Thursday, October 30, 2014

Lempad of Bali: The Illuminating Line



Welcome to the home page of Lempad of Bali: The Illuminating Line.

This web site is the principal contact point in Asia and Oceania to purchase the definitive book on the life and work of Bali’s best-known artist, I Gusti Nyoman Lempad of Ubud.

Lempad (~1862-1978) is an iconic figure in Balinese art. One of the first modern Balinese artists, his contribution to the development of Balinese art during its most revolutionary period from 1925 to 1942 is not his only achievement. Prior to the 1920s he was renowned for his innovations in architecture and sculpture. In the late 1920s he began the series of line drawings that were a futuristic adaptation of stories and characters of Bali’s Hindu-Buddhist wayang pantheon.

Recognizing his young son’s artistic talent before the age of 10, Lempad’s father, a traditional Balinese architect, put the boy to work assisting him on his building projects. In his teen years, Lempad and his father sought political asylum with the royal family of Ubud, after fleeing their home kingdom of Beduluh, near Gianyar. Their timing was perfect as Puri Ubud was in the process of rebuilding, and their skills were welcome. The association continued to the end of Lempad’s long life. In his early career Lempad was widely known as a master sculptor of temple statues and friezes, a carver and painter of sacred masks, a maker of wayang puppets, and an expert in the making of towers and other carved and decorated objects essential to Balinese cremation rites. 



Lempad was a leader in the creation and development of the Pita Maha artists’ collective, formed in 1936 by the king of Ubud, Tjokorda Gede Agung Sukawati, and European artists Walter Spies and Rudolf Bonnet. Pita Maha monitored the progress of the new and developing genre of Balinese modern traditional art. The western artists affiliated with the group forged new national and international markets for Balinese painting and woodcarving. 

During these years, Lempad was a major force in creating a new style of Balinese aesthetics, a style that often featured elongated and distorted figures. Adopting a new and invigorating sense of unadorned line in his compositions, he used white space to emphasize the brilliance of his figurative drawings and the balance essential to their composition. Lempad’s natural imaginative and innovative ability in expressing old stories anew, together with the strength and grace of his flowing, pure and defined lines, helped to redefine Balinese art.

Prior to Lempad’s innovations, almost all Balinese painting was characterized by crowded compositions covering every part of the surface of the canvas with narrative information and motifs. The creativity and originality of his compositions, while strongly rooted in Bali’s traditional art and culture, were aesthetically liberating and influenced many of his peers and their followers and students. 

Lempad’s earliest drawings of the 1920s and 1930s gained much attention from the local art community and from American and European anthropologists, researchers, musicians, and artists living in Bali at the time. Over his lifetime Lempad completed a body of work that is unique in the history of Balinese art.

Lempad of Bali, the first comprehensive catalogue of the artist’s life and work, explores his accomplishments and legacy. At 424 pages with more than 500 images and reproductions of drawings from the 1930s to 1970s, it features biographical and interpretive essays by six scholars and close observers of Bali’s arts and culture: Bruce Carpenter, John Darling, Hedi Hinzler, Kaja McGowan, Adrian Vickers, and Museum Puri Lukisan curator Soemantri Widagdo. 

Other institutions participating in the book include the Library of Congress, the American Museum of Natural History, the San Francisco Asian Art Museum, Leiden University, Leiden Ethnographic Museum, Delft Nusantara Museum, Vienna Ethnographic Museum, Cornell University, the Gallery of New South Wales, and Sydney University.

Cover: Hardback, Clothbound
Size: 277 mm x 360 mm
Pages: 424