Ketut Budiana's fantastic art on display
Ketut Budiana's fantastic art on display
By Jean Couteau
UBUD, Bali (JP): The world of Balinese painting has in the
last few years been overtaken by modernist concerns. Galleries,
journalists and collectors alike - mostly non-indigenous and with
their own vested interests - support an art which retains very
few references to the indigenous tradition of Bali.
Bali seems embroiled in a discourse where the problem of
"form" has become paramount, relegating everything else to the
background.
Abstraction or semi-abstraction - either in the constructed,
informal or "American expressionist" mode - rules the day while
little is being said about Balinese society and values, as if
these were permanently on the wane.
When "Bali" appears, it is either to worship the (past)
greatness of the island culture or merely in a referential way -
eyes of the Balinese witch, checkered black and white cloth,
triangular shape of the cosmic mountain - as if being Balinese
simply meant making a statement of identity through the use of
connotative symbols.
There are a number of causes for this phenomenon. Part of the
modern painting dialogue is probably authentic, but much is
certainly determined by the alienating conditions of the Balinese
market, which is mainly controlled by Jakartans, foreigners and
non-indigenous locals who are looking to buy art corresponding to
their "national" and cosmopolitan expectations.
This situation is even sadder because there is in Bali,
besides a stilted, tourist-oriented art, a post-traditional genre
of painting that is assiduously striving for modernity within the
Balinese system of forms and themes.
A presentation of this "different art" can be found in the
current exhibition of Ketut Budiana at the Agung Rai Museum of
Art (ARMA) in Ubud which has been completely and shamefully by-
passed by the national press. The exhibition is running from 5
April to 5 May 2000.
Ketut Budiana was born in 1950 in Padangtegal, Ubud. His
background, along with being immersed in the magic of Bali
itself, included being exposed to the Balinese imagery of Pita
Maha, the school founded in the 1930s by the painters Walter
Spies (1895-1942) and Rudolf Bonnet (1895-1978).
Modern-educated and currently a teacher at the Senior High
School of Fine Arts in Batubulan, he nevertheless belongs to
"Bali".
Budiana is skilled at making temple images, masks for sacred
performances and cremation artifacts.
It is the renewal and expansion of this tradition, rather than
its questioning, that his painting is really all about, as we
shall see below.
Thematically, Budiana's painting is deeply rooted in Balinese
tradition: he talks about pradana-purusa, Bumi, Rangda and
Barong, Tumbal, leyak and other characters and symbols typically
Balinese.
Yet it would be a mistake to see his work as a simple
transmission -- for a New Age public of spiritually vapid
cretins -- of ordinary Balinese symbols.
The Balinese symbolic references Budiana is using are neither
narrative, anecdotal, exotic nor magical in the operational sense
of the word. They are instead philosophical, albeit dolled up in
"fantastic" garb.
What Budiana actually exposes in his work is a visual
reconceptualization of Hindu-Balinese concepts, a
reconceptualization which, interestingly, has never been
attempted in philosophy -- modern thinkers preferring to cast
aside Balinese concepts by replacing them with ready made,
imported Indian ones.
This reconceptualization is achieved through the
simplification and transformation of Balinese iconography.
Even though the canvas is "full", as is typical in Balinese
painting, the symbols are limited in number, and therefore easier
to identify. They also owe little to tradition, or rather are a
free reinterpretation of it.
We are taken beyond "Bali" into a fantastic world which is at
once personal, "Balinese", and directly, universally readable.
In Kelahiran, birth, as an example, we see two characters in
the upper part of the painting that symbolize the male and female
principles emerging from the cosmic haze. They can be construed
as cosmic forces, the union of opposites, the deities Siwa and
Uma, or male semen and female ovule kama putih and kama bang.
The monstrous shape of the cosmic mother occupies the center
of the canvas, while the cross symbolizes the cosmic movement.
This work is no less than a visual presentation of the cosmos
in its birth process both at the microcosmic (Bhwana Alit=human)
and macrocosmic (Bhwana Agung=world) levels. It is a Balinese
version of Hindu philosophy.
This renewal of iconography occurs in tandem with a renewal of
the form. Melihat Bumi, Behold the Earth, a depiction of the
cosmic force of the planet, represents the head from a quite
uncommon angle -- from above.
There is an uncanny touch of Degas in this view of the bald
head of the earth, considering that the Balinese normally use a
very limited and highly stereotyped range of angles in their
representation - mostly in semi-profile or face forward.
Budiana demonstrates in this work that he can use traditional
iconographic patterns when it suits his symbolic purposes and,
when needed, create altogether new forms to enhance the "power of
meaning" in his chosen themes. His is a modern mind within a
"traditional" frame of reference.
Budiana's technique rests, like that of any "traditional"
Balinese painter, on the quality of his drawing. Some of his
works are black and white and his lines flow freely, as if
unconstrained by iconography, in a manner that is reminiscent of
Lempad's.
See for example Ngereh, Witch Dance, based on a witchcraft
story.
In his color works, Budiana still employs like Ubud painters
of his generation the wash technique using Chinese ink. But,
unlike most of his contemporaries, he does so in a way that
enables him to fully exploit the expressive potentiality of
color.
In his best paintings the wash layers create a general
atmosphere, on top of which bright color surfaces are painted to
enhance the painting as a whole.
Going back to the concerns expressed at the beginning of the
article, what Ketut Budiana is demonstrating in this masterful
exhibition is that there is room for the growth and development
of Balinese "post-traditional" painting.
Themes can be expanded and modernized, the iconography
renewed, the techniques perfected.
The works can remain Balinese while their esoteric meanings
are made accessible to people who don't understand Hindu
symbology.
And, as far as Ketut Budiana is concerned, one would like to
see him recognized as one of the masters of "Fantastic Art" in
the tradition of the late European Middle Ages or Fussli and
Odilon Redon.