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History
In the times of Bali's old feudal kingdoms, woodcarving served as temple decoration and as the bale of the rajas. Wood was also utilized in such everyday household features as carved beams, columns, doors for houses, and implements like musical instruments, tool handles, bottle-stoppers, and hilts of 'kris'. All these functional carvings were painted in bright colors, lacquer, or gold leaf; seldom was the wood left raw. The 1930s, with the ever-increasing influx of tourists, saw a dramatic change in the perspective of Balinese wood sculptors. Shops, street corners, hotel lobbies, marketplaces, the airport, and harbors suddenly blossomed with objets d'art of an unequivocally commercial mold, produced to sell. In contrast to the traditional polychrome, mythological religious carvings, more realistic statues of peasants toiling, nude girls bathing and deer grazing appeared, themes that found a very ready market among the tourists. This mercenary impulse gave the art a terrific boost. An export market soon developed, which found Balinese statues turning up in Jakarta, Singapore, Paris. One of the most striking milestones in modern Balinese sculpture was the emergence of the fluid form of figure sculpture with elongated arms and face, resembling the thinness of a Giacometti statue or a long-necked Modigliani. This style was born one day in 1930 when the artist I Tegelan of Belaluan was asked by Walter Spies to carve two statues from a long piece of wood. Several days later the carver returned with a single statue of a girl with a exaggeratedly lengthened torso. I Tegelan told the delighted Spies he refused to cut such a beautiful piece of wood in two. With Spies's encouragement and support, the abstract style soon caught on, and its appeal to carvers and tourists alike continues to this day. During the highly creative 1930s, other techniques also developed. Competition gave rise to much experimentation. In the villages of Peliatan and Nyuh Kuning (near Ubud), sculptors delicately carved animals and birds with either astounding realism or in caricature, distorting the features of a subject to heighten its special character. Often the Balinese artist mischievously sculpted a creature's face to resemble someone in the community-a stingy old man would be portrayed as a detestable beetle; a fat, ill-tempered woman as a waddling querulous duck. One sculptor, I Tjokot, cleverly chiseled great whorls of demons, divinities, and other mythological characters out of thick tree branches, crafting his sculptures into benches, lamp supports, and trays. It's still easy to recognize I Tjokot's abiding earmark; most often hollowed-out tree stumps over one meter high. A few of this master's original works may be seen in Ubud's Puri Lukisan. Another outstanding carver of modern times was Ida Bagus Njana of Mas, who created phantasmagoric abstract sculptures of human beings and surrealistic knotty "natural" sculptures out of gnarly tree trunks. Only small incisions on the surface indicated contours, the wavy grain of the wood contributing to the motion of the figure. Ida Bagus was also the progenitor of the fat statues of toads, elephants, and corpulent sleeping women you now see everywhere. Several of his carvings may be seen in Ubud's Museum. His son, Ida Bagus Tilem of Mas, is a talented sculptor in his own right and enjoys an international reputation. |
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