The Artists of the Tropics:
The artists of the future
It was the French artist Paul Gauguin (1848-1903) who had this portentous dream, at the end of the 19th century. Who could ever think that at the dawn of the 21st century his prediction would come true? Last year, the Kunsthal Rotterdam organized the travelling exhibition 'Magic and Modernism: Artists from Bali, 1928-1942' that drew attention to a forgotten chapter in art history: Balinese Modernism. The artists representing this intruiging movement had sunk into oblivion until their recent rediscovery, first by a select group of collectors and since then by a wider circle. The exhibition presented the Balinese modernists at the intersection of anthropology and modern art. Thanks to a contribution by the IIAS, 'Magic and Modernism: Artists from Bali, 1928-1942' could be shown in the Kunsthal Rotterdam, Museum Puri Lukisan in Ubud (Bali), the Erasmushuis in Jakarta, and the Fries Museum in Leeuwarden.
By WIM PIJBES
Up to the 1920s, Balinese art was traditionally at the service of decorating temples, palaces and other official buildings. The emergence of the Balinese modernists is primarily due to two European artists: Walter Spies (1880-1942), a painter, choreographer, writer and photographer who settled on Bali in 1927, and the Dutch artist Rudolf Bonnet (1895-1978). Spies supplied the young, talented Balinese artists with better materials and with alternatives to traditional Hindu themes like the 'Ramanaya' legends. As a result, they began to portray their immediate surroundings - nature, hunting and daily village life. It was Spies, especially, who infused the Balinese artists with the dramatic and magical possibilities of painting and drawing. Freed for the first time from the constraints of convention, Balinese artists explored their own imagination and creativity, myth, magic, and realities resulting in a transition from applied art to Modern Art.The distinguishing characteristics of this Balinese modernism, notably in the village of Batuan, are the completely filled surfaces of the paintings, an almost total absence of perspective and the careful rhythmic stylization of groups of trees, foliage, figures and rippling water. This 'sophisticated' naive style is seen in Flemish medieval miniatures and the magical representations of Henri 'Le Douanier' Rousseau.
Centres of art on Bali were concentrated in three villages, each with its own style and themes. Pictures from the village of Batuan are crowded: the representations fill the entire surface, leaving no empty spaces anywhere. There are, however, plenty of open spaces in works from Ubud, which emphasize the human figure, while the coastal village of Sanur is known for its depictions of all kinds of animals and also erotic scenes. Balinese artists rarely signed their work, which is partly why so little attention was paid to them in art history for such a long time.
Paradise
It was in 1906, relatively late, that the traditional princely states came under Dutch administration, following three abortive attempts on the part of the Dutch to gain control of the island in the 19th century. In the 1920s and 1930s the unspoilt earthly paradise of Bali became a meeting place for the Western intellectual beau monde. Writers, actors, and painters were irresistibly drawn to the mythical-sounding and hitherto practically isolated island. In 1917, Europeans were introduced to Bali, in the galleries of the Amsterdam artists' society Arti et Amicitiae. Photographs taken by the German photographer, Gregor Krause, gave the Dutch their first sight of images they had only imagined from the novels of Louis Couperus or Multatuli, but had never before actually seen. In addition to Krause's photographs there was a large selection of drawings and etchings by the travelling artist W.O.J. Nieuwenkamp (1874-1950), and numerous Balinese utensils, textiles, sculptures and artefacts. This early exhibition perpetuated the myth of Bali as a paradisiacal island of bare breasts. Interest in things exotic and erotic reached its peak in the interbellum, with Josephine Baker and rampant Art Deco as eloquent examples. The new vogue for travel to far-off places made Bali a popular destination for the well-heeled tourist.
In the second half of the 1930s, this ferment of cross-cultural curiosity and exchange reached a peak; a stream of highly interested and discerning visitors, such as musicians (Colin Macphee, Jaap Kunst and Leopold Stokowsky), anthropologists (Gregory Bateson, Margaret Mead, Miguel Covarrubias, and Jane Belo), film-makers (Victor von Plessen and Andre Roosevelt), actors (Charlie Chaplin and Noel Coward), authors (Vicky Baum), art-dealers (Rolf and Hans Neuhaus, J.A.Houbolt and B.Preyer), a pharmacist (E.Schlager), and others encouraged the modernists, directly or indirectly, to transcend all preconceptions of mass-produced tourist art and to create work of magic and great quality. The modernistic Balinese paintings, drawings and wood sculptures found their way to a steadily growing group of elite tourists who brought back these artistic souvenirs to their homes in Europe and the United States. In this way, the art from Bali was distributed world-wide as a matter of course.
