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.

Thus, not only the aristocracy can create informal beauty, but a commoner may be as finished an artist as the educated nobleman, although he may be an agriculturist, a tradesman, or even a coolie. Our host in Bali was a prince and a musician, but there were others of the common class who were among the finest musicians of the neighbourhood. Of the leaders of the famous orchestras of our district, one was a coolie, another a goldsmith, and a third a chauffeur.

Until a few years ago the Balinese did not paint pictures or' make statues without some definite purpose. It has often been stated that there are no words in the Balinese language for 919 art " and " artist." This is true and logical; making a beautiful offering, and carving a stone temple gate, and making a set of masks are tasks of equal aesthetic importance, and although the artist is regarded as a preferred member of the community, there is no separate class of artists, and a sculptor is simply a " carver " or a figure-maker, and the painter is a picture-maker. A dancer is a legong, a dancer, and so forth - the names of the dances they perform.

The artist is in Bali essentially a craftsman and at the same time an amateur, casual and anonymous, who uses his talent knowing that no one will care to record his name for posterity. His only aim is to serve his community, seeing that the work is well done when he is called to embellish the temple of the village, or when he carves his neighbour's gate in exchange for a new roof or some other similar service. Actors and musicians play for the feasts of the village without pay, and when they perform for private festivals they are lavishly entertained and banqueted instead. Foreigners have to pay a good amount for a performance: from five to thirty guilders according to the quality of the show and the pretensions of the actors; but a Balinese who calls the village's orchestra or a troupe of actors for a home festival provides special food, refreshments, sirih, and cigarettes for them. If he pays a small amount besides, from a guilder to five, it is not considered as remuneration, but rather as a present to help the finances of the musical or theatrical club. Whatever money they receive goes to the funds of the association to cover the expenses of the feasts given by the club to buy new costumes or instruments.

Nothing in Bali is made for posterity; the only available stone is a soft sandstone that crumbles away after a few years, and the temples and relief's have to be renewed constantly; white ants devour the wooden sculptures, and the humidity rots away all paper and cloth, so their arts have never suffered from fossilization. The Balinese are extremely proud of their traditions, but they are also progressive and un conservative, and when a foreign idea strikes their fancy, they adopt it with great enthusiasm as their own. All sorts of influences from the outside, Indian, Chinese, Javanese, have left their mark on Balinese art, but they are always translated into their own manner and they become strongly Balinese in the process. Thus the lively Balinese art is in constant flux. What becomes the rage for a while may be suddenly abandoned and forgotten when a new fashion is invented, new styles in music or in the theatre, or new ways of making sculptures and paintings. But the traditional art also remains, and when the artists tire of a new idea, they go back to the classic forms until a new style is again invented. They are great copyists and it is not surprising to find in a temple, as part of the decoration, a fat Chinese god or a scene representing a highway hold-up, or a crashing plane, events unknown in Bali that can only be explained as having been copied from some Western magazine. Once a young Balinese painter saw my friend Walter Spies painting yellow highlights on the tips of the leaves of a jungle scene. He went home and made a painting that was thoroughly Balinese, but with modeling and highlights until then unknown in Balinese painting. Artistic property cannot exist in the communal Balinese culture; if an artist invents or copies something that is an interesting novelty, soon all the others are reproducing the new find. Once a sculptor made a little statue representing the larvae of an insect standing upright on its tail; a few weeks later everybody was making them and soon the statue market was flooded with Brancusi-like little erect worms on square bases.

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.

The story of the development of Balinese art

The art history of Bali runs parallel to the history of the island itself. When Bali became a colony -of Java, the conquering aristocracy brought their art with them and every political event in Java has had a powerful influence in the development of Balinese culture. Thus, the early classic period of Javanese art corresponds also to a classic period in Bali, and when the mother country suffered disturbances and transformations, these were reflected in Balinese art, until Islamism and political chaos severed all connections between the two islands, and Hinduism had to find refuge in Bali. As the island became the center of A, new empire and no longer a province of Java, the Balinese natives took over the art of the exiled aristocracy, transformed to suit their taste, and a typical Balinese art came into being.

Nothing definite is known of the art of pre-Hindu Bali, but we know that the old Indonesian had a culture of its own, perhaps like the present one of the people of Nias and the Bataks of Sumatra, to whom the Balinese are in many ways akin. They worked metals, especially iron for the. making of magic krisses cultivated rice, had a well-organized administration, kept domestic animals, and made splendid textiles. Outside of a sarcophagus, some bronze bracelets and arrow-beads found" Petang, probably belonging to people of Hinduistic affiliation

no material traces of their megalithic monuments remain, or have yet been found, perhaps because archaeological excavation has hardly begun in Bali. But a great deal of the old Indonesian spirit has remained in the daily life of the people, not only among the Bali Agas, but also alongside the Hinduism of the ordinary Balinese. As we shall see later, there are definite traces of what could have been the art of pre Hindu times found today in the offerings, in the patterns of textiles, in certain sculptures, and the like.

Antiques are scarce in Bali, although there are thousands of mossy and battered statues all over the island., often of a more primitive style than the usual contemporary art. But a newly made statue appears of great age after six months of exposure to the damp climate of Bali, and, on the other hand, many ancient statues resemble those made in recent years. Many of the innumerable remains found in the temples, in jungles, or imbedded in the trunk of a waringin may easily be contemporary.

We made a sport of going out with Walter Spies into, remote districts to find objects of what we called " native " Balinese style, and often located figures in wood, stone, and evea clay that showed no trace of Hindu influence. There were demons, girls, primitive animals, and alarm-drums with faces carved on them that were reminiscent of Dyak, Batak, and Polynesian art. Spies is an enthusiast for the "' megalithic " art and he has discovered many strange stones with primitive carvings, . such as the stone in Bebitera, or the magnificent stone altar in Batukandik in the little island of Nusa Penida: a pyramid twelve feet high surmounted by the torso of a woman with large breasts, supporting on her head a, stone throne like those from Nias, with two roosters standing on her shoulders, their heads resting on the palms of her hands. The style of the monument is decidedly Indonesian and so are the two little shrines, also in the same village, with well-defined signs of being one male, the other female. I was invited to accompany Assistant Controler Grader and Spieg on an expedition into the wilds between the mountains Batur and Bratan; descending slippery ravines, into jungles, and up steep hills, we found many old statues overgrown with vegetation, some of which seemed from early Buddhist days, while others looked as if Hinduism had never penetrated into those districts. Particularly interesting were the pyramids and strange carvings in wood in Sanda and Selulung or the Polynesian-looking statues in Batukaang and Pengadjaran.

Perhaps the most remarkable of antiquities in Bali is the great bronze drum kept in the Pura Panataran Sasih in Pedieng, the former home of the demon-king Maya Danawa. Some Balinese say that it is one of the subangs (ear-plugs) of the moon, while others say it is a Sasih, the " moon " itself, that fell down to earth and was caught in a tree. It remained there giving a blinding light, preventing some thieves of the neighbourbood from performing their nocturnal work. One of them, bolder than the rest, decided to extinguish the source of fight and, climbing on the tree, urinated on it. The " moon " exploded, killing the thief, and fell to the ground in the shape of the present drum, which explains why it is broken at the base. The people rescued it and placed it on a high latticed shrine in the temple. The drum is of the style of the so-called Chinese drums of the Han dynasty often found in Indo-China and even in Java, but it is the largest and most beautiful I have ever seen. The Pedjeng drum differs somewhat from the usual Han drums; it is elongated, with three great handles, rather like the bronze drums found in Alor, the island near Timor, where they are still used as money, some being worth as much as three thousand guilders.' The drum is decorated on it§ sounding surface with a beautiful star in high telief surrounded by a border of sweeping spirals, and on its sides with borders between parallel lines rather like the popular design called "spears" (tumbak) by the Balinese. Furthermore, there are strangely primitive, or rather conven tionalized, human faces in low relief that have no obvious relation to Chinese art and that are strongly Indonesian, with the characteristic leaf-shaped ornament worn behind the ears, the lobes of which are exaggeratedly distended by the weight of unusual ear-rings. The general style, the motifs, and the workmanship of the drum are all definitely related to the unique bronze axes from the island of Roti, also near Timor, which were unfortunately destroyed in the fire of the pavilion of the Netherlands in the Paris Colonial Exposition of 1931 where they were exhibited. The axes and the drums seem to belong, rather than to a definitely Chinese culture like the Han, to an ancient, mysmysterious Indonesian bronze age.' The Pedjeng drum is regarded with great reverence, and people often bring it offerings.

