Wood Carving

WOOD CARVING

Wood carving,like stone carving, has traditionally featured largely in temple and palacearchitecture with little freestanding 'sculpture' work produced commercially.Immaculately carved demons and mythical beings decorate pillars, door panels,lintels and window shutters with the aim of protecting the buildings fromevil intruders. Scenes of legendary figures placed within floral decorset a more pleasant and educational tone. When producing tools and objectsfor everyday use, sculptors had a much freer hand in choosing subject matter.With the arrival of European influences, wood carving started to developalong more innovative and commercial lines.

 Althoughthere have been noteworthy carvers, for example; I Nyoman Cokot, Ida BagusNyana and Ketut Nongos, artistic integrity has suffered as a result ofthe whole villages specialize in producing certain styles of work. Thevillage of Mas near Ubud is probably the best known for its carvings offemale figures, Buddhas, characters from Hindu epics and the traditionalTopeng and Wayang Wong masks.

Textiles

TEXTILES

One ofthe most striking things about Bali is the rich variety of cloths and materialsthat are to be seen in thousands of shops throughout the island. Howeveronly a small proportion of these are indigenous to Bali. The myriad ofbatik clothes and sarongs available everywhere, are mainly imported fromJava and a large proportion of the woven cloths (ikat) found in and aroundKuta / Legian area are imported from the islands of Sumba & Flores.However Bali does have a very rich textile industry of its own. The beautifulSongket fabrics worn by performers of traditional dance are a good example.

 In Songket,gold and silver threads are woven into the cloth to create complex motifsof birds, butterflies and flowers. Sometimes they use so much gold &silver that the underlying cloth is barely visible.
Endek, orweft ikat is another common method used in Bali. In weft ikat weaving,the weft threads are dyed to create the design and then woven with plainwarp threads. These cloths are recognizable by their abstract designs andbright colors.
 
Althoughby far the least common form of weaving to be seen in Bali, Geringsing,or double-ikat, is perhaps the most sought after. With this technique,both the warp and weft threads are dyed to their final designs before beingwoven together. With the exception of certain areas in India and Japan,this weaving technique can only be found in the small village of Bali Again Tenganan, East Bali.
 
If you wouldlike to see ikat being woven visit the Cili Weaving Center, Jalan CiungWanara, Gianyar.

Stone Carving

STONE CARVING

Althoughstone carvings were mainly used to decorate temples and palaces, the carvershad much more leeway in their use of subject matter than the artists andillustrators. There is little difference between the iconography decoratingtemples and that of private buildings. Gateways represent the dividingline between the inner and outer worlds and as such are the recipientsof some of the most fantastic carvings. 

As well as portraying deities anddemons, the carvers included many scenes from public life and there aremany temple surfaces enriched with the antics of the Dutch Colonialistsincluding scenes of bicycles, drunken parties, car break-downs and evenaeroplanes. Bali's modern-day center of stonecarving is the village ofBatubulan, situated half-way between Denpasar and Gianyar.

 Althoughyou can see excellent examples of Balinese stone carving all over the island,the temples in the North tend to be much more unrestrained (with the exceptionof Pura Puseh in Batubulan). If you are planning on visiting Northern Baliit is well worth taking the time to visit Pura Meduwe Karang in Kubutambahan,Pura Dalem in Jagaraga and Pura Beji near Singaraja. In order to see thework of Bali's most famous stonecarver and accomplished artist, I GustiNyoman Lempad, visit Pura Sagen Agung in Ubud.

Paintings

PAINTINGS

The placesynonymous with the traditional form of Balinese painting is the villageof Kamasan near Klungkung. In the service of the kings of Gelgel and Klungkungup until the beginning of this century, it was only natural that the paintersand illustrators, called 'Sangging', should settle in this one area. Asit was not uncommon for ruling families from other parts of Bali of acquirethe use of a Sangging to decorate their own palaces or temples, the Kamasanstyle of painting quickly spread throughout the whole of Bali.

 Until thestart of this century, the dominant form of painting was the portrayalof Hindu epics, on 'Langse' - large narratives painted either on broad,rectangular cloths or on 'Ider-ider' which were much narrower (about 30cmwide and several meters long). Langse were placed in temples as wall hangingsor used as curtains in the palaces. Ider-ider were hung around the roofsof temples and shrines and were used decoratively at court on festive occasions.The artists also painted on wooden boards which were placed between raftersas ceiling friezes. A side from large representational paintings, the 'Sangging'were also expected to decorate everything from gourds, wooden altars, bamboovessels, headboards for princely bed chambers and in particular to illustrateastrological wall hangings on bark paper or cloth.
 
The stylefor which the artists of Kamasan are famous is based on the East Javanese'Wayang' art. These were basically two-dimensional, iconographic representationsfollowing strict rules and guidelines as to how the characters should beportrayed. For example a person's character and status can be seen fromthe colors used to portray them, his headdress of even the direction inwhich he is facing. Noblemen always have very refined faces while coarsecharacters have large, bulging eyes and fangs. Today in Kamasan you canstill find people who are dedicated to painting in the traditional 'Wayang'style. One of the most famous Kamasan artists is I Nyoman Mandra, who,aside from producing his own paintings and doing restoration work, hasstarted a school to try and keep the Wayang tradition alive.
 
It wasn'tuntil the early nineteen hundreds that Western influence reached Bali.The use of Asian symbols in the works of, amongst others, Paul Gauguin,Toulouse Lautrec and Camille Pissaro created a new trend for Asian-influencedart and European painters began to move to Bali. Ubud's fame for art canbe traced to the arrival of German painter, Walter Spies and Dutch painterRudolf Bonnet. Together, with Indonesian artist Gede Agung Sukawati, theyestablished the Pitamaha Group which encouraged Balinese artists to moreexpressive and less tradition-bound. Aside from the Kamasan school of paintingthere now exists a wide range of different styles. Some characteristicsare listed briefly below.

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The Arts Of Bali

ArtisticallyBali is a melting pot of cultures and traditions. The Balinese have a natural capacity forabsorbing different cultural elements to blend them with their own to produce dynamic newhybrids. Over the years Bali has been the recipient of numerous influences, Chinese,Buddhist, Indian, Hindu, Javanese and most recently, Western. For centuries artists andcraftsmen in Bali worked under the patronage of the priests and ruling classes, decoratingpalaces and temples. The artists themselves were anonymous, never signing their work andusually living close together in artists' 'villages'.

Generallythe artists did not have much room for personal expression as their designs followedstrict aesthetic and religious guidelines. With the arrival of European artists at thestart of this century, this soon began to change and artists started developing their ownindividual styles.

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