ART AND THE ARTIST

THE PLASTIC ARTS IN MODERN BALI

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 grcat quantitics 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 tjewiri over the gate, the face of a leering 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 tjuring, 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 wisecrack 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 tjina, a “ Chinese border.”

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