Another motif which appears to be of native origin is the figure called tjili, a silhouette of a beautiful girl with a body shaped like a slim hour-glass (two triangles meeting at their apex), with rounded breasts, long thin arms, great ear-plugs, and wearing an enormous bead-dress of flowers. Tjili shapes are made in wood, of Chinese coins sewn together, woven into textiles, modeled in clay to surmount tiles for roofs, and made into clay banks for pennies. They are painted on rice cakes for temple ornaments in Selat, and made out of palm-leaf for certain agricultural ceremonies of the old mountain villages or as containers for the soul of the dead (adegan) for cremations. Tjilis form the central motif of lamaks, those beautiful but perishable ornamental strips of palm-leaf, about a foot and a half wide by some ten to twenty feet long, made for feasts by the women, pinned together with bits of bamboo strips of busung, the tender yellow blades of the sugar or coconut palm, taken from the tree before the leaf opens. This is decorated with a delicate geometric pattern, a mosaic of bits of the green leaf of the same palm, cut with a knife into elaborate ornaments which are pinned on the yellow background, forming borders like the ones on the Pedieng drum, ornamental strips (bebatikAn) , groups of rosettes called 94 moons " (bul6n) , the tjili, and a stylized tree (kayon) -. These magnificent ornaments, perhaps the purest examples of the Balinese native art, last only for one day, and after hanging for an afternoon on an altar or a rice granary, by evening they are completely wilted. Spies has collected every different type of Jamak design for a period of years and he has hundreds of them. He claims that every community has a peculiar design not found elsewhere.

The figure of a tjili seems to have a strange hold on the imagination of the Balinese, perhaps because it is the shape of the " Rice Mother " (ninil pantun):, a sheaf of rice dressed into the shape of a tjili. This would indicate that the mysterious figure was connected with, or derived from, the deities of rice and fertility, either Dewi Sri or Melanting also goddesses of beauty and seed respectively. Again If the shape of. the great offerings , a pyramid of fruit topped by a. fan of flowers and palm-leaf, is also a tjili, so stylized however that only the pyramidal skirt and the flower headdre'ss, remain. This became evident when we saw in Kesiman, alongside-. the usual form of offerings, one six feet tall made into realistic tjili her skirt of melons ears of corn, oranges, jambu, and salak

OLD HINDU BALINESE ART

Already in the records of Chinese travelers of the fifth century it is mentioned that in tbe.country of Poli, perhaps Bali, there were Hindu princes, and that the travellers were received by priests who danced around them blowing conch-shells. Bali was already a colony of the Central Javanese kingdom of Mataram, the earliest recorded ruler of which was, according to Stutterheim, King Sandjaya or Sanjaya (A.D- 732) of the Sailendra dynasty, who ruled also over southern Sumatra.
The Sailendras where Mahayanic Buddhists, and their highly developed art. was like that of the great Gupta period of India. Sivaism was introduced towards the middle of the ninth century and, by degrees, the power of the Sailendras waned, but it was within this period, from the seventh to the ninth centuries, the golden age of Javanese art, that the finest monuments of Java were built, the Buddhist Borobudur and the Sivaist Lora Djongrang in Prambanan. Soon this great civilization disappeared mysteriously and Bali came under the rule of independent kings in Pedieng and Bedulu. From their time we have remains of the classic style in the neighbourbood of the present villages of the same names, some in ruined temples, in caves, or among the ricefields, in the strip of land between the rivers Pakrisan and Petanu, where so many of the antiquities of Bali are found. Towards the beginning of the eleventh century there was a renaissance in East Java, in Kediri, brought about by the Balinese-born king Erlangga. Under him Bali became again an integral part of Java and classicism received a new impetus. It was Erlangga who instituted Javanese as the official language of Bali. Tantric black magic seems to have played an important part in Erlangga's time, and while be was having trouble with his greatest political enemy, his own mother, who bad sworn to destroy his kingdom by the black arts, Erlangga's brother ruled Bali in his name. This brother was buried (according to Stutterheim) in the spectacular " Kings' tombs " in Gunung Kawi near Tampaksiring.

Among the important relics of the ancient period are the following:

Gunung Kawi: On the banks of the river Pakrisan, descending a steep ravine, is a group of sober, undecorated monuments shaped like the ancient burial towers (tiandif), hewn out of the solid rock, each inside, of a niche, four on one side and five on the other. To the right of the main group is a sort of monastery with coves also carved out of the rock, arranged around a central ceil with a platform in the centre. The monuments are supposed to belong to the eleventh century, when cremation had not yet been introduced into Bali, and Lekkerkerker thinks the cells were probably destined to expose the corpses to be obliterated by decay and wild animals, such as was the custom among Indonesians, and as is still practiced in Sembiran in Bali and by the Toradjas in Celebes, where it is now forbidden by the Dutch. The monuments were only discovered in io2o, but the Balincse knew them, and saw them with reverence because they attributed them to the giant of mythical times, Kbo Iwa', who is supposed to have carved all the ancient monuments with his own fingernails. The nativcs formerly called the tombs DiaM, but the present placename, Gunung Kawi, means " mountain of poetry " or " mountain of antiquity."

Bukit Darrna: In Kutri near Bedulu there is another antiquity of the classic period, also related to Erlangga. It is the beautiful statue of Mabendradatta, Erlangga's mother, as the goddess of death, Durga. It is preserved in the sanctuary of Bukit Darma, which archaeologists believe to be the burial site of Erlangga's mother. The statue is badly worn, but it can still be seen that it was of the purest classic lines.

Goa Gajah: Together with Gunung Kawi, the best known relic of the ancient art is the famous " Elephant Cave " near Bedu'lu. Goa Gadja is a great hollowed rock, perhaps the former residence of a hermit, elaborately carved on the outside, covered with representations of stylized rocks, forests, waves, animals, and people running in panic because directly over the entrance is the head of a great monster with bulging eyes who splits the rock with his enormous fat hands. Nieuwenkamp says that it may represent Pasupati, who divided the mountain Mahameru into two parts and, taking them in his hands, placed each half in Bali as the Gunung Agung and the Batur. There are a number of ancient stone water-spouts outside the cave, and on the inside is a statue of Ganesa in a central niche, with a linga on either side. The Goa Gadja dates also from the eleventh century and perhaps receives the popular name of " Ele. phant Cave " because of the statue, inside, of the god Ganesa, shaped like an elephant. But Goris attributes the name to the fact that the river Petanu, which runs near the cave, was called in old times Lwa Gadia, the " elephant river." Elephants have never existed in Bali and the elephant motifs that appear so frequently in Balinese art were importations from India or Java. As of Gunung Kawi, Kbo Iwi is also, according to popular belief, the author of the cave. Other hermitages with rock reliefs are the one near by called Toya PuM; the Goa Racksas,a near-Ubud; Djakut Paku, both on the river Oos (Uwos); and the caves near Kapal in Badung.

