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Two examples from works by leading painters from Bali at the turn of the twenty-first century help viewers unfamiliar with this art to understand the principles from which painters work, how the formal and narrative elements come together to amaze the senses of their audiences. The first example is the leading Indonesian contemporary painter I Nyoman Masriadi (1973–), whose works are bizarre and confronting, cartoon-like reflections on human nature and society. The second is an artist more senior by thirty-three years, I Nyoman Mandra (1946–), whose works are the acme of refinement, and whose village lifestyle is far removed from the modern urban and cosmopolitan world in which Masriadi works (Fig. 1).

Southeast Asia’s most expensive contemporary painter, Bali-born Nyoman Masriadi, challenges his viewers with striking figurative works. These images have a strong linearity and sense of proportion that is quite alien to Western traditions of perspective. They draw on the story-telling and the two-dimensional format of the famous shadow puppet (wayang) tradition. The figures, rendered like stiff icons, typify the rougher aspect of Balinese painting. In works such as his Awakening Kumbakarna, Masriadi demonstrates his connections to the foundations of Balinese painting in narrative, in this case specifically to the ancient Hindu epic, the Ramayana, in which the demon Kumbakarna is the last great weapon to use against the hero, Rama (Fig. 3). Produced in 1999 after Indonesia’s most important awakening in Masriadi’s life, the fall of the dictator Suharto, the work gives a contemporary context to mythology, something most Balinese artists do. This painting is ambiguous, since Kumbakarna is a demon to be fought off, and the democratic reawakening of the nation in 1998 also awoke demons of violence and destruction.

Fig. 1 I Nyoman Mandra, 2009 (photo Gustra).

Masriadi’s works impress us with their combinations of line, flatness and dense narrative. The purest expressions of these artistic foundations are still practised in the village of Kamasan, in Klungkung, southeast Bali. The art of Kamasan is regarded not just as the high point of tradition but also as the epitome of the classical form of Balinese painting that connects directly to the wayang or shadow puppet theatre. Today, one artist stands out as an advocate of that tradition. I Nyoman Mandra is acknowledged throughout Indonesia as the master painter and teacher of Kamasan painting. Mandra’s work is a demonstration of how artistic accomplishment is the product of long craft training.

Mandra’s painting of the semi-divine bird Garuda from the Hindu Mahabharata epic, exemplifies the ‘classic’ form (Fig. 2). The figures are directly based on shadow puppets, displaying a different type of conflict, one between the central figure of the anthropomorphic Garuda eagle and the gods of the directions. This is a conflict to obtain the divine liquid of immortality, and thus the scene mirrors aspects of Balinese ceremonies in which holy water occupies a central position.

While Balinese paintings are nowadays found primarily in galleries and museums, traditional works were originally placed in temples and palaces. Mandra’s village of Kamasan is one of the few villages that still brings out paintings for temple festivals, to hang around the eaves of pavilions or on backing boards of offering places. This ceremonial context tells us something about the religious basis of Balinese art. Paintings are meant to convey meanings that bridge communication between the material world humans inhabit and the immaterial world of divine and demonic forces.

Balinese painters often have experience in the other arts. For example, Nyoman Mandra is also a musician in the refined Semar Pagulingan musical ensemble of his village. In the past, Kamasan village had as many as twelve puppeteers in residence. Other painters are also sculptors. This practical interrelationship between the arts means that each draws on the other—paintings have aspects of performance—and that the sense of plastic form realized in sculpture carries over into the two-dimensional arts. This interdependence of art forms allows us to talk about generalized Balinese aesthetic principles, even though each form has unique elements, and there is astonishing variation between villages and areas in each of the arts.

Fig. 2 I Nyoman Mandra, Kamasan, Garuda Nawasanga, Garuda and the Gods of the Directions. Garuda fights the gods as he claims the elixir of life: North (top): Wisnu with his weapon, the cakra or discus; Northwest (clockwise, to the right of Wisnu): Sangkara, angkus or elephant goad; West: Mahadewa, nagapasa or snake arrow; Southwest: Rudra, moksala or mace; South: Brahma, danda or club; Southeast: Maheswara, dupa or fire weapon; East: Iswara, bajra or thunderbolt weapon; Northeast: Sambu, trisula or trident (arrow), 1993, natural paint on cotton, 252 x 227 cm, Gunarsa Museum, USA (photo Gustra).

The painting tradition has a repertoire of images and forms that are integral to even the most contemporary works of art, but while many contemporary works have a universal audience, there are other aspects of Balinese painting that remain strange and inaccessible to outside viewers. What do such viewers need to know in order to appreciate Balinese works?

Fig. 3 I Nyoman Masriadi, Yogyakarta, Awakening Kumbakarna, 1999, acrylic on canvas, 140 x 200 cm, OHD Museum Collection, Magelang (photo Gajah Gallery).

Balinese Aesthetics

The exquisite flow of line and pure, flat figuration in Mandra’s work is the key to the sense of beauty that Balinese appreciate in painting. Part of that beauty, the way a painting can move the viewer, comes from a canon of proportions and forms. Tradition, however, does not mean absence of change, and individual expression comes from the manipulation of pre-set forms. These are the starting points for understanding Balinese taste.

A revealing commentary on Mandra’s art comes from a fellow Balinese painter. Pioneer of Balinese modernist art, I Nyoman Gunarsa (1944–) is himself a painter of figures derived from the shadow theatre, but in an abstracted, painterly style. He describes Mandra’s accomplishments as a combination of adherence to the rules of the style, with ultimate expressive facility. Gunarsa is saying that what looks to outsiders like conventional work is ‘the realization of set forms and technical problems’. Mandra goes through ‘stages that must be followed in a set manner, in order to gain the maximum “classic” result’.

Gunarsa observes that Mandra’s control is also over ‘the form of the … proportions of the figures, the iconography, the facial features or character of the refined, coarse, demonic and monster figures’. This attention to proportion and iconographic convention involves ‘the differing symbolic uses of colours for some characters, such as red, yellow and blue, that each have their own meanings; the symbolic hand gestures (or mudra) of each figure, as well as the foot movements, body stances’.... ‘In making a figure, he has to demonstrate control over all the elements of the shadow puppet (wayang) theatre form.’ Mandra’s ‘control of the ideal wayang proportions includes his overall framing outlines which are then refined with precision and attention to detail’.

Fig. 4 Ida Bagus Made Bala, Batuan, Kajang or shroud, before 1937, ink on cotton, 65.5 x 162 cm, collected by Margaret Mead, courtesy of the Division of Anthropology, American Museum of Natural History, 700-8305.

While Gunarsa’s description of Mandra at work may sound like a process of simple adherence to craft, it is in fact highly creative, since Mandra is ‘dealing with problems on the level of ideas that are played out in the narratives of the Mahabhrata, Ramayana and so on’. The creativity comes through Mandra’s feeling for the tradition, ‘where he can reflexively work from his sharp memory of what the iconography is for each character, using strokes that are precise and spontaneous, but exactly to the mark, and without repetition in the realization of each figure’.¹

Gunarsa here identifies the elements of Balinese aesthetics: the importance of proportion, the nature of colour, the linear and figurative aspect of the art, and the sense of story, which includes a shared iconography that crosses from traditional to modern and contemporary art. Balinese painting is also arrangements of figures on a ground or screen, as the reference to the shadow theatre implies.

Proportion

To an artist such as Mandra, beauty, appropriateness and proportion are inseparable, because, according to another Balinese commentator on art, ‘harmony is experienced as aesthetic satisfaction’.² The underlying outlook is that the spiritual dimension of art is part of the unity of humanity and nature. Thus, according to Anak Agung Made Djelantik, Western-trained medical doctor and co-founder of a number of cultural institutions in Bali, ‘forms seem to evoke spirituality’.³ Djelantik elsewhere observes that the values of traditional art are found in an artist’s aim ‘to put down in his painting his skill to the utmost, aiming at perfection of line, form and proportion, elegance in form and colour, well-measured harmony, contrast and balance’.⁴

In Gunarsa’s description, proportion is central to Balinese aesthetics, but what does he mean by this? Proportion refers to adherence to established conventions about the relative size of parts of figures, which are in turn related to the measurements that come from the human body. These measurements are set down in craft manuals. They are similar to medieval Western systems of measurement, although in the Balinese case each measurement is seen as a human manifestation of elements that exist in the wider cosmos.

Correctness of proportions is part of being in tune with the workings of divine forces in the world. Gunarsa’s description makes it clear that classical ideas of proportion in painting are shared with other arts. Because traditional painting is most closely related to the shadow puppet theatre, the proportions of limbs and head to the body in painting are those of the puppets. They are also connected to ideas of position and how the body is held and moved in theatre, especially in dance-drama.⁵

Balinese aesthetics, as Djelantik observed, do not separate the everyday from what we in the West call ‘the spiritual’. Balinese treatises on art present this connection as the unity between the ‘great world’ of the cosmos (buwana agung) and the ‘little world’ of humanity (buwana alit). In such treatises, an artist meditates to unite the body and the brush with the gods and ancestors.⁶ Thus, painting is an act of meditation, and artists are numbered amongst those who can reconcile the cosmic world beyond the senses (niskala) with the everyday sensory world (sekala).

Traditional artists consecrated into higher forms of esoteric knowledge drew yogic diagrams on death shrouds or kajang, which literally link humans to the otherworld. Some of these artists, such as Ida Bagus Made Bala (1920–42) and Ida Bagus Made Togog (1911–89) of Batuan, used the skills they learnt as kajang makers in producing modern art. They also drew mystical drawings that served as amulets, called rerajahan, which can serve a variety of magical purposes, from warding off harm to enchanting a lover to making someone ill⁷ (Fig. 4).

