“You’re going to Bali?”
“Yes.”
‘Weren’t you there last year too?
“Yes, twice.”
“You lucky bastard. I’d love a holiday in the sun like that.”
Dear friends and colleagues
Well, it’s not quite like that. Yes, in the last four years I have been to Bali eight times, but never for more than three days and I only got to the beach once – for just half an hour. There are a lot of artists in Bali so I go to Bali to do studio visits.
Of course, Bali is beautiful, the traditional architecture, the rice fields, etc. and it is always a pleasure to be there.
The ceremonies are beautiful too, but the gift shops and tourist knick-knack shops have spread across the Southern part of Bali like acne over a teenager’s face. There are an awful lot of art shops too in which mass-produced paintings are made and displayed for the tourists. What sort of paintings? Traditional Balinese paintings, Abstractions, Romantic landscapes, Chocolate box kitsch, any type of painting you want. These are pretty depressing places to go.
Bali is not an art centre like Jogja or Bandung where there is a sense of community and where artists meet regularly and wander in and out of each other’s studios. The artists work more separately here. They have gone there either because it is beautiful, or because they are Balinese and have family obligations. Some Balinese artists actually prefer to stay in Jogja: the ceremonies and social obligations in the home island can take up a lot of time.
I regret to say I don’t have a feel for traditional Balinese painting. I recognise that it is a dynamic tradition and that there are some “genuine” artists there. (Look at Adrian Vicker’s excellent book on Balinese art if you want to learn more.) I am however in awe of the lean, tense drawings made by sculptor I Gusti Nyoman Lempad who worked right up to his death in 1978, apparently aged 116!
I Gusti Nyoman Lempad, Funeral ceremony, 1930s.
But most of the traditional Balinese paintings you see nowadays lack this tension: the canvas being filled up with stock figures and happy detail. It’s a bit like Where’s Wally? but with devils and gods.
Mahendra Yasa, one of the five artists I visited, made the point that he is from North Bali and as the Dutch colonised that in the Nineteenth century they were modernised. South Bali was only invaded by the Dutch in 1906-08 and because of the appalling slaughter – whole villages committing ritual suicide in front of their guns – they tried to appease world opinion by preserving their old culture. So now that Mahendra has turned to making works that refer to Balinese paintings he is doing it not from the standpoint of a traditional Balinese but from that of Contemporary Art. His previous paintings had played on appropriated forms and the authenticity of paint in a way that paralleled Richard Prince, Glenn Brown or others. The painting he is currently working on looks as crowded as any Balinese painting but even a cursory examination reveals something very different and complex:
Studio of Mahendra Yasa
Detail of unfinished painting by Mahendra Yasa
It is filled with images from famous Indonesia artists: Raden Saleh, Basuki Abdullah, Djoko Pekik and (as shown above) Sudjojono. In so doing it also gives a history of Indonesia. (The image by Sudjojono is of a 1949 painting of a freedom fighter reconnoitering through a town destroyed by the Dutch.) These images are interleaved with images from Bali today. It is an extraordinary tour-de-force, one which even with the use of assistants will take months more to complete.
Chusin Setiadikara is one of several artists who have moved from Java to Bali. He has always been a realist painter, a highly skilled one who often, like Mahendra, but in a different way, plays with issues of representation. A recent project has led him to make something that even more than Mahendra Yasa’s work is a history painting. Asked to contribute to an exhibition in Jakarta honouring Raden Saleh, an Indonesian painter who trained in Europe in the nineteenth century and had a succesful career there he has blended Saleh’s iconic 1865 Flood in Java with Gericault’s Raft of the Medusa – and made the whole in contemporary dress.
Chusin Setiadikara studio
As with Mahendra there is great pleasure in going up close, but not for his compacted and juxtaposed detail, but for a subtle and light touch that animates the surface. From the distance it is strong composition, close up it has the vitality of a sketch.
Chusin, detail, and detail of detail.
Back in Singapore there was an opening at the Art Science Museum for the “Singapore Eye”. It was good to see old friends Donna Ong and Adeline Kueh – and their art – there. But both they and other artists had found, to their surprise, that images from their work had been used for posters, mugs, bags and the like without any consultation or approval.
Donna Ong merchandise
Adeline Kueh merchandise
One would laugh, but sadly this is indicative of the way art is sometimes treated in Singapore – as something to be reduced to chic décor. It is a shoddy way to treat two serious artists who were showing significant work about spirituality and memory respectively – not that you would get that from these commercial mutations.
I want to talk about them and the Singapore Eye next week. Like its predecessors, Indonesian Eye and Malaysian Eye, though initiated with much goodwill, it is a flawed and problematic production.
Have a good week!
Tony