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Batuan

batuan

btuwn/
  • Style of painting originating from Batuan Village. en
Andap
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Kasar
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Alus sor
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Alus mider
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Alus madya
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Alus singgih
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Mider
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Bali dataran dialect
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Bali aga dialect
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Usage Examples

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Batuan paintings are remarkably dense with deeply saturated tones. Their images are often dark and sometimes macabre, but they are always carefully made and carefully balanced. The forms in the paintings swirl and intertwine, they repeat each other and expand outwards until they transform into new shapes and new patterns. They create labyrinths of pulsating light that leave very little room for either the mind or the eye to rest.

These paintings are characterised by high levels of energy in both form and content. The subject matter is vivid, indeed many of the subjects portrayed seem to have been chosen for their sensational qualities. There are mythical creatures engaged in titanic struggles, there are murders by decapitation, demons attacking women during childbirth, kidnappings, heroic deeds. But even when the artists choose to portray the mundane details of everyday life, the scenes are infused with a kind of super ordinariness, even the routines of life end up looking extraordinary and shimmering with energy.

The sheer number of objects and situations depicted in Batuan paintings is staggering, almost encyclopaedic in its range. We might identify most easily with the people portrayed, the full cast of characters that could be found in any south Bali village. These people are shown in the contexts they have created for themselves, the built environments of the house compounds and the village temples. They are shown involved in their typical activities, their ritual life, their passions and obsessions. They are shown with the plants they cultivate, the animals they domesticate, and sometimes with the oceans -where they fish.

The natural world, on the other hand, is shown as an entirely distinct environment with its own laws and qualities. These wild places seem unstable and incomprehensible, only the very brave or very reckless would spend much time there. The spirit world occupies a special place in the Balinese psyche, and there are many portrayals of its subtle complexities. There are countless types of spiritual beings depicted, they appear, disappear, change form and then appear again in another place. They exercise their powers at will and only allow themselves to be marginally affected by human concerns, changing their minds often to become an ally one day, and then an enemy the next.

And then there are Bali’s visitors, from the earliest travellers in the 1930s to the mass influx of tourists in the present day. The paintings show these visitors belonging to neither the known world of the village nor the unknown world of nature, they arrive from beyond any comprehensible world, like space aliens wandering around in the painting.

Aesthetically speaking, each painting is made up of countless individual shapes, carefully delineated and discrete, almost as if each shape could be lifted out of the painting like a single piece of a jigsaw puzzle. These individual forms relate to each other in two different ways, they are either repeated as similar shapes creating areas of rhythm, or they are used in opposition to each other creating contrasts and visual tension. Most Batuan paintings contain thousands of these forms either working together or in opposition to create complex fields of pulsating energy, this is what gives them their unique visual sparkle. This same love of multiplicity also gives Batuan paintings a tendency towards baroque over elaboration, the viewer can become tangled up in this mass of jostling forms and be left with only a memory of collected minutiae. But the best paintings don’t get lost in their details, the most successful works focus all of the individual elements towards to a single goal of pictorial unity. Seen from across the room, the hundreds or thousands of forms that make up a Batuan painting create one single unified image, shifting and swaying and held in an uneasy balance.

In spite of this robust bristling energy, these paintings are not the product of a hot-blooded expressiveness. The artists of Batuan do not lunge at their paper in a creative fury, painting for them is more like playing chess. Paintings are developed step by step in a very calculated manner and rendered meticulously, nothing is blurred, nothing is out of place, and nothing is left to chance. Painting in Batuan is nothing like a bull rampaging through a china shop, it is more a matter of rendering a wild raging bull in fine delicate porcelain. In fact one source of dynamism in these paintings lies precisely in the way such vigorous subjects and forms are so carefully rendered.

Serialised from the book Inventing Art, The Paintings Of Batuan Bali

A book by Bruce Granquist

⚙ Usage examples pulled from the Community Spaces


In Balinese:   Sekadi I Gede Mecaling sane masamaya teken Dewa Babi yening kaon I Gede Mecaling pacang matilar ring Desa Batuan.

In English:  

In Indonesian:   Seperti I Gede Mecaling yang berjanji kepada Dewa Babi apabila kalah I Gede Mecaling akan pergi dari Desa Batuan.