Materials and Colours

The links between cosmology and art in Balinese aesthetics mean that colours and forms are codified, and are important vehicles for communication between the two worlds. The word for ‘colour’ in Balinese is also the word for ‘form’—warna. In the treatises on art and artistic practice, colours and lines have their own intrinsic values, related to their ability to be ‘given life’ through connection with the divine.

The materials for painting are an important part of the process of ‘giving life’. Brushes and pens are traditionally made from bamboo—brushes have the ends shredded, pens are carved to split point—although Western materials are now imported and generally used. Possibly the oldest type of artworks were on paper made from pounded bark cloth, daluwang, which is found in different parts of Indonesia and the Pacific Islands. Bark cloth is considered to be rare and valuable. Small pieces, for example, are used as ingredients in ritual offerings, and bark cloth makes the most desirable of shrouds for the dead in preparation for burial and subsequent cremation (generally these shrouds are made of cotton). Working on bark cloth is very difficult as it absorbs the ink and is not a smooth surface. It is a mark of dexterity for a master such as Nyoman Mandra to be able to produce fine works on this medium. Older works on bark cloth show this dexterity of line (Fig. 5).

Fig. 5 Kamasan, Fragment of a Palelintangan or Astrological Calendar, 19th C, natural paint on bark cloth, various dimensions, approx. 160 x 220 cm, from Pura Puseh, Tulikup, Karangasem, private collection (photo Gustra).

Usually painters work on cotton cloth, and sometimes on wood. Balinese artists have also inscribed illustrations from literature on palm leaf manuscripts.⁸ With the importation of Western paper from the early nineteenth century, Balinese artists gradually adapted to the standard formats of paper.

Bali has produced cotton for a long time, probably coming to Indonesia from India in the Middle Ages. The village of Kusamba, to the east of Kamasan, was one centre of production of cotton, which was woven on local hand looms to textile lengths, approximately 90 x 220 cm. In Kamasan, these lengths are known as langse or curtains. Other standard formats for traditional cloth are almost all square pieces called tabing, ranging from 130–150 x 140–160 cm, and the long narrow strips hung around the eaves of pavilions, called ider-ider, usually around 30 cm wide but typically half a metre to a metre long. Traditionally, artists also produce flags (kober) to be attached to spears or poles for temple and other festivals, as well as works to be hung as ceilings (lelangit) of pavilions.⁹ Paintings on wood are also found on pavilions, either on ceilings or as backing boards (parba) for platforms that sometimes serve as beds. Many other wooden objects, such as ‘chairs’ for carrying temple effigies, have been painted by traditional artists.¹⁰ Artists have also inscribed pictures on palm leaf, the medium of manuscripts.

In Kamasan, local and imported cotton cloth was traditionally sized or primed with a rice paste, which was first boiled into the cloth, and then polished using a cowrie shell on a bamboo spring.¹¹ Paintings from other areas are not necessarily sized in this fashion. Unfortunately, the rice paste has made paintings attractive to all kinds of insects, which is one of the reasons few works of great antiquity survive. Confusingly, many Western museums classify Kamasan paintings on cloth as ‘textiles’.

Kamasan painting has always been a communal, and largely a family, activity. The leading artist draws an initial sketch in light ink lines (ngereka), or perhaps nowadays in pencil. That sketch lays down the figures and narratives, but it is up to a group of apprentices and colourists, mostly women, to provide the main painting work. Mandra’s wife, Ni Nyoman Normi, is a talented colourist from a family of painters. When the colourists have finished their work, the final lines are done by the master artist, and then the painting is finished. Paints were once of natural vegetable and mineral dyes, and the soot from oil lamps was used for ink, although Chinese ink and other imported paints are now most often used.¹²

When artists discuss colouring, they usually talk about primary colours, which are used in conjunction with black ink and white. Traditionally, colours are made from natural sources: red or ochre shades from minerals, blue from indigo, yellow from minerals, black from soot and white from crushed animal bones.¹³

Different gods are depicted with different colours, so there is an immediate link between colour symbolism and the divine: Siwa, the most powerful god, is associated with white and Brahma with red. However, different explanations of the cosmos give a range of such associations. For example, in the symbolism of the directions, Wisnu is depicted as brown in skin colour rather than the usual black, while Siwa is said to be associated with the union of all colours.

A good way of understanding colour symbolism in Bali is provided by anthropologist Angela Hobart’s interviews with the makers of shadow puppets. She was informed that colours had a range of associations depending on whether they were considered ‘cool’ (tis) or ‘hot’ (panas), and whether they were ‘young’ (nguda) or ‘old’ (wayah). In this scheme, white and yellow are associated with degrees of ‘young’ and with purity, and black with ‘age’, while red is associated with heat and danger or emotions such as anger.¹⁴

Realism

Artists and texts talk about ‘giving life’ in the artistic process. ‘Giving life’ refers in part to accuracy of representation, a Balinese sense of realism very different from that found in the West.¹⁵ Legends of Sangging Prabangkara, the ancestral painter/craftsman, makes this clear. There are many versions of this story, all with different forms of his name. In one, the High King of Klungkung summons Sangging to construct a palace filled with statues, which he does. The king then orders Sangging to make a portrait of the queen, which he accomplishes ably. The king then sends him out on missions to depict all sorts of creatures. He goes into the forest and makes pictures of all the animals of the forest. Then, having been provided with a crystal vessel by the king, Sangging depicts all the creatures of the sea. Finally, he is sent on a giant kite up into the sky to depict what is there, but he climbs so high that he reaches heaven, which Sangging finds to be very beautiful. He decides to stay there and not go back to the mortal realm.

In one variant of this story, the artist is ordered to make a portrait of the queen. Sangging does this with great skill, depicting her naked. However, a fly lands on the pubic area of the painting of the queen, and it so happens that the queen has a mole in that location. The king, thinking the artist has viewed his wife naked and had sex with her, cuts off the artist’s right arm and sends him off into the forest.

In a third story, the painter is sent out by a king who is looking for a wife. Sangging makes portraits of a number of princesses, including one whom he observed bathing. The king is so impressed by the image of the naked princess that he sends his troops out to abduct her and force her to become his wife. The implication is that this is indeed a portrait, something that renders the features of an individual.

In these legends, there is no differentiation between drawing and painting; the word gambar is used for both. In some literary texts, the term citra—‘painting’, ‘picture’, ‘sketch’ or ‘letter’—is used, as is the term tika, meaning ‘writing’ or ‘drawing’, but also ‘a slate’. The term wimba or ‘image’ is also employed for an artwork. The ability to draw is one of the recognized skills (gina), a word that can cover the English meanings of ‘art’ and ‘craft’, since it is used, for example, of dancers (pragina). A great artist is someone who is clever or wise (wikan, ririh, duèg) at what he does. Sangging is, in fact, a generic term for ‘artist’. A sangging is also someone skilled in other arts, as in the first story where Sangging builds a beautiful palace and fills it with statues. Drawing should result in a likeness that is exact (patuh), that has a sameness of appearance. As for Sangging’s achievements as an artist in the first story, he finds perfection in heaven, where everything is melah-melah, meaning both ‘good’ and ‘beautiful’.¹⁶

These stories all indicate that an artist is someone who can reproduce form (warna, goba) with skill. Despite what Western viewers may consider the stylized nature of Balinese art, it is intended by Balinese artists to be an image of reality. As all the stories make clear, portraiture is a strong part of Balinese tradition. When Danish trader Mads Lange lived in south Bali in the first half of the nineteenth century, he had his portrait painted by a local artist, an image of the essential figure of Lange as mediated by Balinese visual traditions.

Fig. 6 Ida Bagus Ketut Siring, Batuan, Unen-unen, Tonya ane Malu, an Embarrassed Spirit, 1937, ink on paper, 24.6 x 21.8 cm, courtesy of the Division of Anthropology, American Museum of Natural History, 703-4189.

Dark, Light and Composition

For Balinese artists, rendering form is about the use of lines, and the black-and-white basis of painting is important. Artists from different areas refer to this as sigar-mangsi, which literally means ‘to break or tear up the black (ink)’. Two schools, the 1930s Batuan and Sanur painters, took this aspect of Balinese art to extremes in their domination of images with black ink, but figures are arranged on black, whether as lines, ground or elements of form. Gradations of black give depth and placement to figures, not as chiaroscuro or shading from a single light source, but rather as a plastic element in realizing the forms of things and placing them in relation to each other. Western artist Bruce Granquist refers to this as a ‘pulsating’ of light and dark.¹⁷ Nevertheless, some artists taught by Westerners, notably the Dutch artist Rudolf Bonnet (1895–1978), took on aspects of chiaroscuro, but in general the use of light on paintings is absolute, not representative of the capturing of a single moment in time. Interestingly, where shading was used by artists from Sanur in the 1930s to add depth, it was often other artists who added this is a finishing touch to the flatter originals¹⁸ (Figs. 6 and 7).

Composition in Balinese painting is, therefore, about arrangements of items on what we might call a flat ground, like the shadow puppeteers’ arrangement of figures against a screen. In Kamasan art, the artist is imagined as the puppeteer on the other side of the painting to the viewer. In the shadow theatre, the protagonists are arranged on the puppeteers’ right and carried in his right hand, while the antagonists, demons and negative characters, appear on the puppeteers’ left. Thus, those viewing their shadows on the other side of the screen see the characters the other way around. So, too, in Kamasan paintings, the semi-divine heroes, Arjuna or Rama, for example, appear on the viewers’ left.¹⁹ This basis of painting in the shadow theatre and other performance arts means that there is an emphasis on figures rather than, for example, landscape. This is not to say that landscapes do not appear, but they appear as grounds upon which figures are arranged.

