Sri. Kuhnt-Saptodewo

This is a beautifully produced catalogue to a small exhibition in the Museum für Völkerkunde in Vienna about early 20th century art collected by Helene Potjeweyd who together with her husband managed the Hotel Bali in Denpasar, the center of the island's budding tourism industry. Aided by the German busy-body Walter Spies, she built up an art and craft tourist shop in the hotel. Potjeweyd and Spies commissioned local artisans to produce pencil and brush paintings as well as wood sculptures in a style that mixed local traditions with Art Deco influences the prospective buyers cherished. As these statues were produced for tourists, their small size (around 20-40 cm) made them less than ideal exhibition pieces.

The high quality photographs in the catalogue at near life size present the object in a much more attractive context. The same is true for the abstract geometric forms called Lamak which Walter Spies collected and drew from Balinese votive offerings. In the original Balinese context, these Lamak are not present as single illustrations but as part of a larger arrangement of illustrations that include multiple Lamak. Thus, the presentation of multiple Lamak on one page is visually much more attractive.

Besides a short introduction to Balinese masks and early tourist photography on Bali, it is the brush and pen drawings of I Gusti Nyoman Lempad that are beautifully illustrated in the catalogue. The catalogue does not mention the Balinese naming conventions: I Gusti Nyoman Lempad is the third born child (Nyoman) from the Wesya caste of minor nobles ( I Gusti) named Lempad. Helene Potjeweyd commissioned Lempad to draw illustrations for a collections of Balinese fairy tales which unfortunately was never published and vanished. Walter Spies' book project of Lamak illustrations met a similar fate. At least the surviving specimen in the collection in the Viennese museum of ethnology offer a glimpse of what both of these project might have looked like. Recommended.… (mere)