Growing interest and appreciation
The interest in East Indian arts and crafts grew, not just in the Netherlands but in Germany and France, as well. In the Dutch entries to the various world exhibitions, attention was given to the agricultural products from tropical Holland and to the arts and crafts of the colonies. After some occasional exhibitions, it was not until 1927 that the first major museum exhibition outside the Netherlands took place. In that year, the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, part of the Paris Louvre, mounted a large overview of 'L'Art Décoratif dans les Indes Néerlandaises'. On show were pieces from the Musée Guimet, the Musée Ethnographique Trocadéro and other French collections, but also some works from Dutch collections. In 1928, parts of the private collection of W.O.J. Nieuwenkamp were shown in museums in cities like Hagen, Munich, and, again, Paris.
In 1937, Spies, Bonnet, and a few local artists founded 'Pita Maha', an association that co-ordinated sales activities on behalf of its approximately one hundred fifty members. Again, exhibitions were held in the former Batavia, Yogyakarta, The Hague (at Pulchri Studio) and Amsterdam (Stedelijk Museum,1937). From that point contemporary Balinese art was introduced in a cultural context and distributed in an organized way.
The last few years have seen a mounting interest in paintings made in Southeast Asia, particularly in the 1920s. This interest is chiefly evidenced in members of the new moneyed classes of the former colonies, who are trying to buy back their history and culture with their fast earnings. Much of the art from the colonial past has been traditionally in the hands of private collectors in Europe, but is rapidly finding its way back to its land of origin via the recently opened Singapore and Jakarta branches of Sotheby's and Christie's. In addition to Indo-European artists like Le Mayeur, Spies, Bonnet, and Hofker, the names of Balinese artists such as Ida Bagus Made, Anak Agung Gede Sobrat, Anak Agung Gede Meregeg, and others are becoming increasingly familiar. The pre-war works are, by far, the most interesting: rare, refined, mystic, and of high aesthetic quality.
Further research
The Balinese artists rarely signed or annotated their work. Nor, surprisingly, did Spies and Bonnet encourage them to follow this common Western practice, although they signed most of their own work. It is all the more surprising in view of Bonnet's tireless promotion of the Balinese modernists in Indonesia and beyond. The result is that a work and its maker were seldom connected in direct and familiar ways. This might be the reason that the artists themselves have only occasionally been mentioned in art history. For example, a well-known Dutch art-critic, painter and author, Kaspar Niehaus, devoted a whole chapter to Balinese modernism in his important book 'Levende Nederlandsche Kunst', Amsterdam [1942], but only mentioned one modernist by name (I Reneh), and then only in a picture caption.
However, as many of the works were annotated by contemporary purchasers, dealers and gallerists, and are of such personal and distinctive character, a work often can be connected to its maker by way of:
- annotation, mostly on the reverse, in a known hand, such as of G.Bateson, R.Bonnet, or the Neuhaus brothers;
- annotation, mostly on the reverse, in an unknown hand, whether in Balinese, Bahasa Indonesia, English, Dutch or German;
- attribution on the basis of comparison with individualized work.
This individualization is still a continuing process. The book and CD-ROM that have been published with the exhibition are intended to serve as a guide. Many works that are currently dubbed anonymous in museums and private collections could be individualized by applying this procedure, so that these artists are finally treated on equal terms with their Western colleagues. The detailed development of pre-war Balinese modernist art remains a subject for further research. It is as Leo Haks stated: 'The pre-war Balinese modernists deserve to be judged on their art-historical merit'. *
- This article is based on the book published concurrently with the exhibition: 'Pre-War Balinese Modernists 1928-1942: An additional page in history', with articles by Frans Haks, Jop Ubbens, Dr Adrian Vickers, Leo Haks, and Guus Maris.
Wim Pijbes is director
of the Kunsthal Rotterdam.
E-mail: pijbes@kunsthal.nl