Pedjeng: In the ricefields approaching Pedieng there is a beautiful stone water-spout in the shape of a youthful hermit holding in his band a small human figure out of whose body once issued a stream of water. Farther on, in what appears to be the former site of a temple, are scattered fragments of classic statues; an altar of human skulls; the vague silhouette of a slim woman, covered with damp moss, fallen and half buried. The most complete statue is that of a wild raksasa crowned with skulls and about to drink from a larger, stylized human skull. In Pura Panataran Sasih, the temple where the bronze drum is kept, there are a number of ancient statues, the majority being commemorative statues of former kings.

Panulisan: In the ruins of pura PanUhS2n on the mountain of the same name, are some fine statues of kings from the eleventh century. The temple was destroyed by an earthquake and despite the fact that it is regarded as of great holiness, an extravagant stairway of cement has been built to reach it, but the temple has not been repaired. Today one may visit the ruins only with a written permit from the local pungawa.

Other statues worthy of mention are the figures of Durga inthe temple Pondjok Batu" on the road to Tedjakula in North Bali and the great statue of Dewa Ratu" Pantiering Diagat, over twelve feet high, the largest statue in Bali, kept jealously out of
sight in the tower (meru) of the temple Trunyan, a -Bali Aga village on the eastern sbore of Lake Batur. The statue is considered very old and is held to have magic power. No one is allowed even to go into the tower, unless it is the selected " virgin " boys (truna) of the village, who on certain dates clean and paint the statue with a mixture of chalk, honey, and water, accompanied by elaborate carefully observed ceremonials. A excellent description of this interesting feast has been written by Walter Spies in " Das Grosse Fest auf Trunjan " (see Bibliography). The ancient Balinese also left a number of ancient bronzes cast by the cire perdue process, some in the form of plates with inscriptions, drums, and little statues of deities and kings, some classic in style like the beautiful ones found in Java, others of a more primitive, perhaps local style. All of these antiquities are not in museums, but are still the property of the people, kept in the temples and honored because of their antiquity, brought out of their wrappings once a year on the occasion of the temple feast of the village.

The period of Majapahit

After the death of Erlangga, Java went once more into decadence as a power, and various frustrated attempts to regain its former glory followed. During this period the hold on Bali relaxed and the island regained its political independence until the fourteenth century, when the new East Javanese empire of Madjapahit finally conquered its enemies and became supreme over the archipelago. Bali was made a vassal of Madjapabit, A.D. 1343, after vigorous campaigns against the famed Dalam Bedaulu, last of the Pedieng dynasty and now classed as a mythical demon of great power

After Bali was conquered, the generals of Madjapabit establisbed a new dynasty of Javanese colonial rulers in Gelgel near Klungkung. A century later Madjapabit collapsed under the pressure of Islam, and Javanese rule finally gave way to a number of independent Balinese feudal lords, the descendants of the Javanese nobility, who were scattered all over the island. But in the period of years between the classic Sailendras and parvenu Madjapahit the art of Java suffered a great transformation, which was similarly felt in Bali. Under King Rayasanagara (Rajasanagara) , better known by his native name Havarn Wuruk, Madjapabit became the most powerful empire of Indonesia, but being strong nationalists, the Javanese of Madjapahit had repudiated the esoteric classic spirit and had 'reverted to native ideas, with the result that their art became strongly Javanized. Having lost its austerity and primitivism in the process, their art became earthly and realistic, taking the character of a sensuous folk-art, intricate and essentially decorative, with a predominance of flaming motifs, volutes and spirals, leaves and flowers, animals and scenes from daily life; losing altogether its religious character.

Balinese art of the epoch of Madjapabit and its continuation went even further in the love of unrestrained decoration and developed a freer and more fantastic art than that of Java of the same time. Although resembling the style of the ruins of Panataran in East Java, Balinese art is not the art of Java transplanted into Bali, but a parallel art, made even more Baroque by additional decorative elements from China. Tropical vegetation in stone invaded the architecture in the same way that and parasites would engulf an abandoned monument in the hot house atmosphere of Bali.

THE PLASTIC ARTS IN MODERN BALI

Sculpture and Architecture: The primary function of the average sculptor is to enhance the public buildings of his community with florid decoration and judging from the profusion of such carved temple and palace walls, gates, drum-towers, public baths,
court houses, and so forth, seen even in the remotest districts, one comes to the conclusion that there must be an enormous number of sculptors in Bali. Domestic architecture is simply of wood and, thatch with secondary walls, undecorated for the most part, and is the concern of carpenters and tbatcb-workers. Formerly the vassals of the feudal princes built great palaces for them, many of which are still among. the finest examples of Balinese architecture, but today the artistic activity of the people goes into the care of their places, of worshiZ and other communal buildings, still erected and repaired with great intensity.

In Bali there is no special class of architects, and the sculptors are in charge of designing, directing, and even working themselves in the construction of a temple, assisted by a number of stone- and brick-workers. A master carver should be able to plan beautiful gates, which are the most important examples of Balinese architecture. In Mas, a village of Brahmanas, we saw once an architectural drawing, rather resembling our architectural proiects- for a temple gate to be erected in the village. The drawing was made by Ida Bagus Ktut, carver, actor, and musician, member of a who'le family of artists; the position and shape of the stones and the carvings on what was to be in sandstone were drawn in great detail on European paper with black ink, with the parts to be made of brick painted red. I believe, however, that this drawing was exceptional, and usually the work is started without a drawn plan. For the making of the great towers for cremation, for example., the master builder simply has the design and the proportions already worked out., 'as the Balinese say, in his belly.

The only stone to be found in the island is a soft sandstone, a conglomerate of volcanic ash called paras, quarried on the banks of rivers. The stone appears to be softer when freshly taken from the ground and becomes harder with time under favourable conditions. Dr. Stutterbeim claims that the stone was protected in Qld times by a coating of cement, but I bad no occasion to verify this and I never found evidence of such cement being used by the present-day Balinese. It is perhaps the softness ' of this, the only stone in Bali, that is responsible for the over-intricate art of the Balinese, making it possible for them to give full vent to their nafve delight in covering all available space with decoration.

The stone is cut and shaped with adzes, directly on the spot where it is quarried, and made.into blocks of various sizes according to requirements. For the large statues of demons that guard the entrance of temples, the great block of paras is roughly shaped to resemble its ultimate form, and when it is considered that enough surplus stone has been removed, it is carried to its destination on stretchers of bamboo - not an easy task, since
the quarries are generally at the bottom of deep ravines. I have seen as many as fifteen men struggling up a narrow and slippery path with a great block of stone. The schematic mass of the future devil is placed where it is to remain a, d is finished on the site.

The blocks of stone for construction are put together without mortar, but it is essential for the stability of the building that the joints should have a perfect fit. This is accomplished by rubbing the two stones together, wearing their surfaces down
with great quantities of water. The same process is employed"to join baked brick. In this manner the building rises slowly, the workmen protected from the sun by shades made of the woven leaves of the coconut palm and a considerable period of time often elapses before a new temple is finished. The alternate masses of red brick and sandstone are carved last, often leaving the roughly shaped masses of stone for years without decoration.