Different regions of Bali have different ways of treating figures on backgrounds. Not all use the same left–right convention as Kamasan painting. Nearly all the traditional schools, however, fill their main spaces with small motifs called aun-aun or ‘haze’, representing dust particles in the air. This filling accords with Balinese ideas that there is no such thing as empty space, but rather concepts of areas that are ‘busy’ and ‘quiet’ (ramé and sepi), that operate on a spectrum of fullness and emptiness. In Balinese ideas of landscape, certain areas, such as deserted shorelines or conjunctions of rivers or mountains, are more potent, more charged with energy, than others, and can even be regarded as magically dangerous (tenget) or ‘hot’ (panas). Some spaces are ‘reserved’ (pingit) for spirits or people of power. So, too, areas of painting are more or less charged, and figures are arranged in relation to these areas, since they are connected to the characters’ actions. The unity of humanity and nature, of micro-and macrocosmos, is expressed through this sense of space, particularly how areas of painting can be charged with potentiality.²⁰

In composing pictures, artists bring together these different areas of potentiality. Processes of composition are based on piecing together separate elements rather than utilizing an overarching perspective and creating a compositional ‘whole’. Kamasan painters and colourers traditionally have worked sitting on the ground, with the cloth of their paintings on their laps. This process has furthered the division of works into separate scenes, something found in other villages, even when easels have been introduced. Kamasan painters typically use rock or brick motifs around scenes for separation; the rocks are for natural or outdoor settings, the bricks for interiors. Sometimes scenes can overlap or lead onto each other, and in some cases the scene dividers actually point to the direction of the narrative flow.²¹ For interior scenes, the resulting compositions have a sense of a piling up of rectangular blocks. For natural scenes, Kamasan works typically have one dominant scene and one or more subordinate scenes, which give the appearance of being put on top of the main ground of the painting. Some major mythological themes are presented with great symmetry, and older Kamasan works often have a central tree or mountain, like the main world tree that is a feature of the puppet theatre. In such works, there is attention to hierarchical arrangements of deities. In other scenes involving kings and princes, similar kinds of ordered arrangements of figures according to rank are presented. This emphasis on hierarchy, however, is balanced by a fluidity of movement in older Kamasan works, and the results usually mitigate against any strong symmetry.²²

Fig. 7 Dewa Kompiang Kandel Ruka, Batuan, Si Ngurah Batulepang. Gusti Ngurah Batulepang is known as a historical figure who ruled the area around Batuan in the 17th century. According to Balinese dynastic genealogies, his family lost power and was scattered after Batulepang showed disrespect to a priest who asked him for food. Batulepang threw him out, scattering rice on the ground. The priest cursed Batulepang, that his family would be dispersed, just as the rice was scattered, 1930s, washed pen and ink and crayon on paper, 27 x 36.5 cm, collected by A. G. de Mol, ex-Haks Collection, Singapore Batuan Collection (photo Ken Cheong).

Fig. 8 Attributed to Modara, Kamasan, Arjuna and Suprabha as Incarnations of Smara and Ratih, c. 1820–30, traditional paint on wood, dimensions unknown, private collection (photo Gustra).

Although they have not used the scene dividers found in Kamasan, painters from Batuan village have built up larger paintings by clustering and sometimes layering scenes. They refer to this organizational principle as mamedeg, a curious term that generally means ‘a pleasing arrangement’. The term itself comes from ‘woven matting’, bedeg, and provides a convenient metaphor for understanding paintings as the interweaving of different areas.²³

The idea of arrangements of ‘interwoven’ spaces helps explain the ‘flattened’ nature of painted space in Balinese art in general. Some aspects of this flattening come from the shadow puppet theatre screen, but more generally there is a very different sense of perspective at work. This perspective is one inherited from ancient Javanese art, as presented on the temple reliefs of east Java.²⁴ Usually called a ‘bird’s-eye view’, it is more accurately a ‘gods’-eye view’, a vision looking down on the world from multiple or potentially infinite points of view. While, under Western influence, a number of Balinese artists have experimented with single-viewpoint perspective, most artists fall back on this flattened, absolute point of view.²⁵ Typical of this play of points of view is the work of the artists of Batuan, who do not seek to show things as seen by a human observer standing outside the frame of the work, but instead juxtapose blocks of buildings and walls, often with blocks towards the back being larger than those at the front (Fig. 7).

Beauty

Landscape and the pleasing, proportionate arrangement of figures both imply notions of beauty in art. As the legends of the Sangging show, Balinese understand art to be about attention to beauty. Such Balinese terms as melah mean that beauty is more than just pleasing to the eye; it also evokes a sensation of satisfaction in the viewer. There are other words that evoke beauty, usually of people: ayu (for women) and bagus (for men). These can be used for works of art as well, although they are more references to character, and have the dimension of being tied to notions of status, in which people of high social standing or caste actually have these terms as part of their status titles.²⁶ Otherwise, the general term ‘good’, becik, can be used for something that is beautiful, and in the context of art work this has connotations of being skilfully rendered, and even moral goodness.²⁷

A more profound sense of the beautiful is held in the word langa, which is employed extensively in the literature of high poetry that began in ancient Java and has been continued in Bali. This literature, written in varieties of the Old Javanese language, demonstrates that langa, as a notion of beauty, is about sensual experience or longing. In the literary tradition, beauty is an element in a process of yogic meditation, by which a poet or artist achieves union with the divine. Such a union is as that of the God and Goddess of Love, Smara (or Kama) and Ratih. Artists strive for perfect beauty through the skilful rendering of characters. Thus, works regarded as the epitome of perfection in terms of skill and proportion are also seen as consummate renderings of the beauty of the male and female figures, as incarnations of Smara and Ratih. Art, like poetry, is meant to generate feelings, and here the term used is the Indian rasa, that have effects both in the world of the senses and the world beyond the senses. Thus, poets and artists (being mostly male) find inspiration in female beauty, which arouses sensual pleasure. Such female beauty is homologous with the beauty of lonely natural places, particularly mountain forests and seashores, that are charged with power²⁸ (Fig. 8).

Fig. 9 Candi Tigawana, Sadewa Bows before a Priest, c. 1250– 1350, south side base, andesite relief, h 51 cm (photo Ann Kinney).

Innovating and Incorporating the Foreign

Calling Balinese painting ‘traditional’ misrepresents the dynamic and highly innovative nature of painting in Bali. ‘Tradition’ implies lack of change, adherence to set types. While both the old tradition of classical Kamasan painting and the new tradition of modern art that developed in the 1930s work from such set types, they allow for a high degree of change. Innovation takes place in Balinese tradition through imitation. Each artist copies the works of others, but introduces elements both of his or her own making that are connected to social and cultural changes.

Bali has a long artistic tradition, with ancient bronzes and stone statues testifying to the originality of Balinese creative work with forms and motifs. The earliest written records indicate that Bali was constantly interacting with Java, politically, socially and culturally. The development of the shadow theatre and related modes of telling stories, both in literature and sculpture, is recorded as having happened in east Java in periods when ties with Bali were strong, from about the eleventh century onwards. During this period, relief sculptures from east Javanese temples show that the depiction of mythical and semi-mythical narratives had evolved from the Indian-influenced central Javanese style to being a much flatter style, closer to the forms of the wayang and of Balinese art (Fig. 9). Many of the formative principles of Balinese painting came from east Java, particularly during the period of the great kingdom of Majapahit (1273–1527), which ruled over Bali. According to Chinese records, wayang-style paintings, rolled out and performed by puppeteers, existed during the Majapahit era.²⁹ Javanese painting and wayang figures evolved in their own direction, but it is clear that Balinese painting shared a common ancestor with Javanese sculptural art, as shown by temple reliefs depicting both figures and landscapes. Ancient Javanese art shares with Balinese art not only the arrangement of figures like puppets on a screen, but also the use of trees and other background figures as significant elements of composition. In landscapes, the same absolute sense of perspective prevails.

An internal dynamic of Balinese painting comes from the ways that artists innovate through imitation. They copy the works of others, but they produce highly original interpretations, both in terms of composition and style. Certain paintings in the village of Kamasan were highly prized and frequently borrowed to serve as models for other artists.³⁰ The aesthetic of imitation has its origins in ancient Java, but as Peter Worsley, the only scholar to examine this phenomenon in Indonesia, shows, this kind of originality through copying is common both to the ancient West and to Asian traditions.³¹ Artists strive to preserve the cannon of ‘stylistic repertoire’ while adding their own creative elements. An example is the story of Garuda challenging the gods, a story from the Mahabharata, in which the powerful anthropomorphic eagle Garuda, vehicle of the god Wisnu, fights to obtain the liquid of immortality. I Nyoman Mandra’s late twentieth-century version (Fig. 2) is very different from the version produced some fifty years earlier by his teacher and uncle, I Nyoman Dogol (Fig. 10). Dogol’s work is much more about violence, and emphasizes Garuda’s great power by showing him as larger than the gods. The dynamism of the work comes from the way the air/dust motifs create lines and fields of movement, into which the weapons of the gods, breaking and bending as they strike Garuda, are incorporated.

