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Balinese painters

Balinese painters :

Where art thou, art?

By Diana Darling

Religion and the Market

It used to be perfectly OK to say that “every B alinese is an artist,” and for decades many people did so – in their letters home, in tourist brochures, and to the Balinese themselves - to the extent that this fabulous notion has become part of the island's official tourism profile. Perhaps this sounded less outlandish in the 1930s, when Miguel Covarrubias wrote in his instant classic. Bali , that “everybody in Bali seems to be an ar - tist.” In those days, there were fewer opportunities to make souvenir trinkets or public statues of concrete

Before the advent of tourism, painters and were mostly anonymous craftsmen who created works upon request for temples and palaces according to established conventions. The iconography was religious ; the function was ceremonial or even magical; and the act of making these works was considered a devotional labour. Paintings depicted scenes from local myths or the great Hindu epics, the Mahabhorata and the Ramayana. Sculpture was mainly guardian statuary - nearly always demonic and closely incorporated into the

were fewer opportunities

European artists Walter

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