The stone-carvers follow definite rules when they begin to cover a temple or a palace gate with decoration. For instance, there should be a karang tiewiri over the gate, the face of a leer

ing monster with a hanging tongue and long canines. On less important spots the central motif of a pattern is a karang bintulu, a curiously popular design consisting of a single bulging eye over a row of upper teeth, the canines of which are developed into fangs, surmounted by the representation of a mountain. To finish a corner there is a special motif, a karang titiring, the upper part of a bird's beak, also provided, with a single eye and pointed teeth. For the same purpose there is a variation of this same motif, a karang asti, the jawless head of an elephant. The word karang means a reef, a rock, but it also is the word for setting jewels or for a flower arrangement. It has been attempted to give these ornaments an esoteric religious meaning (according to Nieuwenkamp), the representation of the souls of inanimate objects - rocks, mountains, plants - of which they form a part; when a Balinese was pressed to explain why they did not have lower jaws, he replied that it was because they did not have to eat solid food This is, in my opinion , a typical Balinese wise crack and not an indication of any such symbolical meaning.

These motifs are the starting-point for the intricate volutes, leaves, flowers, flaming motifs, and so forth, strongly reminiscent of those used in ancient Java, but also found in Siam, Cambodia, and even in the objects of the Dyaks of Borneo, a people uninfluenced by Hinduistic art. All-over patterns are called karang, while the carved borders in the mouldings are named patra, of which there is a patra olanda (from the Portuguese word for Holland?) and a patra tiin2, a " Chinese border." Here and there small panels are carved with representations of episodes from their literature: animals from the t2ntri stories, the Balinese,AESOP's fables; suggestive scenes from the Ardiuna Wiwaha in which the nymphs of heaven make passionate love to Ardjuna while he is in deep meditation; or a battle from the Ramayana or Mahabharata, with comic scenes in which the retainers of the heroes, the clowns Twailen and D61am, wrestle and bite each other.

The Southern style of architecture (Badung, Gianyar, Tabanan, Bangli, Klungkung) is characterized by masses of red brick relieved by intricately carved ornaments in grey sandstone in a considerably more restrained style than that of the North of the island (Buleleng) , where it breaks out into a gaudy riot of gingerbread decoration in a stone so soft that travellers have mistaken it for sun-dried mud. The gates of a North Balinese temple are tall and slender, with a flaming, ascendant tendency as if trying to liberate themselves from the smothering maze of sculptured leaves and flowers, out of which peer, here and there, grotesque faces and blazing demons, their shape almost lost in the flames that emanate from their bodies.

The North Balinese take their temples lightly and often use the wall spaces as a sort of comic strip, covering them with openly humorous subjects: a motor-car held up by a two-gun bandit, seen undoubtedly in some American Western in the movie house of Buleleng; a mechanic trying to repair the breakdown of a car full of long-bearded Arabs; two fat Hollanders drinking beer; a soldier raping a girl; or a man on a bicycle with two great flowers for wheels. Fantastic pornographic subjects are always a source of hilarious comedy and in many temples in both North and South Bali such subjects are found as temple decorations. As if the mad tangle of stone vegetation were not enough, in North Bali they outline the decorations with white paint to make them even more conspicuous, and in villages like Babetin, Ringdikit, and Diagaraga the overpowering decoration

is painted in bright blue, red, and yellow, giving as a result the wildest and most unrestrained effects.

The art of wood-carving has suffered a curious transformation since our first visit to Bali in 193o. Then the majority of the objects carved in wood were made for utilitarian purposes: from carved doors and beams for houses, musical instruments, masks for dramatic shows, handles for implements, to little statues of deities and other ritual accessories. These were of the conventional contemporary Balinese style: flowers and curlicues in high relief for flat surfaces (ukiran) , and for sculpture in the round (togog), statues of divinities, demons, and other characters of mythology dressed in classical attire and profusely ornamented. Furthermore, all wood-carvings were meant to be covered with paint, lacquer, or goldleaf and only in exceptional cases was the wood left in its raw state. There were unusual pieces, but they were freaks among the predominant styles.

Travellers had started to buy Balinese carvings, however, and on our return to Bali three years later, the Balinese sculptors were turning out mass-production " objets d'art " for tourists. Even before arriving in Bali for the second time, we found the curioshops of Macassar and Java filled with statuettes of a decidedly commercial style which was totally new to us. Before this we had made acquaintance with Gusti Ngurah Gede', an old man of Pemetjutan rated among the best sculptors of South Bali. Although Gusti Ged6 was so old that he talked with difficulty, be could carve the most delicate motifs in hard wood with a precision and sureness envied by the younger. sculptors. He had started to make realistic little statues of nude girls, bathing, combing their hair, or in the process of undressing, masterfully carved out of a fine-grained white wood, figures that found ready sale among travellers. This was perhaps the beginning of a new art in which the sculptor began working for a new public: tourists who had little appreciation of the technical perfection demanded by the Balinese, or foreign a ritists who preferred line and form to intricate ornamentation.

This necessarily introduced the mercenary element into Balinese art, until then non-existent; prices were boosted and the sculptor suddenly became aware thaf'there was a good income in making statues. On the other hand, this same condition gave

the art a new impulse, and sculptors sprang up like mushrooms. Soon every important artistic centre,. such as Den Pasar, Mas, Batuan, Pliatan, and Ubud, was turning out quantities of carv ings in new styles, mediocre heads of dianger.dancers snatched up by round-the-world tourists, stereotyped slim figures from Mas exported to Java and Holland; while, the splendid sculptors from Badung and Batuan carved coconut shells from Bangli and so forth.

Custi Gede' was also the master of a school of sculptors and every morning boys from the town went to his house to receive lessons and to assist him. Some of.his pupils were already fine carvers and could turn out statues almost as finished as those of the master. In'his school we had the opportunity to observe the technique of wood-ta'rving, which is considerably more refined and requires greater skill than the carvings in pargs stone. Hard woods such , as teak (diati) , jackfruit (nangka) , and the compact sawo, a beautiful dark red wood, are invariably used and the sculptor must have a sure hand, trained by the experience of years,'and , a, good knowledge of the art of cutting into the grain of the wood. He uses every conceivable form of knives, chisels, and gouges: round, straight, slanting, V-shaped, and so forth, some of which are intended for exceptionally deep carving. A complete set of tools consists of some thirty instruments and a wooden mallet. The carving technique consists in chipping bits of wood gradually with the highly sharpened instruments, not by band pressure, as among us, but with light taps of the mallet, obtaining -in this manner delicacy of touch and greater control over the material. If the statue is not to be painted or gilded, it is made smooth with pumice and given a high polish by rubbing it with bamboo.

Painting: Unlike the arts of the theatre, music, and sculpture, painting was little in evidence as a living art on our first visit to Bali. Outside of painting artifacts of daily use and scant decorations for temples, the Balinese made only paintings of two sorts: ide rider, strips of hand-made cotton a foot made by some fifteen or twenty feet long, hung at festivals under the roofs, all around the pavilions in houses and temples; and langs6, wide
pieces of painted cloth used as hangings or curtains. There were often calendars (pelelintangan) used to establish the horoscopes of children, divided into squares with symbolical designs, one for each of the thirty-five days of, the month. Often the paint-
ings represented scenes of mythology, episodes and battles from the literary epics; but there were seldon't scenes from daily life and never of contemporary subjects. The characters shown were invariably gods, devils, 'princes, and 'princesses with their retain-
ersi dressed in the ancient costumes of Hindu-Javanese times.

Their attitudes were stilted and the subjects standardized, but at times the restricted artist found an episode where he could give vent to his drotic sense of humour and he took good advantage of a. love scene or a mishap to one of the retainers of the heroes. Erotic paintings were met With at times, scenes of fantastic attitudes in love-making, which they assured me would prevent the house where they were kept from burning!

