THE GUIDE - The Rough Guide to Bali and Lombok - page 191

BALINESE PAINTING
Art historians group Balinese painting into six broad schools : wayang (also known as clas-
sical or Kamasan), Ubud, Pengosekan, Batuan, Young Artists and Modern or Academic.
WAYANG OR KAMASAN STYLE
The earliest Balinese painters drew their inspiration from the wayang kulit shadow plays,
using two-dimensional figures to depict episodes from the same religious and historical
epics that were played out on the stage. Variously known as the wayang style , the classical
style or the Kamasan style (after the east Bali village where the most famous wayang -style
artists came from), this is the most traditional genre of Balinese art, and the one that's been
the least influenced by Western techniques and subjects. The oldest surviving examples
are the eighteenth-century temple banners, calendars and astrological charts housed in the
Nyoman Gunarsa Museum near Semarapura. To see Kamasan art in situ you need to visit
the old palace in Semarapura , where the ceilings of the Kerta Gosa and Bale Kambung pa-
vilions retain their wayang -style painted ceilings; these were done by artists from Kamasan
in the early nineteenth century but have been retouched several times.
All wayang -style pictures are packed full of people painted in three-quarter profile , with
caricature-like features and puppet-like poses. There is no perspective, and stylized sym-
bols indicate the location; pictures are often divided into scenes by borders of mountains,
flames or walls. Traditional wayang artists limit their palette to red, blue, yellow, black and
white.
As with the wayang puppets, the characters in the paintings are instantly recognizable
by their facial features and hairstyles and by their clothes, stance and size. Convention re-
quires, for example, that “refined” characters (heroes, heroines and others of noble birth)
look slightly supercilious, and that their bodies be svelte and elegant. “Coarse” characters,
on the other hand, such as clowns, servants and demonic creatures, have bulbous eyes,
prominent teeth and chunky bodies.
The wayang style is still popular with modern artists and continues to be centred on the
village of Kamasan , which has many studios open to the public.
UBUD STYLE
By the 1930s Balinese painters were starting to experiment with more naturalistic tech-
niques , including perspective and the use of light and shadow, and to reproduce what they
saw at the market, at the temple and in the ricefields. The village of Ubud was at the heart
of this experimentation so the style has been dubbed Ubud style . Expatriate artists Walter
Spies and Rudolf Bonnet , both resident in the Ubud area in the 1930s, are said to have had
a big influence; they also helped set up the Pita Maha arts foundation , whose mission
was to promote innovation and individual expression.