One man's lifelong quest for paradise
One man's lifelong quest for paradise
Christina Schott, Contributor/Jakarta
On Bali, everyone knows his name -- but in Germany, his country of origin, hardly anyone has heard of him: Walter Spies, who lived and painted for 15 years on the Island of the Gods, where he found his paradise.
But even in Indonesia, only a select few know about the other achievements of this musician and choreographer, archeologist and natural scientist, who was once an orchestra master for the Sultan of Yogyakarta before he became Bali's first tourist guide.
Spies was born in Moscow in 1895 as the son of a rich German businessman. After being interned during the First World War, he moved to Berlin, where he met many contemporary artists of the 1920s, like painters Otto Dix and Oskar Kokoschka. With the famous film director Friedrich Murnau (Nosferatu), he even had a romantic relationship.
All this was not enough to satisfy the young painter and musician.
"I don't feel comfortable in Germany," Spies once wrote in a letter. In 1923, he followed his "longing for India" and signed up as sailor on a ship to Batavia. The Javanese capital, however, shocked the usually so open-minded person and he continued his journey to Bandung as soon as possible.
There, he found his enthusiasm again: "The Javanese are so unbelievably beautiful... The music here! Oh my God, that's something marvelous: on never known instruments, never heard (of) melodies," Spies went into raptures in a letter to his mother.
When he arrived in Yogyakarta, Spies met the music-loving Dutch couple Sitsen-Russer, who opened to him a door to the Sultan's court. Besides his gamelan orchestra, the Sultan had a small European chapel with a vacant conductor's post. So the talented German became Wedono Musik di Kraton, or the royal conductor, while he also earned a name and money for his portrait painting.
During his years in Central Java, Spies began transcribing gamelan compositions into Western music scores. "No doubt, Spies was a great painter," later noted the Dutch music scientist Jaap Kunst. "I asked myself several times, if he didn't have at least the same importance as a musician. He fathomed like nobody else the secrets and the core of the Central Javanese and the Balinese music."
Nevertheless, Spies always considered his paintings for his main passion and main source of income.
After three years in the Sultan's city, Walter Spies became restless again and left for Bali. Here, in 1927, he finally found the paradise he was looking for.
"I'd rather die of hunger on Bali than leave again," he said after only half a year on the island.
He learned the Balinese language, its music, dances, ceremonies and crafts and started to collect all kinds of native animals and plants. He sent hundreds of detailed sketches to scientific institutions in Europe and even explored some newly discovered species.
His private estate at Tjampuan resembled a zoo, with monkeys, squirrels, turtles, snakes and birds among its residents. Over the years, his open house became a quite tip for the jet-set traveling to the Far East.
Although he always warned of the bad influence of Western civilization, Spies could be called the first international tourist guide on one of today's most popular holiday islands.
Among his guests were Charlie Chaplin, Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore, anthropologist Margaret Mead and heiress Barbara Hutton. Austrian writer Vicky Baum stayed for months writing her famous novel Love and Death on Bali, in which she immortalized her host in the character of Dr. Fabius.
When ethnologist Victor von Plessen came to Bali in 1933 to shoot his film The Island of the Demons, Spies took responsibility for casting, screenplay and choreography. It was for this film that Spies created the famed Kecak dance: He enlarged the chorus of the dedari trance dance and combined it with scenes from the Ramayana. Thousands of tourists have watched this impressive dance until today.
Walter Spies worked also as conservationist for the new archeological Bali Museum. But his main occupation remained painting. His very special naive-surrealistic style became a model for painters all over the island.
Then and now, his works are on high demand on the international art scene.
Together with Dutch painter Rudolf Bonnet, Spies founded the painting school Pita Maha in 1936, upon the generous support of Balinese prince Cokorda Gede Agung Sukawati. The two Europeans introduced new techniques and materials to local artists, such as paper and watercolors. They also encouraged the Balinese to paint subjects from their daily lives instead of focusing on sacral themes.
All these achievements didn't help Walter Spies when the colonial administration arrested him in 1938 for "immoral behavior". The colonial Dutch government obviously did not like his open contact with the Balinese. During the nine months of his arrest in Surabaya, Spies' friends supplied him with paints, musical instruments and books, and he started translating Balinese legends.
His last return to paradise lasted only until 1940. When the German troops invaded the Netherlands, all German nationals in Indonesia were interned in camps; Walter Spies was transferred to North Sumatra.
In January 1942, the painter and his fellow prisoners were forced onto a ship destined for Ceylon, which was bombed en route by the Japanese and sunk.