ARIE SMIT ON ART AND BALI

The following is from a recently found set of audio tapes of an interview I recorded in 1986 with the Dutch/Balinese painter, Arie Smit (1916-2016). This excerpt focuses on how Smit saw his art and Bali transform from when he first moved to the island through the next thirty years. The interview was transcribed and edited by Scott Alkire.

What attracts you to Bali and keeps you here?

I get inspired by what I see in Bali. I'm a landscape nut, I dream in a landscape, and this is very exciting, what I see. 

I've lived in Bali now for thirty years. In the beginning every half year I moved, took another house, and explored with the real Dutch capacity to explore something, on bicycle, on foot, and so on. Nowadays I take it easy. I have a Chinese young man who has a motorcycle, and he has a good sense of what I would like to see. He knows the mountain area very well, so I go as a duo on the motorcycle and I have my sketchbook with me.

I always go around with sketchbooks and I make lots and lots of sketches. These sketches inspire me in my studio to start painting. I may combine several sketches and may make a totally imaginative big landscape, you know? It's not a thing that I've seen in situ, as the term is. But I make it utterly Balinese, you see.

How have you seen Bali change?

I must tell you something, what was a very strong impression for me when I came to Bali in '56. Bali had gone through the Japanese time. Before that there was tourism of course— tourism had just started, the big cruisers came in, the Orion-Sea, and so on. The enormous American cruise ships, with all the American tourists, they came to Bali. And there were the foreigners living in Bali and twenty-four foreign painters, pre-war time.

That absolutely, abruptly ended when the Japanese came. Most of the foreigners put themselves into safety, and Bali was occupied by Japanese forces — almost, I say, fortunately — because it was the Imperial Navy, not the Army. They were quite respectful of art in Bali. For instance Rudolf Bonnet, a Dutch painter, could simply go on painting! And Theo Mayer, he was Swiss of course, he was neutral, he could go on. Le Mayeur de Merpres, a Belgian painter, just could go on painting. 

Well, so the Balinese had gone through this period, which of course was not very conducive for selling art. There were already painters and carvers of course selling to tourists, but it was a dry period for them. And they had to hide their beautiful temple clothes because, well, the Japanese had an eye on them, you know? 

Then came a chaotic period when the Dutch tried to get back into Bali. Then independence came, the Dutch left the island, left Indonesia in general, and independence came, but still they were poor years.

I came when the situation was that. From Ubud, for instance, there was one little bus a day going to Denpasar. The road from Denpasar to Sanur was a dirt road. You see? Bali was still completely rural. And I thought of myself that I was very far removed from reality according to Europe where I came from. But I was also very much removed in time because I imagined myself to be in this kind of 17th century, you know? Like you see paintings of Europe in the 17th century, Ruysdael for instance, all landscape unaffected by modernity. And this of course I have loved very, very much. 

And I couldn't have loved moving around better than the way I did it, so I lived simply in small villages, yeah? I wanted to see the different aspects of the village, the romantic side of it. I always wanted to know where are the main temples of a village. They are so beautiful! And I lived a life of the villagers. What I usually had to do when I rented the house, I had to add a bathroom, and a toilet, because doing this in the rice field was not my way of doing it! So that was all one Balinese friend of mine said, "Oh! You are a very good man for Bali because you build bathrooms and toilets everywhere!" (laughs)

I have a house now in East Bali that I built myself. I have also built for myself a little house in Ubud because I like to come back to Ubud to sustain my young artists. So from wherever I lived, I used to come back for half a year again to Ubud, and then I worked again with the young artists. That was enough, then I left them alone again, and I did my own work, which was painting Bali!

Please say more about the young artists. How did you begin with them?

It is a well-known story. Before I started with anything, with anybody, I saw a boy who was a duck guardian. And while he was watching his ducks, who were far away in the rice fields, he was with a stick drawing in the sand always. I observed this, and I asked him whether he would draw on paper.

Well, it was a little bit troublesome because the father had to look for another duck guardian. But with a little bit of money — money is always helpful...

The boy was my first pupil, and then I took this seriously, yeah? I thought, this is going to be something. I felt this already, because the output was so extra-ordinary, so very, very creative. Very soon—typically Balinese—the boy asked whether his nephew from the village could also partake in the lesson. 

It was not much of a lesson. I know this much about child art: That it is not, as an American educator put it very nicely, it's not what you put in, it's what you get out of it. Don't put in something, don't suggest, "Oh, what a beautiful red sky you have made!" because the child is so obliging that from now on he will always paint a red sky, just to please me, you see? So you have to be very, very careful. It's a diplomatic thing to teach children art!

The result in Bali was extraordinary because the environment of the Balinese children is so entirely different from children anywhere in the world. These children not only dream of the harvest which is coming, but also of all the festivals that are coming. The Odalan, which is the procession to the temple. The dances, you know? The cremation. And all this subject matter came very clearly and strongly in child art.

In the year 1960 I started with four or five students and in the following years, I had more and more. In ‘62 an American couple visited me in my little studio outside Ubud, saw these young people painting there, and proposed to make a small exhibition in the Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco. Among others who visited the exhibition was the Smithsonian Institution of Washington, who took up the forty drawings, forty paintings and had them for two years in a traveling exhibit of all the colleges and what-have-you in America.

How has your own painting evolved during your time on Bali? What did you discover in making art here?

From the beginning, I was excited very much by Bali—as much as the young artists were, you know, with their new materials and the opportunity given them.

In Bali, my color sense was, let's say, invigorated! I learned to sense here as the Balinese themselves. Their arrangement of flowers is amazing. Their painting of statues is amazing. Pure color they use. Their temple clothes when they are dressed, fully dressed up for a temple festival—then you really enjoy colors. That influenced me very much to use pure color. 

My style here has also differed very much. Some people simply call me an Impressionist. I am not an Impressionist, but my style reminds one of the Impressionistic style. Indeed, I've changed my style because I like variety, not only in my subject matter but also in my style. And I'm free, I am not bound to a gallery, I can do what I want, I have the most freedom. 

Still, my art is all readily visible, readily understandable. It's about Bali—the nature, the sunsets and sunrises and gorgeous skies always full of white clouds—not like the absolutely pure skies like in Italy, which I didn't like at all. A big block of blue, you know, with no variation at all! In Bali we have the white clouds, always. 

Lately, about six or seven years, I also have torsos in my subject matter. I have obliged to do that because I have so many sketches made of them. It seems that I make these Balinese sitting on the floor in a kind of leisurely way with a certain abandon, and totally balanced, you know? My young artists were always my models. They were waiting for me to criticize, to analyze their paintings; in the meantime I made a sketch of them.

I have also started painting flowers, because nowadays flowers have really become a culture in Bali. The governor was very influential that the population of Bali plant trees everywhere and cultivate flowers everywhere. Flowers, of course, are needed for the offerings. But in the olden days it was the foreigners' gardens which were full of flowers, and when there was an offering coming, a festival, then the children very early in morning plundered the garden already and then you found the garden empty! Which still goes on, but now there are more and more flowers; people cultivate flowers now especially. So that was very exciting, when the flowers came and I started to make my flower paintings.

Nowadays I combine flowers with figures, and landscape, and everything!