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Art, Architecture, Music
Art as A Way of Life in
Bali
Perhaps more than any other commentary on Bali, the
famous words of the Mexican artist and anthropologist Miguel
Covarrubias, that “everyone in Bali seems to be an artist,”
have succeeded in drawing legions of eager visitors to the
island’s mythical shores. Even today, fifty years after
the publication of Island of Bali, Covarrubias’s
monumental work on Balinese culture, the idea that Bali
offers the ultimate setting for aesthetic expression has
become a highlight of the established image of the island
and an intrinsic part of its enchanting allure. Searching
for a land where the arts are an indispensable part of human
experience and where artists are respected members of
society, a long line of wandering Westerners have come to
Bali to paint and to patronize, the draw and to deal, to
sculpt and to study the incredible richness of the Balinese
arts.
Yet Covarrubias was not entirely right about Bali. Not everyone
on the island is an artist. In modern Bali, as in the modern
West, there are priests and computer programmers, travel
agents and tour guides, high school teachers and government
bureaucrats who have never wielded a paint brush or a
sculpting tool in their lives. In fact, in the Balinese
language there is no word for “art” or “artist.”
There are picture painters and mask makers and stone
sculptors and wood carvers, but they do not form a special
category of people separate from the rest of society. What
does remain true of Covarrubias’s characterization is that
on Bali, like no place else on earth, a concern with the
beauty, passion and creativity that marks Bali’s aesthetic
activities is an essential aspect of everyday life. The same
man who spends afternoons painting a complex array of
colorful figures on a canvas or sculpting elaborate designs
out of soft volcanic stone may spend mornings tending his
rice fields or searching the ocean for fish. Artistic
activities are mundane ones in that they are tightly woven
into the fabric of daily work rhythms, making the humblest
activity one of grace and beauty. When a Balinese builds a
house, plants a garden of tropical flowers, dresses for a
wedding or a temple ceremony, makes a kite for a child or
even lays out a colorful assortment of wares for sale in a
market stall, it is no exaggeration to say that they do it
with unparalleled grace and style. Even the rice fields of
Bali are gorgeous green sculptures cut out of the living
earth in patterns to delight the eye as well as feed the
body.
But part of what makes the arts so vibrantly alive and so
stunningly spectacular to behold in Bali is that art is also
an inseparable part of religion. The Balinese gods love
beauty, and their worshippers spare no expense or effort in
providing a sensuous feast for the divine. Balinese temples
are famous for their intricate stone carvings and statuary,
complex works that take highly skilled craftsmen months to
create by hand, offering testimony to both human talents and
divine inspiration. The ritual offerings made to thank the
gods for their blessings - from the simplest combinations of
flowers, fruits and rice placed daily in the shrines of
houses to the elaborate towers constructed of colored rice
dough figurines, fragrant tropical blossoms and exotic
fruits presented to the deities at temple festivals -
display similar attention to aesthetics, with shades, shapes
and decorative touches chosen as much for their beauty and
harmonious appearance as for their religious significance.
And even the arts which might seem to have no relation to
the world of the spirit were, in fact, developed out of the
desire to please the gods. The spectacular dances and dramas
that have made Bali world famous and which required the
artistic contributions not only of dancers and musicians but
of designers and cloth weavers to create the spectacular
costumes, gold and silver workers to shape the brilliant
decorations, and carvers to shape the fantastic faces of the
masks used in wayang topeng dramas, began as sacred
performances to welcome the gods down to earth at temple
festivals. And the skills of scores of talented craftsmen,
including builders, sculptors and painters, are needed to
construct necessary ritual objects, including the
spectacular cremation towers used as part of the ceremonies
to send the soul on its journey to the afterlife and
eventual reincarnation.
It is also this embeddedness of the arts in religious
ceremonies and community celebrations that gives Balinese
aesthetic creations their characteristic similarity to each
other. In Bali, where an ethic of individualism has yet to
take hold, the highest praise one can give to an artist is
to copy him. Thus in Bali one sees whole villages producing
the same kinds of paintings, carvings or jewelry designs,
although there are acknowledged masters of their crafts who
are renowned for their special talents who will then teach
others their methods. For Westerners brought up with
copyright laws and an insistence that creativity must
express something unique about the personality of the
artist, the Balinese penchant for using similar motifs and
styles over and over again may seem confusing. But for the
Balinese, it makes perfect sense. Where art is not separable
from life and where artists work together as a way of
serving the gods and the community, the arts are
fundamentally social activities, drawing on shared bodies of
knowledge and techniques and expressing shared hopes and
visions of the world.
Balinese art is also special in that it is constantly
transforming itself to incorporate new ideas and accommodate
social changes. Much of this artistic openness can be
attributed to the fact that there are few permanent
materials used in the Balinese arts. Gorgeous creations made
as gifts to honor the gods are burnt up in cremation fires
or placed in front of shrines where they quickly rot or
serve as a meal for wandering dogs and chickens. Carved wood
is attacked by termites, painted canvas or cloth falls prey
to the high tropical humidity, and even stone carvings are
made out of soft volcanic rock that is worn down by weather
in a matter of a few dozen years. Having to continually
create art anew to fulfill their cultural demand for beauty,
the Balinese have become quite willing to experiment with
reworking and remodelling previous styles to adapt to
contemporary conditions.
In fact, when tourists talk about searching out the “traditional”
or “authentic” arts of Bali, they often overlook the
fact that in Bali there never has been one fixed and stable
way of creating art. Over the past thousand years, Bali has
seen a steady stream of visitors from all the corners of the
world, and has combined these foreign influences with its
own local talent to create art forms that are always
changing and always hybrid. Traders from India, Polynesia
and the Arab Peninsula left their mark on the Balinese arts.
The Chinese, especially, had a great influence on the island’s
aesthetics and ritual, introducing the Balinese to the lion
figure, which remains visible in the famous Barong dance,
and the design-stamped coins Balinese still use to make
religious offerings. Balinese arts underwent a renaissance
in the 14th and 15th centuries when migrants from the
Javanese kingdom of Majapahit, fleeing the rise of Islam on
Java, brought their own artistic traditions with them to
Bali. Under this Javanese influence, the kingdoms of Bali
blossomed like never before, and artists, dancers and
craftsmen were brought to the courts and offered royal
patronage to produce works of beauty that glorified the gods
and the kings. New styles were devised and new techniques
perfected in a continuous imaginative process of creation.
Twentieth century tourism thus encountered not fixed art
forms but aesthetic genres that were in constant creative
flux. And the Balinese, with their characteristic love of
innovation, have made the most of the opportunities of
tourism as well. Working with Western artists, they have
learned new techniques and explored new styles, producing a
wider range of creations than ever before. And tourism has
opened vast new markets for the Balinese arts, enabling many
painters, carvers and craftsmen to devote themselves full
time to their vocations. Of course, tourism has also brought
a commercialization of the arts, with quick profit seekers
turning out careless work for ignorant tourists. But as
visitors to Bali become more informed about the Balinese
arts and the Balinese themselves become educated about their
own rich cultural heritage, tourism has the potential to
spark another creative renaissance on the island of the
arts, assuring a prominent place for Balinese art on the new
global map for the millennium.
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