition, however, does not mean absence of change, and individual expression comes from the manipulation of pre-set forms. These are the starting points for understanding Balinese taste.
A revealing commentary on Mandra’s art comes from a fellow Balinese painter. Pioneer of Balinese modernist art, I Nyoman Gunarsa (1944–) is himself a painter of figures derived from the shadow theatre, but in an abstracted, painterly style. He describes Mandra’s accomplishments as a combination of adherence to the rules of the style, with ultimate expressive facility. Gunarsa is saying that what looks to outsiders like conventional work is ‘the realization of set forms and technical problems’. Mandra goes through ‘stages that must be followed in a set manner, in order to gain the maximum “classic” result’.
Gunarsa observes that Mandra’s control is also over ‘the form of the … proportions of the figures, the iconography, the facial features or character of the refined, coarse, demonic and monster figures’. This attention to proportion and iconographic convention involves ‘the differing symbolic uses of colours for some characters, such as red, yellow and blue, that each have their own meanings; the symbolic hand gestures (or mudra) of each figure, as well as the foot movements, body stances’.... ‘In making a figure, he has to demonstrate control over all the elements of the shadow puppet (wayang) theatre form.’ Mandra’s ‘control of the ideal wayang proportions includes his overall framing outlines which are then refined with precision and attention to detail’.
Fig. 4 Ida Bagus Made Bala, Batuan, Kajang or shroud, before 1937, ink on cotton, 65.5 x 162 cm, collected by Margaret Mead, courtesy of the Division of Anthropology, American Museum of Natural History, 700-8305.
While Gunarsa’s description of Mandra at work may sound like a process of simple adherence to craft, it is in fact highly creative, since Mandra is ‘dealing with problems on the level of ideas that are played out in the narratives of the Mahabhrata, Ramayana and so on’. The creativity comes through Mandra’s feeling for the tradition, ‘where he can reflexively work from his sharp memory of what the iconography is for each character, using strokes that are precise and spontaneous, but exactly to the mark, and without repetition in the realization of each figure’.1
Gunarsa here