Only the old paintings showed skill and taste; the modem ones sold at the, lobby of the Bali Hotel were coarse, hastily made, and with a sad poverty of subject-matter. Painting was at a standstill, no longer in demand from, the Balinese themselves and suffering from lack of freedom of expression. Only rarely did we find pictures with style, but, the reason for this was the systematic and mechanical manner in which they were made; a master painter drew the main outline's and gave the final touches, leaving his children and apprentices to fill in the colours. Once in Gelgel, centre of painters of "the conventional style, the two children of a painter had a heated argument because one had painted with blue the flesh parts of a figure and insisted he was right.

The following are among the invariable rules to be followed by painters of the conservative style: all available space must -be covered by the design, even to the blank spaces between the intricate groups of figures which are filled with an all-over pattern of clouds to indicate the atmosphere. When there are various episodes to a story, each is separated from the next by a conventional row of mountains or flames, with the heroes repeated in various attitudes.

Battle scenes are crowded, bloody, and desperate, a tangle of arms, legs, and blood-spattered bodies, with all the space around .filled with flying arrows and strange weapons. Faces are drawn in three-quarters, rarely full face, and never in profile. The characters are " refined " (alus) ..gods, princes, and heroes and " rough " (kasar) ones - devils, giants, retainers. Coarse characters have wild bulging eyes and fierce mouths full of pointed teeth, their attitudes are violent, their colour dark, and their bodies thick and hairy. The refined ones have long, thin arms and legs, delicate hands with curved fingers reminiscent of Indian frescoes, and their attitudes are studied and graceful. Their noses are fine and their mouths full and smiling, even in
the midst of a fierce battle. They all wear elaborate clothes and jewellery of a type found only in ancient sculptures.

An important distinction is made between the eyes of men and those of women, which are always downcast - a straight line for the upper lid and a curved one for the lower lid - while the eyes of men are of the same shape but inverted, with the straight line for the lower lid, giving them a proud and inquisitive look:

Everything is restricted for the painter: his subjects, his types, his compositions, and even his colours: light ochre for the flesh. of refined characters and darker brown for evil ones; jewellery is yellow, costumes are either in red and blue or more rarely yellow and green. The Balinese painters use five colours: red (barak) , Chinese vermilion called kentju; blue (pelung) , vegetable indigo; yellow (kuning) made from a sort of clay called atal; mineral ochre (kuning wadja) ; black (selem) , soot with vegetable juices; and white (putih) from calcinated pig's bones. They can make green (gadang) by mixing atal and indigo, and brown (tangi) by mixing black and vermilion. These colours come in the form of stones which have to be laboriously ground together with the medium, a sort of fish-gelatine from China called antiur. Formerly paintings were made on hand-woven cotton cloth or on bark paper made by the Toradjas of Celebes, but today imported cloth or paper and even three-ply wood are used. :The cloth is .prepared with starch and glossed with a smooth shell. The preliminary outline is drawn in ochre with a bamboo style (penclak)
or with a lead pencil, and the colours then applied with a home, made brush (penuh), a piece of sharpened bamboo, the fibres of which have been loosened by pounding with a stone. The picture is finished with steady black lines drawn with the bamboo pen, with a second outline in reddish brown inside the black one for all the parts that represent flesh or wood, and the whole glossed once more.

Highly specialized branches of the graphic art are the illustrations of palm-leaf manuscripts (Iontar), and the making of leather puppets for shadow-plays (wayang kulit) . In Singaradja there is a library of these manuscripts, the Kirtya Liefrinck van der Tuuk, where are preserved some splendid old lontars with illustrations (or copies of them) such as the famous Dampati Lelangon, taken from the palace of the Radjas of Lombok at the time of the war; the Tetumbalans of Kamenuh and Sawan, the Bhima Swarga, Pari Bhasa, Adi Parwa, and so forth. These are masterpieces of the art of illustration, with miniature pictures incised with an iron style on the blades of the lontar palm, the scratch filled in with a mixture of soot and oil. These manuscripts are in the form of books. The lontar leaves are cut evenly into strips an inch wide and from a few inches to two feet in length. They are preserved between two boards of some precious wood cut to the size of the leaves and bound together by a cord that passes through a bole in the centre of each leaf.

The shadow puppets, the wayang kulit (described later in greater detail), are fashioned from buffalo parchment, cut out with special iron dyes into the most delicate lace and painted. The style of the wayang is highly conventionalized although it is considerably more realistic than its ancestor, the Javanese wayang. It is curious that' the art of painting pictures is not altogether dependent on the wayang forms, as it happens to be in Java, where the whole of the art consists in reproductions of stylized wayangs; their outline is always in profile, while in Balinese paintings a face in profile is never found. However, the influence of these forms in the - aesthetic education of children was, patent when Jane Belo, distributed paper and water-colours among the children of the small village of Sayan, to see what children without artistic training would do; the majority turned out pictures that were arrangements, of elementary interpretations of wayang shapes.

Together with sculpture, painting underwent a liberating revolution after boys from around Ubud started to paint pictures in a " new " style. These were curious scenes from daily life on backgrounds of Balinese landscapes and village scenes, a mixture of realism and of the formal stylistic, with naive figures of ordinary Balinese: a woman feeding chickens, men working in the fields, a cremation, and a dance performance, subjects that were never attempted before by Balinese painters.

This developed rapidly into a more mature, naturalistic style, producing a new crop of fine artists, each with a definite individual mark, such as I Sobrat, Made Griya, and Gusti Nyoman from Ubud, Ida Bagus Anom from Mas, and the group of young painters from Batuan who draw fantastic forests and strange figures in half-tone against solid black backgrounds. Theseartists were encouraged by Spies and the Dutch painter Bonnet,'who bought their pictures,.and provided them with materials; being careful, however, to keep, undesirable influences from them, and helping them to sell their work in the museum of Denpasar, a clearing-house where only pictures of high quality are exhibited.

New materials, increased the, possibilities of the newly liberated art. The introduction of European paper, Chinese ink, hair brushes, and steel pens resulted in a new style of pictures in black and white, mosaics of delicate black lines with washes of various tones of greys and black, often touched with gold and red. But there are also formal paintings on wood or cloth done in the old Balinese pigments in which they attempted to give atmosphere

and mood through colour: night scenes in beautifully, harmonized colours that are decidedly a step forward, from, the limitations of the pure vermilion, blue, and ochre of the old style paintings. Besides the scenes from daily life, the modern,Balinese painters paint episodes of mythology in which the general), conception has become freed from the old conventional rules. There are the same elegant gods, beautiful princesses, and other fantastic characters, painted among jungles in which every tree and plant is drawn with, each leaf carefully outlined and shaded, jungles that have been wrongly compared with those of the douanier Rousseau, but which resemble more the drawing of Beardsley and Persian or Indian miniatures, none of which the Balinese artists have ever seen. Favourite subjects are from the Balinese.AEsop's fables, the tantri stories, in which the artists find amusing incidents between animals living in the tapestry-like forests of fantastic leaves and flowers.

The birth of individualism rescued Balinese painting from its latent state and placed it on the same level as the emancipated sculpture -new arts that, considering the searching intensity and liveliness of the Balinese spirit, will perhaps develop unpredictable achievements.

The Crafts: Perhaps one of the most charming qualities of the Balinese mentality is the happy combination of the ~ primitive simplicity in which they live, with a highly refined and rather decadent taste. The.Balinese are a people who retain a close contact with the soil, living practically out of doors in simple thatched houses, using artifacts belonging to a primitive culture and going ordinarily almost nude; but they gather for festivals in. elaborate buildings of carved stone and dress in silks and gold to, enjoy themselves, worshipping the forces of nature by means of, flowers, good food, music, dancing, and works of art that only the most highly developed technical skill can produce.

