Everybody in Bali seems to be an artist. Coolies and, princes,
priests and peasants, men and women alike, can dance, play musical
instruments, paint, or carve in wood and stone. It was often surprising
to discover that an otherwise poor and dilapidated village harbored
an elaborate temple, a great orchestra, or a group' of actors
of repute.
One of the most famous orchestras in Bali is to be found in the,
remote mountain village of Selat, and the finest dancers of legong
were in Saba, an unimportant little village bidden. among the
rice fields. Villages such as Mas, Baiuan, Gelgel, are made up
of families of painters, sculptors, and actors, and Sanur produces,
besides priests and witcb-doctors, fine story-tellers and dancers.
In Sebatu, another isolated mountain village, even the children
can carve little statues from odd bits of wood, some to be used
as bottle-stoppers, perches for birds, handles, but most often
simply absurd little human figures in comic attitudes, strange
animals, birds of their own invention, frogs, snakes, larvae of
insects, figures without reason or purpose, simply as an outlet
for. their creative urge. In contrast to the devil-may-care primitive
works of Sebatu are the super-refined, masterful carvings from
Badung, Ubud, Pliatan, and especially those by the family of young
Brahmanas from Mas who turn out intricate statues of hard wood
or with equal ability paint a picture, design a temple gate, or
act and dance.,
Painting,sculpture,
and playing on musical instruments are arts by tradition reserved
to the men, but almost any woman can weave beautiful stuffs and
it is curious that the most intriguing textiles, those in which
the dyeing and weaving process is so complicated that years of
labour are required to, complete a scarf, are made by the women
of Tmganan, an ancient village of six hundred souls who are so
conservative that they will not maintain connections with the
rest of Bali and who punish with exile who ever dares to marry
outside the village.
The main artistic
activity of the women goes into the making of beautiful offerings
for. the gods. These are intricate structures of cut-out palm
leaf, or pyramids of fruit, flowers, cakes, and cat even roast
chickens, arranged with splendid taste, masterpieces of composition
in which the relative form of the elements: employed, their -texture
and color are taken into consideration. I have seen monuments,
seven feet in height, made ~ entirely, of roasted pig's meat on
skewers, decorated into shapes cut out, of the waxy fat of the
pig and surmounted with banners and little umbrellas of the lacy
stomach tissues, the whole relieved by the vivid vermilion of
chili peppers. Although women of all ages have always taken part
in the ritual offering dances, in olden times only little girls
became dancers and actresses-, but today beautiful girls take
part in theatrical performances, playing the parts of princesses
formerly performed exclusively by female impersonators.
The effervescence
of, artistic activity and the highly developed aesthetic sense
of the population can perhaps be explained by a natural urge to
express themselves, combined with the important factor of leisure'
resulting from well-organized agricultural cooperatism. However,
the most important element for the development of a popular culture,
with primitive as well as refined characteristics, was perhaps
the fact that the Balinese did not permit the centralization of
the artistic knowledge in a special intellectual class. In old
Balinese books on ethics, like the Niti Sastra, it is stated that
a man who is ignorant of the writings is like a man who has lost
his speech, because he shall have to remain silent during the
conversation of other men. Furthermore, it was a requirement for
the education of every prince that he should know mythology, history,
and poetry well enough; should learn painting, woodcarving, music,
and the making of musical instruments; should be able to dance
and tosing in Kawi, the classic language of literature. There
is hardly a prince who does not possess a good number of these
attributes, and those deprived of talent themselves support artists,
musicians, and actors as part of their retinue. Ordinary people
look upon their feudal lords as models of conduct and do not'
hesitate to imitate them,learning their poetry, dancing, painting,
and carving in order to be like them.
|
| |
Previous
Next
|
|