No.041/VIII - Jun/Jul - 99
No Island
is a Culture Unto Itself
Bali's ethnically diverse roots
-
Where to Lombok ?
Plans for Lombok's tourism industry
Buffaloes
in Black and White
The races, Sumbawan style
Gallery
Quo Vadis
Balinese Painting ?
Saraswati's
Gift
A community school in Ubud
Postcard
Cat Food
Food
Blast from the past
Adventure
Almighty mountain
Fashion
T-shirt design:art or fashion?
Books
Bali art biblio
Fiction
The beautiful rice paddy
Bali
Living Promotion
Natura
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Also ASRI-educated, Made Wianta’s international fame rivals that of Gunarsa. Unlike many of his peers, Wianta is rarely urged to assert his Balinese-ness on canvas. He sees his life as an attempt to escape from the limitations of culture, and his art may be seen as an attempt at achieving the universal. He is impelled by a strong expressive urge, which may take the form of sketches made up of countless scribbled words. His style has evolved through a succession of phases of explorative deconstruction and reconstruction, and he is somehow able to redirect his explosive creativity into works that are at once simple, expressive and (paradoxically!) structurally very Balinese. Made Wianta first came to the attention of the Indonesian art world with black and white works. His compulsive, obsessive sketches from the 70s are probably one the first genuine expressions of the subconscious in Indonesian art: shapeless monsters, nameless forms, the hidden sides of Bali suddenly spurt out as the expression of a strongly individualized artist. In the middle of the 80s Wianta’s attention shifted from black and white to color, from graphic lines to color dots, and from the figuration of the subconscious to the representation of pure form and color. He thus became an abstract painter. Beginning with informal shapes colored by lines of dots of various hues, he inventoried thousands of dot color combinations, types of calligraphic brush strokes and geometric forms of various sizes. He structured these in such a way as to combine elements of informal abstraction, of art and geometric abstraction. Wianta’s abstraction, however, never aimed at simplifying forms and color or at achieving informal expression. Combination became a goal in itself through an unending dialectical process between the two. A recent example of this combinative spirit is given by the huge ‘Poetry Painting’ that the artist made in Switzerland in 1997. The work consists of thousands of dense lines of poetry interspersed here and there with collages from differently colored paper, thus looking from a distance like a geometric abstract composition. The dots are replaced by words, and color by collages, but the combination of micro and macro elements, a reminder of Hindu concepts, in more present than ever. It is when driven by such creative urge, where the aesthetic and the contemporary are almost accidental by-products of his creative urge, that Made Wianta affirms himself a genuinely creative artist. |
Young artists educated in Java came under the influence of Cubism, which was
taught at the ITB. The foremost exponent of cubism in Bali was Nyoman Tusan, who
constructs his works around the decorative triangular forms of Balinese the Balinese cili.
The generation after Tusan, many of whom were educated at ASRI in Yogyakarta, was more
eclectic. Nyoman Gunarsa (55), for example, combines Balinese subjects with the swift
expressionistic manner of action painting. Whilst consciously avoiding didactic themes,
Gunarsa continues to rely on figures that can immediately be identified as Balinese, such
as dancers and characters from the wayang, thus clearly stating his Balinese identity.
Gunarsa uses warm colors in a free, informal manner so as to suggest the lyrical movements
of a dance or puppet. In this way, he proves himself a modern painter. Gunarsa’s
combining of statements of his ethnic identity with a modern freedom of form and colour
has resulted in his success in Indonesia and abroad - particularly the United States. [top] copyright © 1999 Bali Echo. All rights
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