In sharp contrast with their super-elaborated sculpture, painting, and dramatic arts, are the purely functional objects stylized wayangs; their outline is always in profile, while in Balinese paintings a face in profile is never found. However, the influence of these forms in the - aesthetic education of children was, patent when Jane Belo, distributed paper and water-colours among the children of the small village of Sayan, to see what children without artistic training would do; the majority turned out pictures that were arrangements, of elementary interpretations of wayang shapes.

Together with sculpture, painting underwent a liberating revolution after boys from around Ubud started to paint pictures in a " new " style. These were curious scenes from daily life on backgrounds of Balinese landscapes and village scenes, a mixture of realism and of the formal stylistic, with naive figures of ordinary Balinese: a woman feeding chickens, men working in the fields, a cremation, and a dance performance, subjects that were never attempted before by Balinese painters.

This developed rapidly into a more mature, naturalistic style, producing a new crop of fine artists, each with a definite individual mark, such as I Sobrat, Made Griya, and Gusti Nyoman from Ubud, Ida Bagus Anom from Mas, and the group of young painters from Batuan who draw fantastic forests and strange figures in half-tone against solid black backgrounds. Theseartists were encouraged by Spies and the Dutch painter Bonnet,'wbo bought their pictures,.and provided them with materials; being careful, however, to keep, undesirable influences from them, and helping them to sell their work in the museum of Denpasar, a clearing-house where only pictures of high quality are exhibited.

New materials, increased the, possibilities of the newly liberated art. The introduction of European paper, Chinese ink, hair brushes, and steel pens resulted in a new style of pictures in black and white, mosaics of delicate black lines with washes of various tones of greys and black, often touched with gold and red. But there are also formal paintings on wood or cloth done in the old Balinese pigments in which they attempted to give atmosphere

and mood through colour: night scenes in beautifully, harmonized colours that are decidedly a step forward, from, the limitations of the pure vermilion, blue, and ochre of the old4style paintings. Besides the scenes from daily life, the modern,., Balinese painters paint episodes of mythology in which the gentm), conception has become freed from the old conventional rules. There are the same elegant gods, beautiful princesses, and other fantastic characters, painted among jungles in which every tree and plant is drawn with, each leaf carefully outlined and shaded, jungles that have been wrongly compared with those of the douanier Rousseau, but which resemble more the drawing of Beardsley and Persian or Indian miniatures, none of which the Balinese artists have ever seen. Favourite subjects are from the Balinese.AEsop's fables, the tantri stories, in which the artists find amusing incidents between animals living in the tapestry-like forests of fantastic leaves and flowers.

The birth of individualism rescued Balinese painting from its latent state and placed it on the same level as the emancipated sculpture -new arts that, considering the searching intensity and liveliness of the Balinese spirit, will perhaps develop unpredictable achievements.

The Crafts: Perhaps one of the most charming qualities of the Balinese mentality is the happy combination of the ~ primitive simplicity in which they live, with a highly refined and rather decadent taste. The.Balinese are a people who retain a close contact with the soil, living practically out of doors in simple thatched houses, using artifacts belonging to a primitive culture and going ordinarily almost nude; but they gather for festivals in. elaborate buildings of carved stone and dress in silks and gold to, enjoy themselv~s, worshipping the forces of nature by meansof, flowers, good food, music, dancing, and works of art that only the most highly developed technical skill can produce.

In sharp contrast with their super-elaborated sculpture, painting, and dramatic arts, are the purely functional objectsof daily
stylized wayangs; their outline is always in profile, while in Balinese paintings a face in profile is never found. However, the influence of these forms in the - msthetic education of children was, patent when Jane Belo, distributed paperand water-colours among the children of the small village of Sayan, to see what children without artistic training would do; the majority turned out pictures that were arrangements, of elementary interpretations of wayavg shapes.

Together with sculpture, painting underwent a liberating revolution after boys from around Ubud started to paint pictures in a " new " style. These were curious scenes from daily life on backgrounds of Balinese landscapes and village scenes, a mixture of realism and of the formal stylistic, with naive figures of ordinary Balinese: a woman feeding chickens, men working in the fields, a cremation, and a dance performance, subjects that were never attempted before by Balinese painters.

This developed rapidly into a more mature, naturalistic style, producing a new crop of fine artists, each with a definite individual mark, such as I Sobrat, Mad6 Griya, and Gusti Nyoman from Ubud, Ida Bagus Anom from Mas, and the group of young painters from Batuan who draw fantastic forests and strange figures in half-tone against solid black backgrounds. Theseartists were encouraged by Spies and the Dutch painter Bonnet,'wbo bought their pictures,.and provided them with materials; being careful, however, to keep, undesirable influences from them, and helping them to sell their workin the museum of Den Pasar, a clearing-house where only pictures of high quality are exhibited.

New materials, increased the, possibilities of the newly liberated art. The introduction of European paper, Chinese ink, hair brushes, and steel pens resulted in a new style of pictures in black and white, mosaics of delicate black lines with washes of various tones of greys and black, often touched with gold and red. But there are also formal paintings on wood or cloth done in the old Balinese pigments in which they attempted to give atmosphere

ART AND THE ARTIST. IL95 and mood through colour: night scenes in beautifully, har. monized colours that are decidedly a step forward, froin, the limitations of the pure vermilion, blue, and ochre of the old4style paintings. Besides the scenes from daily life, the modern,., Bib., nese painters paint episodes of mythology in which the gentm), conception has become freed from the old conventional rules. There are the same elegant gods, beautiful princesses, and other fantastic characters, painted among jungles in which every tree and plant is drawn with, each leaf carefully outlined and shaded, jungles that have been wrongly compared with those of the douanier Rousseau, but which resemble more the drawing of Beardsley and Persian or Indian miniatures, none of which the Balinese artists have ever seen. Favourite subjects are from the Balinese.AEsop's fables, the tantri stories, in which the artists find amusing incidents between animals living in the tapestry-like forests of fantastic leaves and flowers.

The birth of individualism rescued Balinese painting from its latent state and placed it on the same level as the emancipated sculpture -new arts that, considering the searching intensity and liveliness of the Balinese spirit, will perhaps develop unpredictable achievements.

The Crafts: Perhaps one of the most charming qualities of the Balinese mentality is the happy combination of the ~ primitive simplicity in which they live, with a highly refined and rather decadent taste. The.Balinese are a people who retain a close contact with the soil, living practically out of doors in simple thatched houses, using artifacts belonging to a primitive culture and going ordinarily almost nude; but they gather for festivals in. elaborate buildings of carved stone and dress in silks and gold to, enjoy themselv~s, worshipping the forces of nature by meansof, flowers, good food, music, dancing, and works of art that only the most highly developed technical skill can produce.

In sharp contrast with their super-elaborated sculpture, painting, and dramatic arts, are the purely functional objectsof daily
stylized wayangs; their outline is always in profile, while in Balinese paintings a face in profile is never found. However, the influence of these forms in the - msthetic education of children was, patent when Jane Belo, distributed paperand water-colours among the children of the small village of Sayan, to see what children without artistic training would do; the majority turned out pictures that were arrangements, of elementary interpretations of wayang shapes.

Together with sculpture, painting underwent a liberating revolution after boys from around Ubud started to paint pictures in a " new " style. These were curious scenes from daily life on backgrounds of Balinese landscapes and village scenes, a mixture of realism and of the formal stylistic, with naive figures of ordinary Balinese: a woman feeding chickens, men working in the fields, a cremation, and a dance performance, subjects that were never attempted before by Balinese painters.

This developed rapidly into a more mature, naturalistic style, producing a new crop of fine artists, each with a definite individual mark, such as I Sobrat, Mad6 Griya, and Gusti Nyoman from Ubud, Ida Bagus Anom from Mas, and the group of young painters from Batuan who draw fantastic forests and strange figures in half-tone against solid black backgrounds. Theseartists were encouraged by Spies and the Dutch painter Bonnet,'wbo bought their pictures,.and provided them with materials; being careful, however, to keep, undesirable influences from them, and helping them to sell their workin the museum of Den Pasar, a clearing-house where only pictures of high quality are exhibited.

