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.