Exhibition traces influences of Kay It

Exhibition traces influences of Kay It

By Amir Sidharta

JAKARTA (JP): The strange and comic pot-bellied terra-cotta
figures now appearing in Jakarta gardens, their elongated hands
playing the gamelan, never fail to bring to my mind the wealth of
creative genius that originates in Bali. These figures, which are
products of Bali, have become one of the most prominent Balinese
handicrafts and can be seen everywhere, especially in the major
centers of tourism on the island.

We tend to take for granted that many kinds of Balinese
handicrafts are works of collective creativity and therefore
remain anonymous and cannot be attributed to one person but
rather only to a village community. By contrast, in these
idiosyncratic figures, we get a strong sense of individual
creativity.

I once became enamored of the subtle sense of gaiety in the
paintings decorating the walls of Murni's Warung in Campuan, a
village just west of Ubud, Bali. One portrayed a triangular face
reminiscent of the cili -- a female figure representative of
fertility -- usually made out of rice dough and included in
Balinese offerings. Another depicted a village scene with rice
barns flanked with ornamental bamboo poles. These drawings seemed
to me even more idiosyncratic and individual than the terra-cotta
figures mentioned previously.

Later, I learned that the stylized figures could indeed be
attributed to one person, a Balinese of Chinese descent by the
name of Kay It. But what was even more interesting was that the
paintings I so admired in Ubud turned out to be the creations of
the same individual.

Kay It was born in 1938 in Tabanan, a village in southwestern
Bali. As the eldest son of a family of mixed Balinese and Chinese
descent, Kay It was expected to continue his parent's copra
business. However, the young man seemed to be more interested in
art. From primary school onwards his favorite pastime was
drawing, and he is even known to have bought his pencils and
paper on credit when he ran out of pocket money.

After completing his secondary education in the 1950s, the
determined student of art spent some time with a relative who was
attending an art school in Surakarta, Central Java. In 1959,
having run out of money, Kay it to returned home.

Back in Bali, he became acquainted with other painters,
including Alimin and Roesli Hakim, at the house of Javanese
painter Bambang Soegeng in Tanjung Bungkak, south of Denpasar.
Bambang's house had become a meeting place for non-Balinese
Indonesian painters who lived in Bali at the time. They displayed
their works at a studio gallery adjacent to the house.

Kay It's first exhibition was held at Surabaya's Pik Gan Art
Gallery in July 1964. No paintings were sold. Young visitors to
the show offered the artist this comment: "Oom (uncle), your
paintings are terrible." But rather than discouraging Kay It, the
experience served as a challenge to him.

Modern art

At the end of the same year, he exhibited at the Prasta
Pandawa gallery in Jakarta, on the invitation of Hendra
Hadiprana, who had met Kay It and seen his works. This show was
reviewed favorably and half of the paintings were sold. Among the
purchasers was Affandi, a pioneer of modern Indonesian art. Kay
It held successful exhibitions in Jakarta in 1966, 1967 and 1969.

During this early period, Kay It's works were clearly
influenced by his interest in modern art. His Flowers in A Vase
(1964), for example, shows inspiration from van Gogh, in subject
matter, and from Matisse, in style. One of Modigliani's reclining
nude paintings appears in the background of Kay It's Faded
Flowers (1965). The techniques of George Rouault have evidently
been applied in his Grandmother (1965). According to Australian
anthropologist David Stuart-Fox, who wrote a book on Kay It, the
artist's knowledge of Western art was limited to second-hand
information obtained mainly from books.

It seems Kay It's encounter with Affandi also made an
impression on him. The expressive strokes of Affandi, as well as
the maestro's palette, which consists primarily of brownish
yellows, reds and greens, inspired the young artist when he
painted Njoman Singen (1966).

Although heavily influenced by other artists, Kay It started
to assert his own presence in his art. While certain elements in
Village Swimming Hole (1966) seem to have been influenced by
Matisse's Dance, the painting reflects what one reviewer in that
year called the painter's "somber view of Balinese life."

Despite his interest in western art, the artist was already
starting to develop his own esthetics and style. This is evident
in Festival Decoration (1965), Temple Ritual (1966) and Night
Creatures (1966).

In about 1967, Kay It began to work with terracotta
craftspeople from Pejaten, a village southeast of Tabanan,
leading to the creation of the figures mentioned at the beginning
of the article. Kay It met Kerry Hill -- the architect of the
Bali Hyatt -- at the home of Australian artist Donald Friend in
Batujimbar, Sanur, in the early 1970s. The meeting resulted in a
commission for decorative terracotta tiles for the entrance to
the Sanur Beach Hotel.

The painter's interest in batik, which dates back to about
1971, led him to go to Yogyakarta to study the traditional dyeing
technique, which was gaining increasing popularity as a medium
for painting among the local artists there. Kay It employed both
brush and the traditional canting (small bamboo scoop for batik)
in his works.

It seems clear that Kay It's mature style was influenced by
batik techniques which he learned in Java and Donald Friend's
method of layering. From batik, he learned the use of resistant
materials.

On the basis of the resistance principle, Kay It developed a
method for his paper-based paintings which was quite different
from batik. He did, however, continue to use wax as a resistant
material. Not patient enough to work with slow-drying oils, he
used acrylics which he applied with rollers of various sizes on
paper and board. The layers of paint gave the works rich colors
and textures. Then the artist delineated the forms and images in
his drawings with pencils and completed them with final touches
of paint.

Artist

An exhibition of Kay It's works which opened at the Hawksburn
Art Workshop in Melbourne, Australia, in October 1973 confirmed
his position as an accomplished artist. In cooperation with the
Hawksburn Art Workshop, the artist's friends, Henry Talbot and
Esta Handfield, who had met him in Bali, had arranged for him to
study ceramics and present lectures in Australia. Less than six
months later, Kay It had held three exhibitions there, the last
one marking the opening of the Solander Gallery in Canberra.

Then, an encounter with another Western artist influential in
the development of art in Bali further reaffirmed his
accomplishment as an artist. During his return to visit Bali in
1975 and 1976, Rudolf Bonnet -- who had lived in Bali between
1931 and 1958 with the exception of a brief period during World
War II -- noticed Kay It's talent and arranged for him to exhibit
in the Netherlands.

In the midst of his preparations for what would have been
perhaps the most important exhibition of his career, Kay It
suffered a fatal heart attack, dying in April 1977.

Knowledge of Kay It's existence and genius has been limited
because of his early death. The Bali expatriates who knew him
were those who were in Bali in the 1970s. Others are familiar
with his work but were not fortunate enough to become acquainted
with the artist himself.

A retrospective exhibition of Kay It's work is being held at
the Santi Gallery on Jl. Benda in Kemang, South Jakarta. Running
until Nov. 7, it is a great opportunity to learn about his work.

Another useful source is David Stuart-Fox's Kay It: Whimsical
World of a Modern Balinese Artist (Koes Artbooks, 1995), which is
the primary source of the biographical sketch above. Stuart-Fox
was a friend of Kay It and the book gives readers who never met
the painter an opportunity to find out what he was like.