Return to Origin… ‘ Kembali ke Asal’. An article by Joo Peter
Joo Peter is a documentary filmmaker, writer and artist based in Southwest Germany, presently working on documentary & travel projects in Asia. Article and photography by Joo Peter
Time to rediscover the famous Ubud artist of mandalas, I Dewa Nyoman Batuan (1939-2013). Thanks to his kind family, I was able to visit his old studio in Pengosekan South of Ubud and discover some unpublished works, not yet covered by the two major books published on his legacy.
Biografi Visual – Dewa Batuan – Kembali ke Asal is the latest book about him in Bahasa published in 2023 and has the touch of a more intimate and personal homage of family and friends to the old master.
Mandalas of Bali
Mandalas of Bali was published in 2009 in English. It was probably around that time that I discovered his work for the first time in a small art space in Jalan Raya Pengosekan. Where now there is a Mexican Taco Food Store. It is hard to imagine that in a place that resembles so much an American Main Street with neon lights up and down the busy street was once rich with Balinese culture. Here I saw the mandalas for the first time and I was struck by the honest and deep spiritual exploration of the artist. This is a unique self-taught effort, just as it was 800 years ago when a famous nun in Germany created wild Mandala visions, Hildegard von Bingen.
A Precious Memory
I kept this exhibition as a precious life memory for years and always wanted to come back and learn more about this artist and his mandalas. So I decided to visit the artist’s studio in Pengosekan, where his family is looking after his legacy after he died in 2013.
The family compound is tucked away on a short side road off the busy Jalan Lebah, and the contrast couldn’t be greater, coming from the noisy street into this quiet and enchanted compound, very traditional Balinese, welcoming with open pavilions full of artworks, carvings and paintings in a garden full of flowers and birds.
The famous filmmakers Lorne and Lawrence Blair became friends with I Dewa Nyoman Batuan very early on in the 70s, even building their first bamboo house nearby on a plot of land given to them by the artist. Lawrence Blair recalls this time in the catalogue introduction to Mandalas of Bali.
“One of the first Balinese I met on first reaching the island of Bali in 1972 was Dewa Nyoman Batuan. He was already an articulate elder of the tiny village of Pengosekan and the founder of its fledging Community of Farmers and Artists. My interest in Balinese mysticism, and his eagerness to communicate it, kept us happily struggling to understand each other for days at a time. Within a few weeks of knowing each other, he invited my brother and me to build a house on a piece of paradise just outside his village, a few miles south of Ubud.” ~L. Blair
It makes me smile melancholically to imagine miles of rice fields “South of Ubud” where there is nothing but traffic jams and bustling tourism in urban Ubud today.
I met his warm-hearted son Dewa Putu Putrayasa, who is himself a painter and quite a witty one. As you can see in the painting at the very end of this article. He took me to his father’s studio on the first floor. A sanctuary full of wonderful mandalas.
Art and its Purpose
Dewa Nyoman Batuan has never set commercial goals in the first place, in spite the fact he was able to exhibit from Tokyo to Los Angeles and his art is prominent in major museums of Bali. Entering the old studio of the master in the family compound with 700 artworks in storage, still until today it is a celebration of art as meditation, not a museum shop.
Discovering the artworks in the archive, I come to understand that this unique Balinese art does not come from an urban elite and academic background, but developed as an amateur passion. He is down to earth, deeply connected to the village community and close to nature. Dewa Batuan founded the Community of Farmers and Artists in his village, and it is remarkable how proudly the ‘farmer’ is put first.
A Little Background on Dewa Nyoman Batuan
Dewa Batuan grew up with ducks and followed his father’s work in the rice fields. Later he studied to become a teacher in the late 50s, meeting his wife who studied to become a teacher also. While teaching in school, he followed his art passion. The demand for his work grew over the years and he subsequently stopped teaching in the 70s. As a leader in the community, he also became head of the Banjar for some years. His communicative charisma helped him to become a cultural messenger on the international stage. Which consequently helped the artists of his community a lot.
Dewa Putu Mokoh
One of the unusual and influential artists emerging from the community in Pengosekan was Dewa Batuan’s older brother Dewa Putu Mokoh (1934-2010), creating naive art with an intimacy breaking free from traditional taboos. This attracted an outsider, who became the most famous female Balinese artist in the international contemporary art scene, Gusti Ayu Kadek Murniasih, called Murni (1966-2006).
Gusti Ayu Kadek Murniasih
Originally from Tabanan, Murni moved to Pengosekan to learn from Mokoh. She grew up in a poor farmer’s family and was sexually abused by her father as a child when she was nine years old. Murni was attracted by the sensible iconic simplicity of Mokoh’s art and developed an even more iconic visual language of surreal feminist pop art with psychoanalytical and archaic power. She transformed the simplicity of their traditional roots into a powerful modern style. Her art shows how influential the Pengosekan artist community is until today.