An earlier Kamasan Garuda, painted to be hung on the back of a pavilion rather than a roof, as in the Dogol painting, does not align the gods with the directions and includes other elements, such as followers of the gods at the bottom, and the sun in the centre at the top (Fig. 11). The comparison between these last two works shows the strength of Dogol’s expression, particularly in the way that Garuda’s outstretched right hand and the alignment of his feet create the rounded and firm pose of a dancer, centring him in a web of power. In comparison, Mandra’s painting is a meditation on order, on divine figures as distant icons, rather than as disturbing powers. The gods and Garuda are more equal, with the divine weapons not broken against the bird, as in the other paintings.

External change in Balinese art come from Bali’s long interaction with the rest of the world. Ornamental elements in Kamasan paintings, whether from painted borders or flower and rock motifs, show clear Indian and Chinese influences, which is not surprising given that Bali was on sea trade routes that went from the Spice Islands of eastern Indonesia to both major centres of Asia, from at least 100 CE. Chinese porcelain and Indian textiles have long been imported into Bali. Indian flower decorations from chintz and other fabrics, and Chinese swastika ornaments from plates, are a regular part of the Balinese artistic vocabulary (Fig. 12).

Fig. 10 I Nyoman Dogol, Kamasan, Garuda Nawasanga, Garuda Challenging the Gods for the Liquid of Immortality, 1920s, natural paint on cotton, 165 x 124 cm, ceiling painting from Pura Dadia, Kamasan, Forge Collection, Australian Museum, E74225 (photo Emma Furno).

Fig. 11 Kamasan, Garuda Challenging the Gods for the Liquid of Immortality, 19th C, acquired 1938, paint on cloth, 112 x 135 cm, tabing, gift of Mrs de Vogel-Theunissen, Tropenmuseum, Amsterdam, coll. nr. 6207-211.

Changes in motifs and content are part of a wider pattern that makes Balinese art so complex. The ancient myths of Bali derive from India, the source of Bali’s Hindu-Buddhist religion, but have been localized. Bali’s famous barong, the lion-dragon figure that defends humanity from the depredations of the witch Rangda, is directly derived from the Chinese lion dance.

The capacity of Balinese art to absorb and reshape elements from outside has meant that Western influences have been able to be added to the rich cultural mix of the island. Balinese first saw Western art in 1597, when the captain of the first Dutch expedition to the island presented the king of Gelgel, then ruler over the whole island, a painting of a ship pressed into the doors of a mirror. Through exchanges of gifts with the Dutch East India Company over the following centuries, Balinese rulers must have acquired other products of Western art and craft, although in their correspondence with the Dutch these kings showed that they were more interested in the rich and colourful fabrics of India than in Western items.

The largest impact of the West on Balinese art was technological. The introduction of Western paper, manufactured cloth, painting implements and paints had a far greater role in changing Balinese art than any observation of Western art. The latter, with its attention to the painterly and its dependence on oil paints, was inimical to Balinese drawing up until the late twentieth century. Paper and the smoother manufactured cloth allowed Balinese artists to work with greater speed and dexterity than the difficult surfaces of bark cloth and local cottons. Paper formats meant that Balinese could focus on working on single-scene drawings and paintings in ink rather than the larger canvases or long rolls of Kamasan paintings. Such a major compositional change meant a new understanding of the possibilities of what should be highlighted in these single scenes.

In the late nineteenth century, artists such as I Ketut Gede from north Bali experimented by taking scenes from mythology and mixing them with historical and contemporary images in unique compositions. These possibilities came because a Eurasian dictionary maker, Herman van der Tuuk, wanted Gede and others from south Bali to illustrate scenes from mythology and daily life.³² Precedents such as this allowed Balinese artists to further explore new possibilities presented to them by Western painters, who began to settle in Bali from the 1920s onwards. Western modes of shading, perspective and painterly depiction were added to the array of choices available to Balinese, although these seem to have been choices rarely taken up until the second half of the twentieth century.³³

Fig. 12 India/Bali, Indian printed textile incorporated into a Balinese painted cloth with flaming heads signifying lightning (gelap-gelapan), 19th C, natural dyes and paint on cotton, 39 x 54 cm, Forge Collection, Australian Museum, E76400 (photo Emma Furno).

The Stories

The narrative element of Balinese painting is at the heart of its continuity as an art form. Most Balinese painting communicates on a primary level through story-telling, and the painters assume a knowledge in their audience of the major stories, even if some parts of these are no longer well known. The Indian roots of Balinese narrative, as Djelantik’s discussion quoted above shows, are closely related to the way Balinese aesthetics combines Indian and indigenous ways of looking at the world. These ways of seeing link understandings of beauty, feeling and communication with the world beyond the senses. In the presentation of narratives, artists act like puppeteers, communicating between the everyday and the divine worlds.

The chief narrative sources for Balinese art are the great Indian epics, the Ramayana and Mahabharata.³⁴ Scenes appear in Balinese art that are also found throughout India and other parts of Southeast Asia, such as the story of the gods and demons Churning the Ocean of Milk. There are also many indigenous stories depicted in Kamasan works, such as the courtly romance of Prince Panji and the story of the Brayut family who had too many children.

Iconography

The stories in Balinese paintings are understood through the system of iconography that is employed in the shadow theatre. This divides characters into different types: male and female (indicated by obvious body types); refined (thin, with narrow eyes, aquiline nose and usually golden or light-coloured skin); and rough or coarse (rough, hairy, bulging eyes, bulbous nose). While the refined versus rough categories are usually seen in terms of good versus bad (for example, the refined king Rama versus the demon-king Rawana), this is not always the case, as the example of the hero Bima shows. He is one of the semi-divine Pandawa brothers, the protagonists of the Mahabharata, but has a large body, round eyes, large nose and speaks gruffly. People of low social rank, commoners, are usually shown with rough, even caricatured features.

Iconography also identifies rank. There are two types of iconography. The first is based on the narratives and characters of the Hindu epics, a category dubbed ‘mythological’ by anthropologist Anthony Forge in his attempt to describe the systems of Kamasan painting.³⁵ ‘Mythological’ stories are concerned with the gods and the most important heroes, who are incarnations or children of gods. The major heroes in this iconographic subsystem, figures such as the Pandawa brother Arjuna, are princes who have a ‘crab claw’ hairdo and other kinds of ornamentation in their hair and around their necks, such as a pointy ear ornament (sekar taji), a bird face decoration at the back of the hair (garuda mungkur), a necklace and shoulder guards. The princes and princesses all sport diadems. Kings have a variety of crowns or coiffures, the highest ranking having an actual tower-like crown with a rainbow ornament at the back, and large bird face ornament, with diadem, ear ornaments and other decorations shared with those of lower rank. Lower-ranking kings and their courtiers have various other coiffures. Men are shown with sarongs, but are barechested except for their ornaments, while women of high rank have cloths wrapped around their breasts and two layers of sarongs. Priests and other characters of spiritual power usually have turban-like headdresses and wear long coat-like garments over their sarongs. Commoners and servants usually have minimal or no ornamentation and wear only a loincloth.

Amongst the commoner figures, two sets of servants are particularly important. These are the clown figures who serve the main characters of the ‘right’ and ‘left’, respectively Twalen and Merdah and Delem and Sangut. In the wayang they play the role of interpreting lofty speech into everyday language and comedy, and in traditional painting their roles are a visual equivalent, since they mediate the views of ordinary people with their comic actions. These servants are ubiquitous in Kamasan paintings (Fig. 13).

Indigenous stories belong to the second category of iconography, what Forge labels as ‘post-mythological’, legends that belong to a more recent past, with protagonists closer to humanity than the deities and semi-divine figures of the epics.³⁶ The main identifying features are a variety of coiffures denoting different ranks, for example, kings with upswept hairbuns and princes, such as the hero Panji, with downswept hairbuns called ‘crescent moons’ (tetanggalan). In post-mythological iconography, characters have less ornamentation than in the mythological, though female characters are similar in their presentation.

Fig. 13 Kamasan, Bima, with ‘crab claw’ hairdo, thick, hairy body and bulging eyes, possibly c. 1900, paint on cloth, 108 x 81 cm, flag (kober), Forge Collection, Australian Museum, E93475 (photo Finton Mahony).

Fig. 14 Kamasan, The Snake Sacrifice of King Janamejaya. Janamejaya is seated on a lion throne, to the right of centre. The priests, led by Bagawan Srutasrawa, are shown to the left of the central sacrificial fire in the main scene. At top right, Indra talks to Taksaka. At top left, Astika talks to the naga, 19th C, natural paint on bark cloth, 152 x 144 cm, ex-Nieuwenkamp Collection, Gunarsa Museum, USA (photo Gustra).

Mahabharata

The Mahabharata is a long story that centres on the battle between the Pandawa brothers and their cousins, the Korawa. Balinese painters learn the epic through translations of sections into prose texts and poetry, both in the Old Javanese language, and focus on certain scenes. In Kamasan and other villages, even those painters not literate in Old Javanese would have learned stories from shadow puppeteers and passed those stories down to their students and families. Thus, the painters usually focus on certain main stories and do not seek to depict all the details of the epic.

The first part of the Mahabharata, the First Book (Adiparwa), provides Balinese painters with a range of stories about the origins of the world and the great kings of the mythological past. The First Book is concerned not only with the ancestors of the heroes of the Mahabharata, but how the world, and civilization, came into being. It contains a number of stories, depicted by Kamasan painters, of the founders of the highest-ranking castes, those of the ksatria or royalty and the brahmana or priests. The First Book depicts them in a constant struggle for power, as when the priest Ramaparasu attempts to kill all the ksatria in revenge for the death of his father. After many generations of conflict, the two parties are partially reconciled when King Janamejaya requests the leading brahmana, Bagawan Srutasrawa, to become Janamejaya’s court priest in order that the king can carry out a sacrifice meant to destroy the naga or serpents. The god Indra tries to help the snake king Taksaka but is defeated by the priest’s powers. Only Astika, a priest who is also the son of a serpent priestess, saves Taksaka by tricking King Janamejaya into granting one request. He then asks that the sacrifice be abandoned (Fig. 14).

