Unlike
the individualistic art of the West in which the main concern
of the artist, is to develop his personality in order to create
an easily recognizable style as the means to attain his ultimate
goal - recognition and fame - the anonymous artistic production
of the Balinese, like their entire life, is the expression of
collective thought.
A piece of music or sculpture is often the work of two or more
artists, and the pupils of a painter or a sculptor invariably
collaborate with their master. The Balinese artist builds up with
traditional standard elements. The arrangement and the general
spirit may be his own, and there may even be a certain amount
of individuality, however subordinated to the local style. There
are definite proportions, standard features, peculiar garments,
and so forth to represent a devil, a holy man, a prince, or a
peasant, and the personality of a given character is
determined, not so much by physical characteristics, but rather
by sartorial details. The romantic heroes, Arjuna, Rama, and Pandi,
look exactly alike and can only be recognized by the headdress
peculiar to each. A strong differentiation is made between "
fine " and " coarse " characters; Ardjuna, for
instance, is refined, with narrow eyes and delicate features,
while his brother, the warrior Bhima, has wild round eyes and
wears a moustache. He is further identified by his chequeredloin
cloth.
The Balinese
obtain their artistic standards of beauty from ancient Java, and
for centuries there has been only one way to treat a beautiful
face; which they have, curiously enough, come to identify with
themselves. Once, discussing the facial characteristics of various
races with the Regent of Karangasem, a man of high Balinese education,
he asked me how I drew a Balinese.
He disagreed
with my conception and proceeded to draw one himself, a face from
the classic paintings and a type that could not be found on the
whole island. Within these conventions, Balinese art is realistic
without being photographic -, that is, without attempting to give
the optical illusion of the real thing. Thus there is no perspective
and no modeling in painting and sculpture is highly stylized.
They admire technique and good craftsmanship above other points,
and when I showed Balinese friend a beautiful sculpture I had
just acquired, he found fault with the minute parallel grooves
that marked the strands of hair because in places they ran together.
Balinese art
is not in the class of the great arts like great Chinese painting
- the conscious production of works of art, for their own sake,
with an aesthetic value apart from their function. Again, it is
too refined, too developed, to fit into peasant arts nor is it
one of the primitive arts, those subject to ritual and. Tribal
laws, which we call " primitive " because their aesthetics
do, not conform to ours. Their art is a highly developed, although
in formal Baroque folk-art that combines the peasant liveliness
with the refinement of the classicism of Hinduistic Java, but
free of conservative prejudice and with a new vitality fired by
the exuberance of the demoniac spirit of the tropical primitive.
The Balinese peasants took the flowery art of ancient Java, itself
-an offshoot of the aristocratic art of India of the seventh and
eighth centuries, brought it down to earth, and made it popular
property.
Although at
the service of religion, Balinese art is not a religious art.
An artist carves ludicrous subjects in the temples 'or embellishes
objects of daily use with religious symbols, using them purely
as ornamental elements regardless of their significance. The Balinese
carve or paint to tell the only 'stories they know - those created
by their intellectuals, the religious teachers of former times.