Museum collections of art from Kamasan village attest to historical engagements between Balinese subjects and colonizers in the context of colonial state formation. Paintings circulated as war booty, acts of prestation and gift giving, souvenirs, and as the subjects of academic study, motivated by colonial concerns to preserve authentic, traditional Bali. Although slanted towards the perspectives of colonial collectors, this survey allows the muted voices of colonized subjects to emerge. Exchanges of people and goods reconfigure linear views of Balinese art history by challenging presuppositions about the cultural value of art being corrupted by exchange in a market economy.
There are several public collections of Kamasan art in museum institutions around the world, most notably in the Netherlands.1 Given that museums housing collections of material culture now define their mission in terms of the relationships that lie behind collections, knowing how objects came into their care, how they relate to the culture of the people who made them, and what cultural-heritage significance they have today is paramount. This survey of collecting Kamasan art proceeds from the understanding that collecting art involves overlapping relationships between people and objects. Using the notion of ‘entanglement’ proposed by Thomas (1991), it explores the interdependencies, mutual influencing, and social relationships embodied in museum collections. Although the term ‘entanglement’ is more a descriptive term than a theoretical model, it has the analytical potential to shape the way we think about how cultural and social change occurred in this period. Thomas argues that ‘entanglement’ is a way to incorporate local perspectives in wider world histories. In doing so, he places the study of museum collections within a bigger picture of global interactions, involving people, ideas, and material goods. This article considers how collecting art might be located within a broader narrative of colonial expansion by exploring the collection of Kamasan art in Bali during the colonial period.
Kamasan paintings depict stories from epics of Indian and indigenous origin, relating the lives of the deities, the royal courts, and—sometimes—even commoner families. When displayed in temples and family compounds, paintings are hung only for the duration of festivals or ceremonies. At other times they are folded, or rolled, and stored alongside other ceremonial equipment. Paintings are normally produced on cotton cloth (kain belacu), made from cotton grown on the island of Nusa Penida or cotton imported from Europe. They are also painted on bark cloth (daluwang) sourced from around the archipelago and on wooden boards or panels (parba) that form the back of bed-like offering platforms (taban). The narratives depicted on them serve a didactic and devotional function and the paintings acquire many layers of meaning in the context of their display. They are intended to gratify and entertain the gods during their visits to the temple, as well as the human participants in ritual activities.
Not a lot is known about the origins of Kamasan art, since the earliest physical examples of cloth paintings go back only as far as the early nineteenth century. Although there is little material basis to illustrate precisely how Kamasan art came into being, it is generally associated with the Majapahit court culture, which came to Bali in the late fifteenth century. A similar style of painting was practised throughout Bali at least until the early twentieth century and continues to be produced by small numbers of artists in other Balinese villages; Kamasan, however, is the only village in Bali where this style predominates.2 The most important distinction between Kamasan art and other visual art traditions of Bali is that the style of Kamasan has not been superseded by the newer styles that took root in other villages. This is not to imply that artists in Kamasan adhere to an unchanging model, though the art is highly conventionalized in that artists work according to certain parameters (pakem) and adhere to strict proscriptions in terms of iconography. Artists interpret these stylistic boundaries in different ways, introducing innovations while maintaining that they belong to an unchanging tradition of great antiquity.
The style of art produced in Kamasan is often called ‘wayang painting’ with reference to its shared roots with the shadow-puppet (wayang) theatre. Artists use the same term for the figures (wayang) they paint, which are depicted in almost the same manner as flat Balinese shadow puppets except in three-quarter view. The term ‘narrative art’ also describes Kamasan paintings because they depict versions of stories and myths found in written, oral, and performance genres. Other terms, including ‘temple art’, ‘traditional art’, and ‘classical art’, are also applied to Kamasan painting. Although artists in Kamasan have no standard description for their art, they usually include the name of the village as a referent. They refer to the paintings as ‘Kamasan paintings’ (lukisan Kamasan) or as painted in the ‘Kamasan style’ (gaya Kamasan) or use other similar phrases to identify them.
Kamasan and the Court of the Dewa Agung
Today Kamasan is a village of four thousand people located between the east coast and the mountain ranges of Gunung Agung on the island of Bali. It is part of Klungkung, the smallest of eight administrative districts (kabupaten) in the province of Bali. Although now incorporated within the Indonesian state, the administrative arrangement of Kamasan village reflects the historical role of the village as a community of artisans working in the service of Balinese rulers. The village is divided into wards (banjar) based on the specialized services once provided by artists to the court, including goldsmiths (pande mas), smiths (pande), and painters (sangging). The artists were members of the commoner caste (jaba), and in exchange for decorating royal palaces and temples they were provided with tracts of farming land (sawah ngayah). In the arrangement of customary villages (desa adat), which coexist with the administrative villages, Kamasan belongs to Gelgel, the former seat of royal power. From the late fifteenth or early sixteenth century, Gelgel was home to the court of the Dalem, a dynasty established by the Javanese Hindu-Buddhist kingdom of Majapahit. The following two centuries, when Bali was united under one ruler, are widely perceived as a ‘golden age’. Although this may be an imagined ideal rather than a political reality, the glory and prosperity associated with Gelgel is evoked in Western and Balinese histories of the island alike (Creese 1991a:255).The ‘golden age’ ended around the late seventeenth or early eighteenth century, when the reigning king, Dalem Di Made, was removed from power and chief minister (patih) Gusti Agung Maruti assumed power. In around 1686, nobles loyal to the Dalem attacked Gelgel and reclaimed the throne from Maruti on behalf of his son Dewa Agung Jambe.3 Dewa Agung Jambe re-established the dynasty; however, he relocated his palace from Gelgel to the town of Klungkung.4 The dynasty adopted the reign title Dewa Agung at the same time. The new palace, called Smarapura and meaning abode (pura) of the God of Love (Smara), was the residence of the ruling dynasty until 1908, when Klungkung became the last Balinese kingdom to succumb to colonial rule. At this point the entire island of Bali was incorporated into the colonial administration of the Netherlands East Indies. This event is known by the Balinese as the Puputan, meaning the ‘finishing’ or ‘the end’, which refers to the slaughter of the Klungkung royal family by (or their ritual surrender to) the Dutch on 28 April 1908.The two pavilions (bale) that survived the Dutch attack feature spectacular painted ceiling panels produced by the artists of Kamasan. These are regarded by present-day artists as the most enduring testimony of their relationship with the court (Fig. 1). The pavilion on the north-east corner of the site, known as the Kerta Gosa, features nine levels of paintings. These include the story of the mythical bird Garuda from the Adiparwa; stories from the animal kingdom (tantri) referring to the social and moral duties of leaders; and scenes from the 12-month prognostic calendars (palindon). The most well-known story associated with the Kerta Gosa is Bimaswarga, depicting Bima’s mission to release the souls of his step-parents, Pandu and Madri, from the Balinese realm of punishment. On this journey Bima witnesses an extraordinary range of sinners receiving their punishments, depicted in the scenes along the lower levels of the ceiling.
