Trisha Sertori, Contributor, Gianyar
A small pen-and-ink painting in the foyer of an Ubud hotel marks the start of a 100-year journey across Balinese art, and the lives of three generations of the island's artists.
Australian author and Balinese art expert Christopher Hill renders in words the quantum shift in art content over these generations during the 20th century in his new book, Survival and Change: Three Generations of Balinese Painters.
Hill says he had always enjoyed Balinese painting, but not passionately. It was the discovery of that small pen-and-ink artwork that would change his perspective on the island's arts forever.
""I was drawn not to the view (from the hotel), but to a small drawing. There were other good traditional paintings on display but this one was different,"" says Hill of the drawing.
He deciphered the name of the artist, Gusti Putu Sana of Pengosekan village, and made a beeline for the artist's home the next day.
""My friendship with Gusti Putu Sana and my interest in the art of Bali had begun,"" writes Hill of that meeting.
With his burgeoning interest, Hill soon realized that there was a line of painters like a family tree, displaying distinct and highly individual skills stretching back to Tjokorde Oka Gambir. These were the students of Tjokorde -- an aristocrat and revered painter from the early 20th century -- who in their turn passed on the techniques to the next generation.
In Survival and Change, Hill introduces the reader to Tjokorde, whose deeply religious and traditional art is still revered but little known outside Bali.
Tjokorde's students and the next generation of painters, I Wayan Tohjiwa and I Gusti Ketut Kobot, challenged traditional and drew art out of the temples. The third generation of painters -- who studied under Tjokorde's immediate pupils -- consist of I Dewa Putu Mokoh and his cousin, I Gusti Putu Sana of Pengosekan, the latter the artist of the small drawing that first inspired Hill.
This third generation is still creating paintings born of traditional skills, but with the added bumbu, or spice, of Bali's modern history.
Coincidence clung to Hill during his research into the art of Bali, drawing him constantly to these artists and the discoveries of their relationship through family and village ties.
""I was in a small art shop in Ubud and found a large painting on cloth folded up under a pile of textiles. The painting, about four meters long and one meter high, was in good condition although it looked old,"" writes Hill.
He had the painting examined by a dalang (puppet master) who could read the Sanskrit lettering and decipher the artist's signature.
It was a work painted in 1939 by Tjokorde's student Tohjiwa, writes Hill of the freakish and fortunate coincidences that followed him throughout his journey into the making of Bali's 20th century art.
Hill stresses that art is ""best understood when placed in some sort of context"".
The turbulence that shook Indonesian politics, society, culture and economic foundations during much of the 20th century is the backdrop of his book, as well as the medium that wrought such shifts in Balinese art and perspectives on that art over the past 100 years.
According to Hill, the changes in the Balinese perception of art was due largely to a couple of the island's earliest tourists who soon became father figures of its growing expatriate community.
Artists Walter Spies and Rudolph Bonnet arrived on Bali in the early 1930s, both with a passion to paint life in ""paradise"".
For many indigenous artists observing the works of Spies, Bonnet and others who depicted the human element and daily rhythms of Balinese life -- rather than the worlds of the Gods -- was an epiphany.
Watching these foreign artists also sell their secular works and living on the income derived enabled the notion that Balinese painters could also view themselves as professional painters able to live off their skills.
Hill explains that until the advent of Spies and Bonnet in particular, Balinese artists created works for religious offerings rather than for sale.
""They would tend their rice fields throughout the day and it was only following work that these artists had the leisure to create their art,"" said Hill. ""Spies and Bonnet really led the way in so much of Balinese art today. Their example showed artists they could work full time as professionals at their arts practice.""
The impact from Spies and Bonnet on Bali's artists is similar to the impact on Australia's Aboriginal artists by Geoff Bardon, who fathered Australia's massive indigenous arts movement in the 1970s.
Bardon opened the way for Aboriginal artists to reinterpret their dream stories on saleable canvas, rather than impermanent sand or immovable rock walls.
And where indigenous Australians continued to portray their religious history, Bali's artists moved from religious works destined for temples and began painting their daily lives -- the secular, rather than the sacred. These new paintings could be sold and had a marketable value.
And while the content of Balinese paintings has evolved alongside the changes across technology and society in the past century, the skills passed from generation to generation remain.
Hill points to artists I Gusti Putu Sana and I Dewa Putu Mokoh who still make their own paintbrushes from bamboo, having learned at the knee of their uncle, I Gusti Ketut Kobot. And Kobot learned his skills from Tjokorde 70 years ago.
Hill, in Survival and Change, reveals these artists are the keepers of the invisible ribbon -- painted in Chinese ink with frayed bamboo -- that stretches back into the past and forward toward the future.
Survival and Change: Three Generations of Balinese Painters by Christopher Hill (ISBN 1 74076 123 5) is available on Amazon.com, www.murnis.com and www.pandanusbooks.com.
