the nature of colour, the linear and figurative aspect of the art, and the sense of story, which includes a shared iconography that crosses from traditional to modern and contemporary art. Balinese painting is also arrangements of figures on a ground or screen, as the reference to the shadow theatre implies.
Proportion
To an artist such as Mandra, beauty, appropriateness and proportion are inseparable, because, according to another Balinese commentator on art, ‘harmony is experienced as aesthetic satisfaction’.2 The underlying outlook is that the spiritual dimension of art is part of the unity of humanity and nature. Thus, according to Anak Agung Made Djelantik, Western-trained medical doctor and co-founder of a number of cultural institutions in Bali, ‘forms seem to evoke spirituality’.3 Djelantik elsewhere observes that the values of traditional art are found in an artist’s aim ‘to put down in his painting his skill to the utmost, aiming at perfection of line, form and proportion, elegance in form and colour, well-measured harmony, contrast and balance’.4
In Gunarsa’s description, proportion is central to Balinese aesthetics, but what does he mean by this? Proportion refers to adherence to established conventions about the relative size of parts of figures, which are in turn related to the measurements that come from the human body. These measurements are set down in craft manuals. They are similar to medieval Western systems of measurement, although in the Balinese case each measurement is seen as a human manifestation of elements that exist in the wider cosmos.
Correctness of proportions is part of being in tune with the workings of divine forces in the world. Gunarsa’s description makes it clear that classical ideas of proportion in painting are shared with other arts. Because traditional painting is most closely related to the shadow puppet theatre, the proportions of limbs and head to the body in painting are those of the puppets. They are also connected to ideas of position and how the body is held and moved in theatre, especially in dance-drama.5
Balinese aesthetics, as Djelantik observed, do not separate the everyday from what we in the West call ‘the spiritual’. Balinese treatises on art present this connection as the unity between the ‘great world’ of the cosmos (buwana agung) and the ‘little world’ of humanity (buwana alit). In such treatises, an artist meditates to unite the body and the brush with the gods and ancestors.6 Thus, painting is an act of meditation, and artists are numbered amongst those who can reconcile the cosmic world beyond the senses (niskala) with the everyday sensory world (sekala).
Traditional artists consecrated into higher forms of esoteric knowledge drew yogic diagrams on death shrouds or kajang, which literally link humans to the otherworld. Some of these artists, such as Ida Bagus Made Bala (1920–42) and Ida Bagus Made Togog (1911–89) of Batuan, used the skills they learnt as kajang makers in producing modern art. They also drew mystical drawings that served as amulets, called rerajahan, which can serve a variety of magical purposes, from warding off harm to enchanting a lover to making someone ill7 (Fig. 4).
Materials and Colours
The links between cosmology and art in Balinese aesthetics mean that colours and forms are codified, and are important vehicles for communication between the two worlds. The word for ‘colour’ in Balinese is also the word for ‘form’—warna. In the treatises on art and artistic practice, colours and lines have their own intrinsic values, related to their ability to be ‘given life’ through connection with the divine.
The materials for painting are an important part of the process of ‘giving life’. Brushes and pens are traditionally made from bamboo—brushes have the ends shredded, pens are carved to split point—although Western materials are now imported and generally used. Possibly the oldest type of artworks were on paper made from pounded bark cloth, daluwang, which is found in different parts of Indonesia and the Pacific Islands. Bark cloth is considered to be rare and valuable. Small pieces, for example, are used as ingredients in ritual offerings, and bark cloth makes the most desirable of shrouds for the dead in preparation for burial and subsequent cremation (generally these shrouds are made of cotton). Working on bark cloth is very difficult as it absorbs the ink and is not a smooth surface. It is a mark of dexterity for a master such as Nyoman Mandra to be able to produce fine works on this medium. Older works on bark cloth show this dexterity of line (Fig. 5).
Fig. 5 Kamasan, Fragment of a Palelintangan or Astrological Calendar, 19th C, natural paint on bark cloth, various dimensions, approx. 160 x 220 cm, from Pura Puseh, Tulikup, Karangasem, private collection (photo Gustra).
Usually painters work on cotton cloth, and sometimes on wood. Balinese artists have also inscribed illustrations from literature on palm leaf manuscripts.8 With the importation of Western paper from the early nineteenth century, Balinese artists gradually adapted to the standard formats of paper.
Bali has produced cotton for a long time, probably coming to Indonesia from India in the Middle Ages. The village of Kusamba, to the east of Kamasan, was one centre of production of cotton, which was woven on local hand looms to textile lengths, approximately 90 x 220 cm. In Kamasan, these lengths are known as langse or curtains. Other standard formats for traditional cloth are almost all square pieces called tabing, ranging from 130–150 x 140–160 cm, and the long narrow strips hung around the eaves of pavilions, called ider-ider, usually around 30 cm wide but typically half a metre to a metre long. Traditionally, artists also produce flags (kober) to be attached to spears or poles for temple and other festivals, as well as works to be hung as ceilings (lelangit) of pavilions.9 Paintings on wood are also found on pavilions, either on ceilings or as backing boards (parba) for platforms that sometimes serve as beds. Many other wooden objects, such as ‘chairs’ for carrying temple effigies, have been painted by traditional artists.10 Artists have also inscribed pictures on palm leaf, the medium of manuscripts.
In Kamasan, local and imported cotton cloth was traditionally sized or primed with a rice paste, which was first boiled into the cloth, and then polished using a cowrie shell on a bamboo spring.11 Paintings from other areas are not necessarily sized in this fashion. Unfortunately, the rice paste has made paintings attractive to all kinds of insects, which is one of the reasons few works of great antiquity survive. Confusingly, many Western museums classify Kamasan paintings on cloth as ‘textiles’.
Kamasan painting has always been a communal, and largely a family, activity. The leading artist draws an initial sketch in light ink lines (ngereka), or perhaps nowadays in pencil. That sketch lays down the figures and narratives, but it is up to a group of apprentices and colourists, mostly women, to provide the main painting work. Mandra’s wife, Ni Nyoman Normi, is a talented colourist from a family of painters. When the colourists have finished their work, the final lines are done by the master artist, and then the painting is finished. Paints were once of natural vegetable and mineral dyes, and the soot from oil lamps was used for ink, although Chinese ink and other imported paints are now most often used.12
When artists discuss colouring, they usually talk about primary colours, which are used in conjunction with black ink and white. Traditionally, colours are made from natural sources: red or ochre shades from minerals, blue from indigo, yellow from minerals, black from soot and white from crushed animal bones.13
Different gods are depicted with different colours, so there is an immediate link between colour symbolism and the divine: Siwa, the most powerful god, is associated with white and Brahma with red. However, different explanations of the
