Art Reflection

Why should the old "national" artist classification be limited to warriors? Why is it difficult for an artist, like Gusti Nyoman Lempad, to be seen as a “national” maestro and still be labeled “traditional”?

The following article was translated using both Microsoft Azure Open AI and Google Translation AI.

HERYUNANTO

Jean Couteau, Author of Udar Rasa

In a few weeks, the Republic of Indonesia will be 78 years old. Not so old for a nation, but that age has provided a distance of judgment in several ways. One of them is fine arts.

With the passing of time, the trend factor in artistic stylistics and also the speculative factor no longer greatly affects our judgment. Therefore, now we can see the names of several painters whose quality of work has been tested by time: Raden Saleh with Javanese symbolism shrouded in Western academic appearance; Affandi, with his wild ego brush strokes; Hendra Gunawan with his colorful social poetry; Srihadi Sudarsono, whose dialectic of Kawulo-Gusti is conveyed through endless color nuances; even Soedjojono in his nationalist spirit. That is the list of Indonesian maestros now widely recognized.

is this enough? In my opinion, not enough. Why should the old "national" artist classification be limited to warriors? Why is it difficult for an artist, such as Gusti Nyoman Lempad, who is now being celebrated for one month in Nusa Dua, Bali, until August 9 2023, to be seen as a “national” maestro while still being labeled “traditional” and local? As if there is a hierarchy between national art (representative of modernity) and traditional art. It seems that local art cannot represent the whole nation.

Why do artists with the title "national" seem to have to be born from modern school classrooms, with that typical analytical approach? Doesn't tradition also have the potential to produce cross-border artists, even if they are not well-known, as seen in certain tribal art collections?

All of the above mentioned things need to be reconsidered, considering that traditional knowledge and technology have been sustained alongside modern life until now, as seen in the rice fields and Subak irrigation system in Bali.

Returning to the case of Gusti Nyoman Lempad. He is often considered famous for things beyond his artistry: he allegedly lived for 116 years, from 1862 to 1978. This means that he experienced three periods, namely pre-colonial classic Bali, colonial Bali, and independent Indonesia. However, he is more than someone whose life was very long: he is a giant among modern artists.

Also Read: Connecting the cultural sense

During the "Classical Bali" period, he was a servant in the palace of the Cokorde of Ubud. He was educated not by schools, but by Bali Arja opera, puppetry, public reading of Kekawin literature, and temple ceremonies celebrating the visit of the gods to his grandchildren. Then Lempad became an architect, creating temples to accommodate those visiting gods. He created a new architectural style.

The modern genius emerged during the colonial period, in the late 1920s. At that time, the modern world entered his mind not analytically, like the artists above, but intuitively and spiritually. After seeing the images brought by Western visitors, especially the way Walter Spies drew realistically, the old visual world of Lempad was aroused. Given high-quality European paper, he spontaneously and intuitively changed the position of the lines.

Unlike the “lines” of previous paintings by by Balinese artists, which were short and dense, with repetitive patterns and always narrative, Lempad “creates” free lines, which run on the paper without restraint. In his work, the line is no longer present as a mere descriptive complement, it exists for the sake of the line itself. With that, Lempad shows how modernity in drawing can appear without a Western-style rationality process, only through intuitive processing.

The Lempad line represents a revolution no less significant than the "analytical" revolution of Raden Saleh. However, for some reason, its image is now reduced to either his old age, its Balinese characteristics, or its role in the Pita Maha Bali movement from 1936-1942. All of these, of course, are present within him, but his genius surpasses them all. He is a maestro of national art and a maestro of cross-cultural art.

Is there any other artist in Indonesia who intuitively modernizes art, based on the transformation of traditional art like Lempad? It should be explored by academics and art enthusiasts. Who knows, the tradition may not have run out of breath yet within the modernization of Indonesian art. Whether it is in Gayo Land, amidst the Asmat people, or even in the depths of Java island.