ART AND THE ARTIST

THE PLASTIC ARTS IN MODERN BALI

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 (pelting) , 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 antjur. 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 (penelak) or with a lead pencil, and the colours then applied with a homemade brush (penuli), 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.

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