The story of the priests continues in the tale of Bagawan Uttangka and his teacher Weda. Little known now, the story featured in many Kamasan paintings of the nineteenth century.³⁷ It tells how Uttangka was tested by his teacher, in particular how he had to honour the request of his teacher’s wife by getting a ring from King Posya. In the langse version below, Uttangka, bottom centre and left, is shown being sent on his quest by the king and queen. He is then shown in the top left-hand scene of the painting, bathing before he puts on his red coat to visit King Posya’s wife. The king, however, offers the priest impure food, so Uttangka curses the king to be blind (central top scene). Before he can take the ring to his teacher’s wife, Uttangka has it stolen by the snake king, Taksaka, and so has to retrieve it from the underworld (top right) before he can return to his teacher and be honoured (bottom right). The version illustrated here, a fine work from the first part of the nineteenth century, presents the story as a balance of power between the royal (left side) and priestly (right side) figures, representing the two castes (Fig. 16).

Fig. 15 Pan Ngales, Kamasan, Churning of the Ocean of Milk, 1921, natural paint on cotton, 132 x 160 cm, tabing, Forge Collection, Australian Museum, E74163 (photo Emma Furno).

Very popular from the First Book is the the ‘Churning of the Milk Ocean’ (Samudramanthana / Pamuteran Mandara Giri). In the main scene of this episode, the gods stand on the left-hand side of the world mountain while their enemies, the demons (deitia), stand opposite. Both groups hold the world serpent, which is wrapped around the world mountain, to churn it in the ocean of milk. Indra, king of the gods, sits on top of the mountain to hold it stable and creates rain to cool those doing the churning. Underneath the mountain is the world turtle. The churning produces three goddesses, the central one of whom holds the elixir of life (amerta) in a winged jar. This particular scene is highly favoured for use in the pavilion where a padanda or Brahman high priest prepares holy water, called tirtha, for a ceremony, an equation of the elixir of life with holy water. In sequels to the ‘Churning’, battles between gods and demons occur (Fig. 15).

The gods are the superiors of the lesser heavenly beings, called the dewata, gandharwa and widyadara. At times, these lesser beings form an independent group, at others, such as in the story of Sunda and Upasunda, they are the direct servants of the gods. Sunda and Upasunda are two demons threatening the stability of the world and the power of the gods. The gods create the heavenly nymph Tilotama, who is so beautiful that the god Brahma grows four heads so that he can see her, regardless of the direction he is facing. When Sunda and Upasunda see the nymph, they start fighting over her, and both are killed in the ensuing battle (Fig. 17).

Fig. 16 Kamasan, Bagawan Uttangka’s Quest, before 1849, natural paint on cotton, langse, from a temple in Kusamba, State Museum of Berlin, 1c876f (photo Martin Franken).

Fig. 17 I Nyoman Mandra, Kamasan, Sunda and Upasunda, 1991, natural paint on cotton, 47.5 x 141.5 cm, artist’s collection (photo Gustra).

A significant story from the First Book that preoccupies painters is that of Garuda, the mythical eagle, and his mother Winata, who is cursed by her sister Kadru, the mother of the serpents—the thousand naga—the enemies of Garuda. He can only release her by obtaining the elixir of life. In order to do this, Garuda has to challenge the Gods of the Directions (see Figs. 2, 10 and 11). This particular scene provides Balinese painters with a way of depicting the cosmic order, much like meditation diagrams from India.

The First Book has many other scenes explaining the relationship between the naga and the brahmana caste. In particular, the priest Jaratkaru marries Nagini, the daughter of the snake king Basuki. Jaratkaru does so on the instruction of his ancestors, who are suspended from bamboo poles in hell because Jaratkaru has no children. Both this scene and the meeting of Jaratkaru with Basuki and Nagini are featured in a large cloth³⁸ (Fig. 18). In other paintings, the story continues with the agreement that Nagini makes with Jaratkaru, that they will stay married as long as Jaratkaru is never angered by his wife. Unfortunately, one day Jaratkaru oversleeps. He is just about to miss out on his sunset worship when Nagini decides it is better to wake him, risking his anger in doing so. He immediately leaves her but tells her she will bear a child, Astika, who will save the serpents from being destroyed by King Janamejaya’s sacrifice.

The painting itself uses its narrative as the starting point for a much more extensive rendering of Balinese cosmology. The main part of the First Book narrative is found in the top right-hand corner of the painting, although in the top left section the artist has extended the First Book’s preoccupation with Garuda and the naga by showing both, and a variety and animals and anthropomorphic figures behind them, positioned either side of an eleven-layered tower, which is the Balinese way of showing the Siwa-lingga or phallus, the manifestation of Siwa’s divinity.

The main part of this painting is taken up with depicting the punishments of hell, which also feature in other paintings, particularly of the side story of how one of the Pandawa brothers, Bima, has to go to hell to rescue the souls of his stepparents (Bimaswarga). Strictly speaking, what is translated as ‘hell’ is closer to the Roman Catholic Purgatory, and the Balinese term swarga covers all aspects of the afterlife. Souls are understood to go through a passage that reflects the Hindu idea of karma, that is, bad actions are punished, as shown in this painting where a woman is driven across a bridge over a fire (punishment for having an abortion), other souls are chased by birds, positioned under a tree of daggers which a demon shakes down on them, devoured by wild animals (punishment for hunters), cooked over a fire like a roast suckling pig, boiled in a cauldron, have their sexual organs violated with weapons (punishment for promiscuity), and a female soul is forced to suckle a caterpillar (for not having children). The equivalent of the Western ‘heaven’ is shown at the top of the painting, where people sit in pagoda-like pavilions and have offerings made to them. Thus, heaven resembles the inside courtyard of a Balinese temple. At the bottom of the painting are shown, from right to left, a witch, people in boats at sea experiencing problems with sea animals, and a man fishing. Such scenes of ordinary life are juxtaposed with mythological scenes to demonstrate the relationship between actions in the spiritual world and those in the mundane world.

The First Book reflects a universe where the various cosmic forces are constantly interacting. As such, it presents a view of the universal forces that were at the time after creation forming themselves into different possibilities of world order.

Fig. 18 Kamasan, Jaratkaru in Swarga, 1831, natural paint on cotton, 150 x 160 cm, tabing, from a temple in Karangasem, Forge Collection, Australian Museum, E74161 (photo Emma Furno).

A number of other mythological stories are depicted by Balinese painters in order to show the workings of divine power and influence in the world. Of significance in Balinese religion is the story of the Burning of the God of Love (Smaradahana), which explains the existence of desire in the world. In this story, the god Siwa is meditating and thus denying his influence to the world. The other gods are worried about this disturbance to the natural order, and ask Smara to end the meditation by shooting Siwa with his love arrow. This will arouse passion in Siwa. In the painting illustrated here, the top scene shows the meditating Siwa in the top right corner, with his two guardians, Nandiswara and Mahakala, seated beside him (Fig. 19). Siwa is struck by the arrows fired by Smara, who stands towards the middle of the top scene, with the other gods behind him (right to left, Indra, Wrespati, Wisnu, Brahma and Yama), and their followers or dewata below them. Twalen and Merdah, the ubiquitous servants of the burning love god, are on the left. In the larger bottom scene, Siwa turns into his angry or pamurtian form, with many heads and arms, and burns Smara to ash. Such angry forms of deities or semi-divine heroes are only shown in great events, since they represent manifestations of great power.³⁹ According to Balinese legends, Smara’s ashes blow around the world, inspiring sexual desire in humanity.

Although rarely depicted, a remarkable painting shows the death of Smara’s wife, Ratih (Fig. 20). In the large top scene, Werespati, the divine sage, tells her of the death of Smara, and she is then shown with her servants, Nanda and Sunanda, in mourning (top right), and raking through her husband’s ashes (bottom right). In the main scene, she commits suicide by cremation, along with her servants, watched by Siwa.⁴⁰

Other stories tell of the lead-up to the great battle between the five Pandawa brothers and their hundred cousins, the Korawa. These stories usually depict episodes from other ‘Books’. They tell of the births of the Pandawa brothers, the sons of different gods that were summoned by their mother Kunti: Yudhistira (also known as Darwawangsa), son of the God of Virtue or Duty, Darma; Arjuna (Partha), son of Indra; Bima (Wrekodara), son of Bayu, the God of Wind; and their younger brothers, Nakula and Sadewa (or Sahadewa), sons of the divine twins, Aswinodewa. They have a stepbrother, Karna, the son of the Sun (Surya or Aditya), but he joins the Korawa. The Pandawa are sent into exile by the Korawa after Yudhistira loses their kingdom gambling on dice.

Fig. 19 Kamasan, Smaradahana: The Burning of Smara, late 19th C or early 20th C, natural paint on cotton, 132 x 166 cm, tabing, Forge Collection, Australian Museum, E76373 (photo Emma Furno).

Fig. 20 Tabanan, Smaradahana: The Suicide of Goddess Ratih, before 1900, traditional paint on wood, 146.1 x 148.2 cm, parba, National Ethnographic Museum, Leiden, 1586-34.