Ketut Liyer
Another influential artist of the Pengosekan circle was the Balian healer Ketut Liyer (1924-2016), who became famous through the film “Eat, Pray, Love”, which unfortunately boosted mass tourism a lot in Ubud. Ketut Liyer painted themes from a farmer’s life as well as traditional and sacred drawings known as ‘rerajahan’.
Community Memories
A friend of Sawidji Gallery, the Balinese artist Made Artawa, spontaneously joined me on this visit, and it turned out that he had attended some of Dewa Nyoman Batuan’s art classes as a child. “In those days we learned more by carving than by drawing… partly because there still was not much western paper used back then anyway.”
Walter Spies was the first to introduce paper to Lembah in the 1920s. Carving is a more intense form of studying and learning traditional forms. Whether it is a carving of a wooden door, the head of a Balinese skite (layang layang), a statue or a mask, the spirit materializes more powerfully in the three-dimensional form.
In His Own Words
Dewa Batuan was mediating about a different form of three dimensions. In his own words, he writes in a longer essay about the Meaning of Mandalas in his book from 2009:
“Everything in life seems to come in threes and to move in circles. For example, the earth turns on its axis, giving us morning, day, and night. We experience time as a circle of three: yesterday, today, and tomorrow. We are hungry, we eat, we eliminate. We wake up, work, and sleep. We are born. We live. We die. ~Dewa Batuan
Perception and the Realm of Knowledge
“Although our perceptions of life are defined by finite times and spaces, the process of life is actually infinite. Beyond the horizon we can see, there is always another horizon; beneath the ground that supports us there is always another layer of earth. There is always something further right of what is on our rightmost edge, left of what is on our leftmost edge; before yesterday there was another yesterday, and after tomorrow there will be another tomorrow.”
The same is true in the realm of knowledge. We search for meaning in our lives, yet the more wisdom we gain, the more we may come to feel as if our lives are insignificant. The more science and technological know-how we acquire, the more ignorant we become, the more we still need to know. We have to keep learning again and again.” ~ Dewa Batuan
The Material Realm
“In the material realm, we wish to possess things, but the more we own, the more we feel we lack and desire to have more. (That is why we need to be able to limit ourselves. Without limits, it is hard to achieve contentment in this fleeting life). So we can conclude that: Life is ever changing, perpetually turning like a wheel. Sometimes we are on top, sometimes on the way up or down, and sometimes we just have to be at the bottom.”
The Constancy of Change and Eternal Spirituality
“The only constant is change itself. Whatever exists must also cease to exist. Whatever lives must die. We cannot have one without the other. From this holistic perspective, it follows that what is non-existent exists, or is part of existence, and what dies is still alive, or is part of life. For example, if you take a stone or a clump of earth, and you break it up into small pieces, and keep breaking it up into smaller and smaller pieces, it will turn to powder, and then eventually disappear, leaving nothing tangible behind. But the power or energy of that stone or clump or earth continues to exist. Modern physics confirms that all matter is made up of space, composed of energetic particles so tiny they cannot even be seen under a microscope.
Similarly, most religions teach that there is an invisible, yet eternal, spiritual reality that underlies, yet transcends our visible yet transient, material reality. I personally believe in a Creator God who created existence out of non-existence. I am sure He is there even though I have never seen Him. Because He dwells in everything, He has no finite form. He exists even though He does not exist in material terms.(…)”
Painting as Meditation
“That is what my mandala paintings are all about. Giving form (goba), power (bayu), and sense (rasa) to the living circle through which existence transforms into non-existence, and non-existence transforms into existence. Fathoming the line that connects the tangible and intangible dimensions of life – which, when we can instill and hold it in our consciousness, leads us toward the sacred.
Serving as tools for meditation: to help us find the balance, purity of heart, expanded awareness and peace of mind we need, in rapidly changing, uncertain times.”
As I left the old master’s studio, I felt grateful and wished that politics would do more to preserve Bali’s culture. Connect with the history and culture of the place before you build villas here. Just make it a mandatory part of the permit. Investors are eager to exploit the cheap labour of Indonesian construction workers. Why not at least require them to bring in Balinese architects or show up in the banjar to discuss their future personal contribution to the community? Where is the line to turn rice fields into concrete buildings? And if they don’t want to live here anyway, don’t want to be part of the community, why do they want to build here at all? Just for remote profit assets?
Art can help to rediscover, reconnect, raise awareness to take action and preserve this precious culture.
Paintings by I Dewa Putu Putrayasa
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