New materials, increased the, possibilities of the newly liberated art. The introduction of European paper, Chinese ink, hair brushes, and steel pens resulted in a new style of pictures in black and white, mosaics of delicate black lines with washes of various tones of greys and black, often touched with gold and red. But there are also formal paintings on wood or cloth done in the old Balinese pigments in which they attempted to give atmosphere

ART AND THE ARTIST. IL95 and mood through colour: night scenes in beautifully, har. monized colours that are decidedly a step forward, froin, the limitations of the pure vermilion, blue, and ochre of the old4style paintings. Besides the scenes from daily life, the modern,., Bib., nese painters paint episodes of mythology in which the gentm), conception has become freed from the old conventional rules. There are the same elegant gods, beautiful princesses, and other fantastic characters, painted among jungles in which every tree and plant is drawn with, each leaf carefully outlined and shaded, jungles that have been wrongly compared with those of the douanier Rousseau, but which resemble more the drawing of Beardsley and Persian or Indian miniatures, none of which the Balinese artists have ever seen. Favourite subjects are from the Balinese.AEsop's fables, the tantri stories, in which the artists find amusing incidents between animals living in the tapestry-like forests of fantastic leaves and flowers.

The birth of individualism rescued Balinese painting from its latent state and placed it on the same level as the emancipated sculpture -new arts that, considering the searching intensity and liveliness of the Balinese spirit, will perhaps develop unpredictable achievements.

The Crafts: Perhaps one of the most charming qualities of the Balinese mentality is the happy combination of the ~ primitive simplicity in which they live, with a highly refined and rather decadent taste. The.Balinese are a people who retain a close contact with the soil, living practically out of doors in simple thatched houses, using artifacts belonging to a primitive culture and going ordinarily almost nude; but they gather for festivals in. elaborate buildings of carved stone and dress in silks and gold to, enjoy themselvs, worshipping the forces of nature by meansof, flowers, good food, music, dancing, and works of art that only the most highly developed technical skill can produce.

In sharp contrast with their super-elaborated sculpture, painting, and dramatic arts, are the purely functional objectsof daily
of daily use found in every home implements of labour, simple but effective tools made of bamboo, wood, and iron, walls of split bamboo, cool mats for sleeping made of finely woven pandanus leaf, light but strong baskets and pocketbooks, and clay vessels to keep water cool. The common objects of daily requirements are beautiful in their simplicity, in the handling of elemental materials such as wood, bamboo, palm-leaf, and clay. In contrast are the lavish taste, labour, and money spent on their objects of luxury: their temples and musical instruments, their jewellery and textiles worn on ceremonial occasions, their weapons, and so forth. Their love, of display often goes to extremes, as in the case of the costly towers, biers, and other accessories for the cremation of their dead, which are destroyed in a few minutes after hundreds of. guilders and months of labour are spent to produce them.

I have mentioned the gringsing cloth, the scarfs from Tenganan, which are one of the rare examples in the world of the art of " double " ikat - that in which both the warp and the weft of the cloth are, patterned by the elaborate process of dyeing only sections of the threads before weaving by binding them with fibres, the designs of both being made to fit afterwards when the scarf is woven. The ikat process is characteristic of Indonesians, although today the laborious double ikats are made only in Tenganan in Bali. Single ikats in cotton - those in which only the warp is previously patterned - are still made in Nusa Penida and in Mas, but in Klungkung they make " ikated " silks of amazingly elaborate patterns.

K1ungkung is also famous for its brocades (sungket) in red silk with woven designs in gold and silver thread. The Balinese often decorate pieces of silk by the tie-and-dye process (plangi) ; the fabric is knotted tightly in certain places and dipped in the. dyes so that when the knots are loosened, a regular pattern results, leaving uncoloured patches where the dye could not, penetrate. Interesting also are the striped and chequered cloths in cotton and silk made all over the island, some of which are very popular, and the open-work scarfs (k2mben 4,erik) wom by the women around the breasts for feasts. There is a peculiar cloth in black and white checks (kamben pol6n) like the enlarged design of gingham, to which is attributed magic protective qualir ties. It is worn for certain magic dances like, the baris tekok
djiago and is the garment of magic characters such, as Bhima, Twalen and Merdah.

Although not a part of the weaving art, the gilt cloth (kamben prada) used for theatrical performances is also important. This is coloured silk boldly patterned with applications of pure -goldleaf (vrada) -valued onto the fabric with Chinese gelatine (antiur) by a special process. It is curious that despite tbefact that every Balinese wears Javanese batik for everyday dress, there is no evidence of their having adopted this popular process of decorating cloth. I have found strange, batiks in a rough handwoven cotton of a non-Javanese style, but 1,could never discover proof that they were made in Bali.

The Balinese also excel in the art of working metals, from the simple agricultural implements of iron, the parts of musical instruments, and the accessories of priests (bells, incenseburners, lamps, tripods, and so forth) cast in brass, to the extravagant gold and silver platters (lelantiang) , 'water-bottles (kendih) , and vases (sangkd and batil) , the knives and scissors for cutting betel-nut (oaket) of wrought iron inlaid in silver, and the rich and elaborate rings . , bracelets, ear-plugs, and flowers for the hair in hammered and chiselled gold set with rubies and star sapphires.

But the mostimportant examples of Balinese craftsmanship are their krisses, the famous weapons of important Indonesian men, nowadays 'worn only as synibols and as ornaments. An inherited kris that has descended in a family for generations becomes not only their. most important heirloom, but also the tangible part of the family deity and has come actually to, be worshipped as an ancestral god, 'a batara kawitan, in whom the magic strength of tbefordathers continues to live. Thus the head of a prominent Balinese family regards his kris as an important appendage and a symbol of himself. Today in the old villages it is compulsory for every man to wear his kris to attend a meeting; the kris must be worn at marriage and for all ceremoniAl or state occasions. Whoever cannot appear in person, sends his kris to represent him,, as for, instancea, judgef'zwW-.41, sj&znd
cannot attend a trial. In certaincases the marriage to a woman of the lower castes is performed-by form of the kris of, her future, husband,.; A new. kris- "made "' alive " by a priest, who blesses it -in a special reciting magic formulas over it,and, inscribing imaginary'.Wo over the blade, while its owner dedicates an offering. Ancit krisses are kept alive with. offerings of flower's. and.,incenk, a neglected and rusty kris is said to be dead.

The economic status of a 'man is determined bythe,'richness of his kris, and a. good part of his fortune is invested in the gold and jewels that'decorate it. Only the blade is sacredandtbe gold parts, the precious stones and ivory can bewned in case of need and turned into cash. There are, krisses worththousands of guilders, covered with beaten gold, with handles shaped likegods or demons and set with enormous rubies and roseZiamonds'. Such are the, famous krisses of the kings of South Bali taken. by the Dutch as war booty at the time of the great'mass suicide, Den Pasar in now among`the starpieces of the Batavia Museum. These fancy jewelled krisses were made to be worn on state occasions, while simpler ones were used for actual fighting, with more practical wooden handles shaped:to ensure a good grip.

