Wianta broadens language, content of abstract art

Wianta broadens language, content of abstract art

By Jean Couteau

DENPASAR (JP): The international image of Bali owes much to painting. But this image is, paradoxically, the source of the painters, and particularly Balinese painters. The role artists play in the creation of the myth of Bali as "the island of the gods" is, sadly, more important than their contribution to the world of painting. To be Western and married to a Balinese is a better guarantee of success as a painter than making a real contribution to painting. Whatever the talent of Westerners such as Spies, Bonnet and others, none of them has been a Gauguin. Their work is more often of a documentary quality rather than important artistically.

But the Balinese artists might succeed where the Westerners have failed: they are now regaining control of their art and the producing their own image. Instead of being made into something by Westerners, they are now regaining control over their art and the image-making of themselves as Indonesians and Balinese, contributing their share to the definition of the new international art, as shown in the exhibition "Contemporary Art of the Non-Aligned Nations" now being held in Jakarta.

These artists are not the village painters who stick to a stifled idea of themselves as Balinese. They are city boys like Erawan, who reacts to the "shredding effect" of tourism and modernization on Balinese culture, or like Made Wianta, who broadens in a Balinese way the language and content of abstract art.

"I don't care what I make," says Wianta, 46, stomping around, full of nerve, will and energy, sporting a wry Balinese smile. There's a brush in his hand, a splash of color on his canvas. "To me the medium does not matter," he carries on. "I am a painter, but if I cannot 'do' it in shapes and color, I do it in words," he says, referring to his upcoming poetry book. Poetry written, with archetypal drawing, on a metro ticket, on toilet paper, "while abroad," he eagerly adds, or on the page of a magazine, written while waiting at the doctor's.

"The process of drawing, painting, dancing, writing,", he says, "is to me all the same, just like making love. One does it, and one thinks of the result later. Love could not be great otherwise, nor painting," he says, laughing.

Although a highly spontaneous artist at times, Made Wianta, arguably Bali's most famous artist, can also be at his best with paintings full of painstaking details. Much of his work of the last ten years -- he moved into abstraction in 1984 -- is based on the principle of pointillism, with color dots lined, one after another, in an almost infinitive variety of hues, leading to the impression of rich detail and Eastern delicacy which is, indeed, his main contribution to abstract art. How can Wianta combine the labor-intensive lining of dots with his compulsive and spontaneous creativity? "We are in Bali," he answers, looking me straight in the eyes.

"I was fed up with geometrical abstraction," he says, refer ring to his highly popular impressive series of triangles mostly in reddish and golden hues. "So I broke it." The demonstration followed: He "broke" the colors before my very eyes, looking for the "vulgar", then the obnoxious. First pure spontaneity of color, a world far from the systematic dot lining shown on a nearby canvas. Then pure spontaneity of form: broken sticks hanging out in a yellowish haze, in apparent contradiction to all the rules of composition, and a fair cry from the symmetry of his otherwise geometric works.

Spontaneous

Wianta is both systematic and spontaneous. Systematic in geometric form and the color of his dot lines. Spontaneous in breaking the symmetry and bringing out "archetypes" as well as spontaneously splashing color.

He constantly hovers between these two -- one after the other, or one inside the other -- as when he inserts "archetypal" spontaneous signs within otherwise geometrical works. He thus combines at several levels both formal and thematic elements.

Here is where the Balinese comes to the fore. Balinese classical painting is made up of formal and iconographic patterns, inserted within each other at several levels. It can be seen on the flat horizontal level, the eye running around the canvas, or on the deep vertical level, the eye moving inside a pattern, then a sub-pattern.

One should look at Wianta's painting in much the same way. Although the general language is modern, he talks or shapes and colors in a highly plastic and striking way. In Old Bali the eye moves horizontally before penetrating inside the details. Instead of the short and direct appreciation of the painting, as usual with abstract art, we get into a dialogue with a sophisticated piece of art. A novel way to look at abstraction.

Made was not always into abstraction, though. He started his career with minute, compulsive black and white drawings of Balinese ghosts, unlike the highly patterned ones of Balinese painting. But Made's individual ghosts were born from the demons, dancers and the lush nature of Bali. A revolted "individualist" in a communal society.

Some collectors would have liked him to remain there. But the temple priest's son and Java-educated artist had more to do. Having brought his ghosts to the fore, he had other ones coming up: visual ones, archetypes of the colors, shapes and signs haunting the brain of man and the Balinese Man.

From the caveman of Southern France to Jackson Pollock, the language of signs has a long story and Made Wianta brings his own touch to it. Some of his new works, such as those recently exhibited at the Grand Hyatt in Bali, and now decorating the Hall of the Grand Hyatt Jakarta, dwell on the Asian art of calligraphy. He brings in both the direction of action painting and abstract expressionism, and that of a magical, allusive near figuration. Having shocked us, Made Wianta now makes us dream.

What about his career? Brussels, Paris, San Francisco, Tokyo, Fukuoka, soon Bengalore, Dortmund, it has the hallmarks of an international career. Not as a Balinese, but as an abstract painter. His collectors read like a Who's Who list of the arts and business. His activities from work with the Ford Foundation, as head of the Ford Foundation Wianta Foundation Gambuh Project, to his financing of poetry publishing to donations to Aids. Made Wianta, although well-rooted in his village, sees himself as man of the world, in his mind and his works.

Stomping once more, he throws his brush on the canvas, then tells me: "let's have a cup of coffee". We are barely seated before he is again scratching at his daughter's school-book. A compulsive and creative artist. Other surprises lie ahead. Always about translating the language of Bali into that of the world.