Fig. 21 Kamasan, Arjunawiwaha: The Temptation of Arjuna, before 1938, paint on cloth, 167 x 129 cm, tabing, collected by Charles Sayers, Tropenmuseum, Amsterdam, coll. nr. 809-148.

During their exile they gain many allies, notably King Wirata and his sons, and great sources of power. The story of Arjuna’s asceticism and marriage, Arjunawiwaha, tells how Arjuna gains a magic arrow of power from Siwa. Arjuna performs meditation in the wilderness, and the gods, under threat from a great demon, Niwatakawaca, send seven heavenly nymphs, dedari, to tempt Arjuna, so he can defeat the demon. The temptation or meditation (matapa) has long been a very popular scene for artists, especially since it allows them to depict the full range of female beauty, including humorous scenes where Arjuna’s servants succumb to the temptations of the servants of the nymphs while their master remains immune to such seductions (Fig. 21).

A number of paintings also deal with the sequel to this story (Fig. 23). Arjuna, shown in these scenes wearing the turban of a holy man, hunts a boar after he is visited by a priest, who is actually Indra in disquise. Arjuna looses his arrow at the boar at the same time as another hunter, and they then engage in a fight over whose kill it is. Arjuna fights his opponent to a standstill, and the hunter reveals that he is actually Siwa. Siwa then gives Arjuna an arrow of great power, the pasupati weapon.

Many painters focus on the climactic battle of the descendants of Bharata, the Bharatayuddha, the climax of the Mahabharata. The main scenes from the battle involve the deaths of the various leaders and heroes in battle.

Bhisma is the teacher of the Pandawa brothers but commander-in-chief of their enemies, the Korawa. The Pandawa forces are unable to defeat Bhisma, for he can only die at the moment of his own choosing. No man can defeat him, but the great warrior is brought down by the arrows of Sikandi, who in the original Indian text is a hermaphrodite, in Indonesian versions a female warrior. Punctured by Sikandi’s arrows, Bhisma is laid down on a bed of arrows by Arjuna. The Pandawa and the Korawa come to him to pay their respects. Bhisma then instructs Yudhistira in the duties of a king before he dies at the time of his choosing (Fig. 22).

Fig. 22 I Nyoman Mandra, Kamasan, The Death of Bhisma, 1990, paint with gold leaf on bark cloth, 56 x 70 cm, artist’s collection (photo Gustra).

Fig. 23 Gianyar? Arjuna’s Temptation and Fight with Siwa Disguised as a Hunter, before 1938, paint on cotton, 77 x 193 cm, collected by Colin McPhee, courtesy of the Division of Anthropology, American Museum of Natural History, 70.2/1124.

Mandra’s painting of this scene shows the Korawa kneeling on the right and the Pandawa on the left, making gestures of homage with hands clasped together (sembah). Arjuna fires an arrow that creates a spring to give water to the sage, while two priests appear in the sky. Kresna stands behind Arjuna, and the eldest Pandawa, Yudhistira, kneels between them. Below him, from left to right, are the clown servants, Merdah and Twalen, with the Pandawa twins, Nakula and Sadewa (Bima is missing from the brothers). The lead Korawa, from left to right (beginning with the top row next to Bhisma), are Duryodana, Karna and Drussasana, with, in the bottom row, the two servants of the opposing side, Delem and Sangut, flanking two other Korawa. This painting shows a great moment of tragedy and spiritual meaning. Arjuna, urged on by Kresna, knows that the killing of his teacher is necessary to fulfil the fate of the Pandawa. It is an ordained moment of destiny, but no less personally felt.

A particularly moving scene after the death of Bhisma is of the death of Abhimanyu, the son of Arjuna, who is trapped at one stage of the battle after saving his uncle, Yudhistira (Fig. 24). The leading Korawa warriors surround Abhimanyu and shoot him with 100 arrows until he dies. For this, Arjuna vows to take revenge.

After Abhimanyu’s death, Siwa appears to Arjuna and Kresna. In a fine nineteenth-century painting, Arjuna and Kresna kneel before Siwa (left), then go to tell their brothers that Siwa has prophesized the death of Jayadratha, the Korawa general (Fig. 25). Abhimanyu’s two wives are shown below, in sorrow at his death, but the second wife, Uttari, is pregnant, so only the first wife, Siti Sundari, commits suicide on her husband’s funeral pyre (main scene). This is reported to the Korawa (right).

After different leaders of the Korawa army are all killed by the Pandawa, it is Salya’s turn to lead (Fig. 26). Salya is reluctant to fight the Pandawa, particularly because Nakula, one of the twins, is his favourite nephew. The Pandawa (bottom left-hand side of the painting) send Nakula off to meet with Salya. Nakula kneels and pays his respects to Yudhistira, with Bima standing behind him, and Dropadi, a servant, and Sadewa kneeling below them. Immediately behind Nakula stands Kresna, with Arjuna behind him, and the two servants, Twalen and Merdah, kneeling behind Nakula. In the next scene at the bottom, Nakula travels off with his servants. In the following scene, Nakula meets with Salya, who reveals to his nephew that he cannot be killed by weapons, but he can be killed by a book wielded by a king who rules according to the Law, Yudhistira.

Fig. 24 Pan Seken, Kamasan, The Death of Abhimanyu, 1930s, paint and gold leaf on cloth, 80 cm x 104 cm, tabing, Forge Collection, Australian Museum, E74174 (photo Finton Mahony).

Fig. 25 Kamasan, The Death of Siti Sundari, 19th C, paint on cloth, 71 x 216 cm, langse, Doremus Missionary donation, courtesy of the Division of Anthropology, American Museum of Natural History, 70-1709.

Fig. 26 Mangku Mura, Kamasan, The Death of Salya, 1981, paint on cloth, 90 x 211.5 cm, langse, private collection (photo Gustra).

In the bottom right-hand corner of the painting, Salya’s wife Satyawati, knowing that her husband is doomed, wraps them both in a single sarong when they go to bed. Salya, however, cuts away the sarong in the morning so that he can go to battle.

The battle scene occupies the top part of the painting, with the Korawa forces against the Pandawa armies. Nakula, Sadewa, Arjuna and Kresna make meditative gestures, with their hands crossed, to turn Yudhistira’s book into a weapon. Bima fights with his club, slaying the demons that have been unleashed by the arrows of Salya, while Yudhistira, mounted on an elephant, shoots his book into the chest of Salya, shown on the right, who is mounted on a lion. Duryodana and the remaining Korawa leader, Sakuni, flee from Bima. In the continuation of the story, not shown in this painting, Bima kills Sakuni and Satyawati commits suicide on her husband’s funeral pyre on the battlefield. Like the suicide of Siti Sundari, this scene is one of the great tragic moments in Kamasan art.

In the final book of the Mahabharata, the Swargarohana Parwa, all the Pandawa and Korawa families have been killed in the great war. This book describes the ascent to heaven of the eldest Pandawa brother, Yudhistira, following a dog, actually his father, the god Darma, in disguise. In heaven, Yudhistira, on the left-hand side, meets the god Indra (Fig. 27).

Ramayana

The other great Hindu epic, the story of King Rama’s quest to regain his wife Sita, is one of the great themes of Balinese arts.⁴¹ Balinese are very interested in Hanoman, the monkey general who leads Rama’s forces into battle against the demon-king Rawana, and exhibits great bravery and power. Hanoman is the son of two gods, Siwa, with whom he shares a white body, and Bayu, the God of Wind. Because he is Bayu’s son, Hanoman is considered in Balinese religion to be similar to Bima in power and standing, and like Bima he is able to challenge the gods and intervene in the cosmos.

As with the Mahabharata, the Ramayana contains many stories that tell of the ancestors of the protagonists, of their births and adventures before the events of the main story. In Balinese painting, these include depictions of the story of the dynasty of Raghu, Rama’s ancestor, whose incarnations are described in the Sumanasantaka, and the Arjunawijaya, or story of Arjunasahasrabahu (not to be confused with Arjuna), a king who battles and ultimately imprisons the demon-king Rawana (Fig. 29).

Fig. 27 I Nyoman Mandra, Kamasan, Yudhistira, 1993, paint and gold leaf on cotton, 71.5 x 48.5 cm, Gunarsa Museum, USA (photo Gustra).

Fig. 28 Mangku Mura, Kamasan, Sutasoma’s Sacrifice to the Naga (detail), 1973, paint on cloth, 67 x 87 cm, Forge Collection, Australian Museum, E74182 (photo Finton Mahony).

A different depiction of sacrifice is presented in paintings of the Sutasoma story. Originally derived from Indian stories of the previous lives of the Buddha, in Bali it has been incorporated into the tales of the priestly figures who precede the main Ramayana.⁴² Sutasoma is an incarnation of the Buddha, known as Bhatara, God, Boda (or Jina) in Bali, but he is also a relative of Rawana. Sutasoma is not the usual fighting hero, but instead offers peace in the face of his enemies. As he wanders through the forest he meets two beings fighting, an elephant-headed man, Gajahwaktra, and a serpent. He ends their quarrel and makes both his followers. Further on he encounters a tigress who is so hungry she is about to eat her cub. To prevent this great sin, Sutasoma offers himself as her food, but he is brought back to life by the god Sakra. At the climax of the story, Sutasoma confronts the world-threatening cannibal king Purusada, who has been taken over by Rudra, the destructive form of Siwa. Rudra attempts to destroy Sutasoma by turning into a giant dragon and eating him, but Sutasoma’s power is such that he can passively resist this assault, thus releasing Purusada from Rudra’s power.