Gold hilts with prepious stones are of coursel, the, mhst stylish, but there are also some made, of horny ebony, and other precious woods, with a heavy base (bebataran) of, gold set with rubies and a small ring, of gold and rubies also, betwee6 the hilt, isid the blade. 'There is a great variety of . kris handles, but . paticularly interesting. model, is that. called kotjet-kotjetan if the representation in eb6ny of the chrysalis of a large. beetle

The sheath not only protects the kris from outside influences, both physical and magic, but, also insulates the, vibration. emanating from the kris itself, wbich, may act dangerouslyon litium beings. The sheaths of the, superornate krisses are of, wood

covered with gold and silver, topped by a large crosspiece of ivory or I ebony. The Balinese, also, made krisses of -great sim. plicity, with the sheath, and handle of a beautifully mottled precwus wood called pelet which they obtained from Java. Old men claim that a fine piece of pelet for the crosspiece of the sheath or for the handle brought as much as fifty guilders in former times.

The shape of krisses is native Indonesian, free of all Hindu influence. It is found all over the archipelago from the Malay Peninsula to the -Philippines and is invariably known by the name of kris. The Balinese, form differs from that of the other islands only in details, and especially from the Javanese kris mainly in that it is considerably larger ~ and more elaborate, although. old Javanese blades are found in Bali, provided, however, with the richer Balinese hilts and sheaths.

The blade is the most important part of the kris; it can be straight and simple at times, but most often is fierce cooking, shaped like a flame, perhaps a form derived from a mythical serpent, a naga, since often there are krisses, not only in Bali and Java, but Aso in other parts of Indonesia, in which the body of the naga forms the blade, widening as it nears the top to make room for the curved neck and head of the naga. The
upper part of the blade is full of barbs,",dents, and curlicues wrought into the iron in an endless variety of styles, each with a special name, mysterious shapes that must once have had a now lost significance. There are also krisses with representations in high telief of elephants, bulls, winged lions (singha) , and geese (angsa) , which could possibly, at one -time, have been related to the family totem, The extraordinary watered. patterns (pamor) of silvery metal against a background of blue-black iron which have made krisses famous is the msult of beating over and over alternating layers of meteoric nickel and iron layersuntil a fine more -like pamor is obtained, brought out afterwards by blacken" ing the iron layers with a mixture of antimony and lemon juice.
The kris is preserved from rust by a coating of coconut oil The blacksmiths, makers of krisses, belong to a special caste; the pande, aristocrats among the lower classes who fiery volcano Batur and are regarded, as powerfulmggicians who understand the handling of iron and fire, two elements,h614,4n reverence since earliest times. The distinguished panda,it even r espected by the, proud Brahmanas,,who consider thetw selves the highest form of humanity, and who are, required W address a pand6 in the high language when the-smith.bas.his tools in his hands. It is said (according to Korn) that a pande Blacksmiths 'at Work (from a balinese manuscript) who engaged a Brahmanic priest to official for him took holy water from a Brahmana ") would lose his ", pande power
(kepandean) and might even become a monkey. There are many popular beliefs concerning the life and power of krisses. It is said, that a witch-doctor, through trance, can communicate with the spirit of a given kris and learn its. Past history. It is also believed that the strange, fascination that a kris has on certain individuals is the cause of the temporary madness of a man who runs amuck, (amok). He is not responsible for his acts because be is compelled by a bloodthirsty kris torun wild, killing people. ' Often ancestral krisses are held to have come from the heavens a's a gift from the gods, and these krisses are powerful amulets against all sorts of cal Amities, In) Ubud, I
was told of a man who fell, asleep under an oU waringin tree and dreamed that the s'iritof the tree ordered him, to cut cerht in roots for an offering. 'Imbedded among the roots, he found, an old kriss blade. Afraid to keep it, be turned it over to the feudal

lord of the.district, the Tjokorde of Ubud, who placed it in a special shrine in his family temple. But..the temple caught fire, and from then on, every place where the kris was kept soon went,up in flames. Through trances,and consultations it was learned that it was necessary to placate the spirit of the waringin tree by planting a sprig of it'in. Ubud. Then the fires stopped, but the magic kris would not, tolerate anything above it and had to be keptin- a roofless shrine. The kris cannot go through doorways,and when it is moved out of the temple it has to be carried over the wall by a bridge.

The historical tale of Ken Arok, the bandit who became a famous Javanese king of the thirteenth century, one of the great classics of Kawi literature, is in reality the story of a magic kris:

The child of simple peasants of Tumapel, Ken Arok ran away from home and joined bandits and gamblers-,,, whom be robbed and deserted after be bad learned all be could from them. He continued in his career of crime, holding up people and raping girls, but his personality and charm enabled him always to find someone who would shelter him, until one day he fell in with the great Brahmana Lohgawe', who claimed descent from Wisnu'. Lohgawe' was so. completely won by Ken Arok that he ended by adopting him as a son and introduced him into the court, into the private service of King Tunggul Ametung. The king's wife was the beautiful. Ken Dedes, said to be the reincarnation of Dewi Sri because from her womb irradiated a glowing light. She was the daughter of a Brahmana and consequently of a caste superior, to the king who had stolen her, causing her affronted father to curse the king to die by a kris.

Ken Arok, immediately fell in love with Ken Dedes and she with him. His Brahmanic.friends saw the opportunity for vengeance and enticed Ken Arok into making love to her, telling him that he who possessed. her would own the world. They did not discourage Ken Arok when be decided to kill the king and, marry Ken Dedes. With this purpose in mind,, Ken Arok. ordered a magic kris from Mpu' gandring, most famous of black smiths, whose kriss bad the power of killing at the first thrust. The blacksmith asked for six months in which to complete the kris, after which time Ken Arok came impatiently to collect it. In a fit of temper, because the kris was not ready, Ken Arok stabbed the blacksmith with it. Before dying Mpu' Gandring cursed Ken Arok to be killed by the same kris, and his children and grandchildren also to die by it.

Ken Arok lent the kris to Kbo Idjo, his best friend, who was so fascinated by it that be wore it everywhere, boasting that it was his. One night Ken Arok took the kris from his friend and killed the king, leaving the kris near the body. Kbo Idjo was accused of the murder and was killed with the kris. Ken Arok could then marry Ken Dedes, who knew who had murdered her husband. The marriage was made possible by a proclamation of the Brahmanas declaring Ken Arok of divine ancestry. The wedding took place despite the fact that Ken Dedes was about to give birth to a child of the dead king.

The child was born and was brought up as a son of Ken Arok, who named him Anusapati, but the young prince always felt an instinctive dislike for Ken Arok. Ken Dedes gave birth to four children by Ken Arok, but he took a second wife, Ken Umang, by whom he bad a child, Tohdjaya, who became his favourite. Ken Arok grew in power and proclaimed himself Radja of Tumapel, a title nobody dared to challenge. Instigated by Brahmanas who bad been humiliated by the ruler of the empire of Singasari, of which Tumapel was a part, Ken Arok made war on him, slaying his troops and causing the king to commit suicide with his whole retinue. Ken Arok became supreme ruler of Singasari, changing his name to Radja Rajasa.

But his reign lasted only seven years. Ken Dedes had grown tired of him, and one day she told her son Anupasati of the secret of his birth and of bow Ken Arok bad murdered his father. Anupasati obtained the famous kris from Ken Dedes and bad Ken Arok stabbed in the back during a meal, by one of his servants.

Anupasati then became King Anusanatha, but his half-brother Tobdjaya bated him and one day, in the excitement of a cockfight, Tobdjaya grabbed his father's kris from Anupasati and killed him with it.- The feud continued between the sons of the two wives of Ken Arok when Tohdjaya became king. Anupasati's sons plotted against Tohdjaya but they were discovered and killed. A revolt took place, and when Tohdjaya was fleeing in a sedan chair, one of the carriers lost his loincloth, remaining naked. The king laughed so., that the carrier became infuriated, seized the king's kris, and killed him with it. The story of the kris proceeds until the full curse of the blacksmith is completed.

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