In Balinese:   Batuan (Baturan) inggih punika desa ring Bali, Indonesia.

In English:  

In Indonesian:  

In Balinese:   Manut Pak Made Djimat ( sesepuh tari ring Batuan) maosang manut cerita sane kapirengan olih dane, sane ngaryanang genggong inggih punika Tapak Mada (wastan Maha Patih Gajah Mada duke durung manados patih).

In English:   ⏤

In Indonesian:   Di Bali Genggong memiliki laras selendro.

In Balinese:   Silih sinunggil desa ring gianyar sane madue sekaa Genggong inggih punika desa Batuan.

In English:   ⏤

In Indonesian:   Di Bali Genggong memiliki laras selendro.

In Balinese:   Mangkin I Nyoman Suwida pinaka silih sinunggil seniman Batuan sane teleb ngelestariang kesenian Genggong.

In English:   ⏤

In Indonesian:   Di Bali Genggong memiliki laras selendro.

In Balinese:   Nyantos mangkin, nenten kauningin duk kapan genggong niki mijil ring Bali miwah desa Batuan.

In English:  

In Indonesian:   Namun, tidak diketahui secara pasti kapan Genggong muncul di Desa Batuan.

In Balinese:   Ring ilen-ilen Genggong Batuan wenten makudang-kudang soroh gending petegak, sekadi : tabuh telu, angklung, sekar sandat, sekar gendit, katak ngongkek, lan kecipir.

In English:  

In Indonesian:   Perkembangan Genggong dari musik individu menjadi sebuah barungan gamelan tidak bisa dilepaskan dari perubahan konteks musiknya.

In Balinese:   Ajinnyané, Dewa Rai Batuan pinaka undagi miwah pangrawit sané kajanaloka.

In English:   He loved watching and admiring them while they were painting and he also learned a lot of traditional art techniques from them: such as sketching, colour blocking, shading, highlighting, and gradation.*

In Indonesian:   Sayangnya, sang ayah sangat keras menentang keinginan Mokoh menjadi pelukis.

In Balinese:   Pekandelan, Batuan, Sukawati, Gianyar, Bali.

In English:   He studied painting with I Wayan Taweng (father) and I Wayan Bendi (brother).

In Indonesian:   Dia belajar melukis pada I Wayan Taweng (ayah) dan I Wayan Bendi (kakak).

In Balinese:   I Wayan Diana, embas ring Batuan 1977.

In English:   I Wayan Diana, born in Batuan, 1977.

In Indonesian:   I Wayan Diana, lahir di Batuan, 1977.

In Balinese:   Ngenenin indik kapurwan, desa Batuan sane sampun lintang kawastanin Desa Baturan, sakemaon kruna Baturan kasuen-suen kadadosang Batuan.

In English:  

In Indonesian:  

In Balinese:   Togog Anak Alit sane masila ring simpang tiga Jalan Raya Sakah, Desa Batuan Kaler, Kecamatan Sukawati Gianyar.

In English:  

In Indonesian:  

In Balinese:   Manut ring administrasi Pura Puseh Canggi wenten rin wewidangan Dusun Canggi, Desa Batuan Kaler, Kecamatan Sukawati, Kabupaten Gianyar.

In English:  

In Indonesian:  

In Balinese:   Ida Tjokorda Batuan pinaka ratuning Peliatan daweg punika nitahang mangda Ida Tjoorda Kandel, treh Dalem Sukawati ngenterang jagat Ubud taler ngadegang Puri Saren Kangin Ubud.

In English:  

In Indonesian:  

In Balinese:   Seniman Batuan sane mawasta I Made Sujendra nlatarang karya puniki nganggen pitaken sane sadarana:

"Sapunapi rasane dados taru?"

Sujendra maosang, lukisan punika kadasarin antuk anak sane ngusak asik taru.

In English:  

In Indonesian:  

In Balinese:   Seniman Batuan I Made Sujendra ngwetuang makasami ring lukisan sane kakaryanang.

In English:  

In Indonesian:  

In Balinese:   Lukisan-lukisan khas Batuan madue akeh pisan tokoh mawarna bungah taler dasar warna ireng, ngawinang paningalan sane nyaksiang prasida nglelana santukan nenten wenten tokoh sane bungah adiri.

In English:  

In Indonesian: