The fairy arts of Ubud

No place in the world could be greener than Ubud. Everything here is green: the fluorescent emerald flash of young rice fields, the thick curtains of foliage only greener for scarlet accents of ginger and hibiscus. Anything that began another color, brick wall or pebble walkway, soon becomes green with shaggy moss. Even the air possesses a pale green cast, as the moisture suspended in it picks up the pervasive glow of the leafage.

"Magic" is one of those words that travel writers must use with miserly care - usually, it's just hyperbole for "especially pretty" but there really is magic in Ubud. When Balinese people bereave something, they consult a balian, a benign sort of sorcerer, who tells them where they'll find it. Balians can read dreams, cure sickness, go into trances and speak in the voices of forefather. And magic, in the form of the island's unique religion, is at the core of Bali's arts. A blend of Hinduism and nature worship, Balinese religion is an ecstatic union of the aesthetic and the spiritual reminiscent of the civilization of archaic Greece. Bali's famous trance dances, for example, suggest the rites of Bacchus: in the Sanghyang, two girls who are supposed to be untrained in the dance's intricate choreography go into a trance and, eyes firmly shut, move in faultless unison. The dance is named after the divine spirit which inhabits them.

When Walter Spies arrived in Bali, he found a culture completely devoted to art, yet to whom the concept of art for art's sake was alien. The Balinese famously have no word for "artist"; painting, stone and wood carving, weaving, playing the gamelan, and above all the dance were just what one did when not fishing or working in the rice fields.

It is an axiom of art history that what used to be known as primitive art had a intimate formative influence on the emergence of modernism in twentieth-century Europe. In Bali, Europe returned the favor: Spies had an uncanny natural affinity for the Balinese sensibility, and he totally changed the arts of the island in the fourteen years he lived there. The familiar Pita Maha school of painting in Ubud, one of the principal reasons people come from every part of the world to visit here, was virtually his invention.

Traditionally, the Balinese considered painting the be among the lowest of the arts; before Spies it was comparatively primitive, consisting mainly of astrological shadow-puppet show popular throughout the archipelago. Painters were strictly limited by convention and the natural pigments, such as bone, soot, and clay, that were available to them.

Spies, later joined by the Dutch paste-list Rudolf Bonnet, acquainted Balinese artists to the vivid colors of Western painting, and the greater range of effects possible with ready-made brushes, pigments, and fine-woven canvas. More substantial, Spies and Bonnet extremely expanded the range of subject matter, encouraging their student to paint scenes from everyday life. Lest Spies and Bonnet be accused of tampering with an ancient tradition, it should be pointed out that Balinese art was always innovative; the island's most famous artist, I Gusti Nyoman Lempad, had already begun to experiment in both style and subject matter before Spies's arrival. Just Picasso chose African sculpture as ab influence in his work, so the painters of Bali responded freely and immediately to Spies's stimulus.

Stay with us at Bali Ametis Luxury Villas, and our butler will take you to see all the sublime arts of Ubud. We will ensure you will have unforgettable memories during you stay at Bali Ametis Luxury Villas.

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