The main scene of the dragon or giant naga attempting to devour Sutasoma is the most important in the story. Underlying it is the concept that the two gods involved, Buddha and Rudra, are one and the same. The scene represents the transformation of a thing into its opposite, called matemahan in Balinese, by which the pure destructive, demonic form is revealed as a manifestation of its opposite, the pure goodness of Sutasoma. Sutasoma’s sacrifice is a purification of the world (Fig. 28).

Frequently depicted from the main Ramayana is the abduction of Sita by Rawana. Rawana arranges this by having his demon follower, Marica, turn into a deer, who lures Rama away from where he, Sita and Laksamana, Rama’s brother, are living in the forest. When Rama shoots Marica with an arrow, the demon/deer cries in pain, and Laksamana and Sita think that Rama is in trouble. After a quarrel, Laksamana goes off to find his brother. Then Rawana appears disguised as a priest and steals Sita away, flying her off on his winged vehicle, Wilmana. The Garuda-like Jatayu eagle attempts to stop Rawana. In their frequently depicted battle, Jatayu is mortally wounded, but before he dies he tell Rama of Sita’s abduction.

Rama wanders in the forest in search of allies and meets the monkey brothers Bali (or Subali) and Sugriwa, who are fighting for the throne of the monkey kingdom. In a focal scene for Balinese paintings, Rama intervenes in the brothers’ duel by shooting Bali with an arrow, thus committing Sugriwa to bring his monkey forces, including his nephew, their general Hanoman, to Rama’s aid. The killing of Bali shows Rama in an ethically dubious light, although in ancient Indian and Balinese books of royal ethics, kings are permitted to use any strategy necessary to achieve their ends.

Fig. 29 Karangasem, Arjunawijaya: Arjunasahasrabahu Captures Rawana (detail). Inscription reads: ‘Syat Arjunawijaya/ring segara/lawan sang Rawana/sang Arjuna triwingkrama/kahejuk sang Rawana’/Arjunawijaya fights in the sea against Rawana. Arjuna has taken his triwikrama (pamurtian or monstrous) form and Rawana is captured, c. 1900, paint on cloth, patched together, mounted on bamboo matting, with bound-on painted bamboo edge, 79 x 355 cm, Forge Collection, Australian Museum, E76379 (photo Emma Furno).

Fig. 30 Kamasan, Building the Bridge to Langka, with Tantri scene below, c. 1810–30, traditional paint on bark cloth, 150 x 127 cm, tabing, from Pura Jero Kapal, Gelgel, Forge Collection, Australian Museum, E76168 (photo Emma Furno).

Fig. 31 Kamasan, The Death of Indrajit, before 1849, paint on cloth, langse, from a temple in Kusamba, State Museum Berlin, IC876c.

Hanoman flies to Langka to meet with Sita in Rawana’s asoka tree garden, where he gives her a token that Rama is coming for her. On the way out, Hanoman fights with Rawana’s demons, and destroys part of their palace. Balinese artists frequently depict Hanoman’s fight with the demons, although paintings showing Hanoman’s mission to Sita are less common, despite this being a common theme for dance-drama.

The next major topic for Balinese artists is the march of Rama’s army to the island kingdom of Langka (modern-day Sri Lanka). Rama’s monkey army, aided by other creatures (called paluarga by Kamasan artists), must build a causeway to invade the island. Led by the architect Nala, they set about carrying rocks to do this, while their general, Hanoman, calls on his grandfather, the Sun, not to beat down too hotly on them. An extraordinary painting of this scene shows Hanoman flying up to the Sun (top) (Fig. 30). The scene recalls the story of Hanoman’s birth, also known to painters through a text called Kapiparwa, in which Hanoman threatens to eat the Sun, such is the monkey’s great power.⁴³

Once Rama’s forces are across the causeway, the battle with Rawana’s army begins. The war, as with other epic battles, is described in terms of surges by different leaders. It ends in the defeat of Rawana’s forces. One very beautiful mid-nineteenth century Kamasan painting shows the death of Rawana’s brother, Indrajit, at the hands of Laksamana, as the monkeys, led by Hanoman, wage furious battle around them (Fig. 31). Rawana is shown at the bottom of this work, grieving for his loyal sibling.

Rarely do Balinese paintings show Rawana himself in battle, let alone defeated. He and Rama remain in the background while their forces do the fighting. The climactic scene is the arrival on the scene of Rawana’s gigantic brother, Kumbakarna (‘Pot Ears’), who has to be awakened from a sleep to which has been cursed (Fig. 32). Once awakened, Kumbakarna turns on the monkey army, which stones him. Through Hanoman’s intervention, the demon is finally killed.

After Rama has defeated Rawana, he is unsure of whether his wife Sita has been faithful to him, given that she was in captivity with Rawana for such a long time. In order to test her fidelity, Rama orders that a funeral pyre be built, and Sita jumps into it (Fig. 33). The God of Fire, Agni (in some versions Brahma), appears and saves her.

Fig. 32 Kamasan, The Death of Kumbakarna, possibly late 19th C, paint on cloth, 140 x 154.5 cm, tabing, Tropenmuseum, Amsterdam, coll. nr. 1844-1.

Fig. 33 Kamasan, Sita’s Ordeal by Fire, mid-19th C, collected 1915, paint on cloth, 177 x 136 cm, tabing, Tropenmuseum, Amsterdam, coll. nr. 118-13.

Rama stands closest to the fire, on the right, making a gesture with his hand that indicates shocked conversation. Behind him is his brother Laksmana and Rawana’s brother Wibhisana. Above them the gods Wisnu and Siwa look on, carried by a divine vehicle. Rama’s monkey allies are all around. On the ramp from which Sita has thrown herself into the fire is her companion Trijata, Rawana’s daughter, and the divine priests.

The frequency of depictions of this painting is testimony to its importance in Bali. The scene has both emotional and religious depth, since it speaks both of the loyal purity of Sita and the sanctifying presence of Agni, the God of Fire. Sita’s loyalty is emphasized by her centrality: she and Agni are the focal points around which all the other characters are placed. Rama has to stand to one side.

Like his morally ambiguous intervention in the fighting of Bali and Sugriwa, Rama’s doubting Sita demonstrates his fallibility, which must be challenged by divine intervention. Fire and water are the key elements of Hindu ritual. Although Balinese priestly practice tends to emphasize water, these paintings, like some of the Mahabharata scenes and the story of the burning of Smara, focus on the divine nature of fire in sacrifice, as destruction and renewal.

Post-Mythological Stories

The epics have layers of significance that make them appropriate to temples. Other kinds of narrative may be less sacred, but still involve forms of communication of the world beyond the senses, conveying ideas of order, action in the world and ethics. The term ‘post-mythological’, coined by Forge to describe this different level of storytelling, gives a sense of the difference in time that some Balinese ascribe to these narratives: the mythological stories belong to an ancient but eternal past, the post-mythological narratives to more recent, but still venerable, histories of Java and Bali. Traditional paintings have been described by Western writers as not illustrating daily life, but such observations were made without paying attention to what artists were interested around them.

Calon Arang and Other Historical Stories

One of the most potent traditional narratives is the story of Calon Arang, the widow Rangda who calls on the power of the goddess Durga. Rangda is angry that her daughter has been rejected by the great king Erlangga, and determines to take revenge. As with the Sutasoma story, this narrative reveals the presence of destructive aspects of divinity on the world, since Durga is the demonic form of Uma (Parwati), the wife of Siwa. Rangda and her witch followers bring disease and destruction to the kingdom (Fig. 34).

Fig. 34 Sabug?, Kamasan, Calon Arang, late 19th C, paint on cloth, 37 x 714 cm, ider-ider, from Pura Dalem Bugbugan, Gelgel, Forge Collection, Australian Museum, E74124 (photo Emma Furno).

Fig. 35 I Ketut Gede, Singaraja, Kelika (left) Honours Durga (right), before 1890, paint and ink on Dutch paper, watermark concordia ‘VdL’, 34 x 41.8 cm, Leiden University Library, UB Or3390-209.

Assassins sent to kill Rangda in her sleep fail, and are destroyed by her. Her reign of terror goes unchecked until a powerful priest, Mpu Barada, intervenes. Barada, a Buddhist priest, has power to match Rangda’s, and forces the witch into submission.

The Calon Arang story is best known for its performance in the dance-drama commonly referred to as Barong, in which Mpu Barada takes the form of the lion-dragon in order to subdue Rangda. The story is also performed as a particularly dangerous shadow puppet theatre, in which the puppeteer challenges the power or sakti of witches and warlocks in the community, risking his health and life. Artists who depict the power of witchcraft take similar risks, but by calling on other powers may be able to strengthen themselves (Fig. 35).

Tantri

Regarded, like the Calon Arang story, as about historical kings and figures, the Tantri stories are animal fables concerned with the correct conduct of people at various levels of society, particularly kings and priests. The frame story of this ‘Thousand and One Nights’ collection is the tale of an aristocratic girl, Tantri, who has been given by her father to a king whose practice it is to sleep with a virgin every night and then discard her (Fig. 36). Tantri, assisted by her old servant, defers her fate by telling the king a different tale each night. The stories are about kings and priests who do wrong, and others who act virtuously, and the frame story within a frame story is of a bull (symbolic of priesthood) and a lion (symbolic of kingship), who meet in the jungle kingdom but are incited to fight by their jackal subjects, who tell stories to each of them, creating mutual distrust. The bull and the lion ultimately fight to the death, and the king is eventually persuaded to take Tantri as his wife.⁴⁴

In addition to depictions of Tantri and the king, and the lion and bull, the stories commonly shown from the Tantri cycle include the pretentious tortoises, who, wishing to fly, end up crashing to the earth; the hunter and the monkey stuck up a tree while fleeing from a tiger; the virtuous priest who is rewarded for helping others by being saved by those he has helped; and the stork who pretended he was a priest in order to trick fish and crabs into being eaten.

