Ida Bagus Made: A unique painter of Ubud

By Intan Petersen

UBUD, Bali (JP): "I feel hurt," hissed painter Ida Bagus Made. Tears sprang into his eyes when he was read an article about one of his stolen paintings appearing at a Christie's auction in Singapore last March.

People in Bali still remember that in 1978, 14 of the painter's best paintings were stolen from his house in Tebasaya village, Ubud, Bali and have never been returned to him.

"Today I can't paint like that any longer, I am now too old," said the 80-year-old Ida Bagus Made.

Nobody knows the price of any of his paintings, when he sold them and who the buyers were, but he is the most appreciated painter in Ubud. However, his relationship with galleries is not as smooth as is normally the case between painters and galleries. Once he felt cheated by the owner of a gallery in Ubud, and since then he has always treated galleries and art dealers as his worst enemies. He is the only Balinese painter the galleries must work hard to get a painting from. Usually they have to send somebody who can please him, but even this often fails. Once he asked vice president Adam Malik to leave his house, because the latter thought that his paintings were too expensive.

"You can't appreciate art, please leave my house," he said angrily to the country's then deputy.

People who meet the painter for the first time often find him arrogant and stubborn. You have to comply with what he wants and he avoids journalists. Nevertheless, it is common knowledge that he is the favorite painter of the late president Sukarno, who liked his honesty, eccentricity and innocence. He was often invited by the first president to visit the Tampak Siring Palace.

"President Sukarno liked me because I am what I am," he said one day. He is probably the only Indonesian painter who dared ask the late Sukarno to buy his paintings. One day he said, "Pak, you must buy my paintings. I do not have anymore money to buy paint and paper." Sukarno, without comment, bought the paintings.

Ida Bagus Made was born in 1915 the only child of an adoring mother and the painter Ida Bagus Kembeng. He grew up in the brahman family, in Tebasaya village, Ubud. His father was one of two the painters to receive a Diploma de Medaille d'Agent from the French government in 1937 during an exhibition in Paris. The other painter was Ida Bagus Kembeng (1897-1952).

With a little persuasion, Ida Bagus Made told me about his early years, his poor childhood.

"I was born poor and poverty taught me to resign myself and all this frightened me that I might be controlled by money. My father didn't have the money to send me to school; we even didn't have money to buy clothes," continued the illiterate Ida Bagus Made.

When asked about his late mother whom he adored very much, he closed his eyes for a moment and sighed, "What I loved most in her was her inconspicuousness, and I have always wanted to get back to her, as if she had not died."

Ida Bagus Made's success cannot be separated from two legendary names in the Ubud painting world: Rudolf Bonnet and Walter Spies. Ida Bagus Made grew up in the pure cultural environment of Ubud in the 1930's, when the two world-famous maestros came there. As was the case with two other painters in his era, Kobot and Sobrat, he learned from Bonnet and also became a member of the Pita Maha painting brotherhood established by Bonnet and Tjokorde Agung Sukawati.

"Bonnet taught me a lot, but Spies was too smart for me. My brain cannot reach his level of intelligence," he confessed.

It was from Bonnet and Spies that the Ubud painters at that time were introduced to perspective, anatomy, new compositions, new coloring materials and themes which were no longer taken from myths.

His ultimate achievement, which he will never forget, was in 1953 when two of his works were chosen to be exhibited at the United Nations to represent Indonesia.

He devotes his life to painting. "I really have an obsession for painting," Ida Bagus Made asserted.

"People always refer to modern painting. Are they the only ones who understand composition, understand movement and have a concept?" he protested. "The concept of my paintings is found in the gamelan. Listen to the sound of the gamelan, there is movement, there is composition, vibration. I paint from the depth of my feelings when enjoying the gamelan. I have been applying this concept for over ten years, and I am still not perfect," he said.

A clever painter, according to him, should retain his most beautiful works. As a matter of fact, the asset of a painter is his best works. After the theft of 14 of his best paintings in 1978, he began hiding his top paintings. Nobody knows where they are and nobody is allowed to have a look at them.

Many people are hunting for his works, but he does not release his works of art easily. He dismisses the worldly life, leaves his old house dusty. Around his easel are sacks of rice, the bags musty and covered in spiderwebs.

Ubud witnesses Ida Bagus Made, the world famous painter, strolling barefoot along the roads of Ubud in only a sarong, forever a personality.