Fig. 36 Tantri: The Bull Nandaka Meets the Jackal Subjects of the Forest Kingdom. Nandaka is a gift from Siwa to the priest who abuses the bull and, thinking it has died, has his servants cremate the bull. Nandaka revives and fights the jackals, servants of the lion king of the jungle, c. 1910, traditional paint on Balinese cloth, 26 x 577 cm, ider-ider, from a temple in Takmung, Forge Collection, Australian Museum, E74211 (photo Emma Furno).

Fig. 37 Kamasan, The Landing of the King of Malayu at Tuban, 19th C, traditional paint on Balinese cloth, 155/164 x 144 cm, tabing, Tropenmuseum, Amsterdam, coll. nr. 1763-1.

Malat

The iconography used to depict kings and courtiers in the Calon Arang and Tantri stories is found in a variety of other narratives, most commonly the story of a prince called Panji, known as the Malat. Up until the 1930s, the Malat’s scenes of courtly life and royal behaviour, a preoccupation with warfare and marriage, were extremely popular with artists and their royal patrons, but nowadays few on Bali know the story at all.

The main part of the Malat story is concerned with a wandering prince from Koripan, Panji, looking for his lost betrothed and cousin Rangkesari, who is princess of Daha. Panji wanders through different parts of the world, establishing alliances with some kings and princes, and waging war with others. Eventually, Rangkesari turns up, like Panji in disguise, in the court of the king of Gegelang, where Rangkesari’s brother, disguised as the king of Malayu, is looking after her. After an elaborate set of tortuous coincidences, and after Panji has acquired a set of other wives, the two lovers are eventually united.

These stories served as reflections of the hierarchy and culture of the many kingdoms that existed in Bali prior to the Dutch takeover of 1849–1908. The Malat’s scenes are of palaces and princely order, of women swooning and of handsome princes who are endlessly longing for princesses.⁴⁵

Fig. 38 Detail of Fig. 39 (overleaf).

One of the most interesting scenes from the Malat shows Panji’s cousin, Rangkesari’s elder brother, returning from abroad in his new guise as the young king of the kingdom of Malayu⁴⁶ (Fig. 37). King Malayu and his two chief wives appear in the large ship in the bottom left-hand scene, landing at Tuban, the ancient royal port on the north coast of Java.

In the two main scenes that dominate the central part of the painting, they are greeted by the local official (adipati). Different versions of this story show either indigenous-style boats and ships or Chinese and European ships and crews. Since this scene is concerned with the meeting of different ethnic groups, elaborate ceremonies and celebrations, in this case worship at a temple (top left) and feasting (bottom right), are shown.

When Panji and Malayu are both in the court of the king of Gegelang, they are faced with an army led by four kings who are brothers: Mataram, Mataun, Camara and Lasem. Unbeknown to Panji and Malayu, the lost princess Rangkesari has been taken by the king of Lasem, although he has yet to consummate their marriage. Only after this battle does Malayu discover his sister’s identity.

The painting of the Great Battle above is by the master of Kamasan art from the end of the nineteenth century, Kaki Rambug, and displays complex composition and dense narrative (Fig. 39). The work shows the culmination of the military confrontation between Prince Panji’s allies and their enemies, led by King Mataram. Panji and his allies, who include his cousin Malayu and their uncle, King Gegelang, are shown on the left-hand side, facing to the right. King Mataram and his brothers Lasem, Mataun and Camara, are shown coming from the right side, facing left.

The front section of this complex battle scene shows various warriors from both sides, with Panji’s companions, the rangga (aide-de-camp) and kadehan, highlighted, such as in the scene where one of Panji’s kadehan kills the demang or chancellor of the enemy (Fig. 38).

King Mataram appears in the bottom part of the painting, riding his red horse, soon to become Panji’s. Mataram is then shown in a sequence of killings in the top row. In the top right, Panji’s cowardly elder brother, Prabangsa, flees the fight, while Panji challenges and then kills Mataram. Panji then kills Matuan in the middle of the top sequence, while Malayu kills Lasem. Magical signs appear at Lasem’s death, a flaming head (lightning), the sun shining, and a symbol surrounded by an aureole. On the bottom right, Camara, who has come late to the battle, is persuaded to surrender after his brother’s death. Above this scene, Panji accepts Camara’s surrender. In other paintings, this great victory is followed by the suicide of the wives of the king of Lasem, who stab themselves with ceremonial daggers.

Fig. 39 Kaki Rambug, Kamasan, Great Battle from the Malat, end 19th C, traditional paint on Balinese cloth, 77 x 268 cm, langse, from a temple in Sidemen, private collection (photo Gustra).

Brayut

In contrast to the sublime doings of the princes in the Malat, the story of the Brayut family presents peasant life (Fig. 40). Given that the artists of Kamasan were peasant farmers, there is great care in presenting the story of the impoverished and over-fertile Pan (father) and Men (mother) Brayut. Reversing gender roles, Pan Brayut does the cooking and other housework, looking after the eighteen children, while his wife lazes in bed.

The story is an excuse for artists to depict their temple festivals and making of offerings. A significant scene in the story comes later when Brayut’s son, Ketut Subaya, gets married in a parody of courtly heroics. The artists tended to go to town with depictions of the wedding, and of course of its consummation, with the pockmarked Ketut shown in bed with his demure new wife. Pan Brayut himself seeks the life of a hermit, meditating in a graveyard and resisting the assault of the ghosts and spirits sent by Durga. Eventually, he becomes a priest (Fig. 41).

Fig. 40 Kumpi Mesira, Kamasan, Brayut, c. 1910, traditional paint on Balinese cloth, 23 x 380 cm, ider-ider, from a temple in Takmung, Forge Collection, Australian Museum, E74195 (photo Emma Furno).

Calendars

Another way in which daily life and the greater cosmic scheme of things come together in Balinese paintings is in calendars. Bali has many complex calendrical systems, based mainly on discerning the quality of time, so that people can plan for ceremonies or other important events. Balinese do not necessarily celebrate birthdays according to annual calendars, but days of birth, as in other astrological systems, help to determine an individual’s character or nature, and it is important to know the correct offerings related to one’s day of birth.⁴⁷

Star Calendars (Palelintangan)

Balinese calendars recognize many forms of weeks, from a one-day week to a seven-day week. A ‘month’ in Bali consists of the combination of a five-day and seven-day week, producing a thirty-five day cycle. These thirty-five day cycles are displayed in the frequently produced star calendars, or palelintangan. There calendars, as well as dealing with cosmic principles of the relationship between the divine and humanity, also serve as references, and thus usually have long explanatory texts in Balinese. Through calendars such as these, Balinese are able to know the nature of days of the month as they align with star signs. Knowing this, people can know whether days are auspicious or inauspicious.

The seven-day week starting Sunday (redite, soma, anggara, buda, wrespati, sukra, saniscara) is depicted in the top and bottom rows, each day governed by a deity with different attributes: a tree, bird, companion figure. The grid is formed by the five-day cycle shown from top to bottom (umanis, paing, pom, wage, kliwon), so that the first day of the ‘month’ is redite-umanis, governed by the star sign kala sungsang or upside-down demon. Redite is governed by the god Indra, whose companion figure (and also a wayang figure) is Panji or a minister, its tree the kayu putih, and its bird a siung or parrot, all of which are shown in the top left-hand panel of the painting. The other governing influences are shown in the bottom row and these consist, for redite, of a Garuda bird and an elephant-headed demon (Fig. 43).

Fig. 41 Kamasan, Brayut, 19th C, traditional paint on cloth, 72 x 213 cm, langse, Gunarsa Museum, USA (photo Gustra).

Earthquake Calendars (Palindon)

A different type of calendar depicts the character of months in which earthquakes occur. The first month, according to the Indian-based lunar calendar used in this system, is July. Each month is governed by a deity, and if earthquakes occur in that month, then other events will follow. Thus, if there is an earthquake in the first month (top right panel), Pertiwi, the Goddess of the Earth, is meditating, which means that the world will be prosperous, all the trees will bear fruit, and everything will be cheap, a situation that will continue for years.

The Balinese concept of causality displayed here is complicated. Deities do not directly cause the events predicted by each month’s earthquakes. Rather, the divine power or sakti of each deity’s meditation has sets of indirect consequences, including the earthquakes caused by the act of meditation. Events, good and bad, are indirect manifestations of divine power working in the world, and are not related to intentions (Fig. 42).

Fig. 42 I Nyoman Dogol, Kamasan, Palindon, 1930s, natural colours and lamp black on cloth, 172 x 216 cm, purchased 1989, Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory Collection, IND01546.

Fig. 43 Pan Seken, Kamasan, Palelintangan, 1940s, traditional paint on Balinese cloth, 164 x 159 cm, Forge Collection, Australian Museum, E74230 (photo Emma Furno).

These earthquake calendars, like the depictions of Garuda challenging the gods, are typically made to be placed as the ceilings of pavilions, and so are also aligned with the directions.

The range of subjects of traditional paintings shows how much Balinese art is about more than simply storytelling. The narratives, and the non-narrative scenes such as are found in the calendars, are windows into the workings of divinity in the world. These are paintings about power, about the greater and smaller cosmos in operation, and about everyday life. While Balinese art was dramatically transformed in the twentieth century, such elements have remained constant.