Personal Critical Archive of the Visual and Related Arts
Unknown Artists: Balinese
19th-century, 20th-century
Urbana, IL: Spurlock Museum
38%
Wayang Carving. 20th century. Wood and pigment
My eye's not well-trained on Indonesian art, so it's likely that I'm off base here, but this carving seems like it was made for the tourist market rather than for actual puppet theater performances (wayang). This is to its artistic detriment — not because I have some vague notion of "authenticity" which it's not adhering to, but because the carving's nature as a commodity (again, this is educated presumption on my part) has gotten in the way of what's artistically great about wayang objects: their blended delicacy and durability, their planarity, the selectiveness of their ornament. This carving is too thick and sculpted and decorated, which is what makes me think it was made for some Western rube. Wayang kulit is the phrase for leather Indonesian shadow puppets, wayang klitik refers to the carved wood variety, which is a comparatively minor form. But your average klitik carving hews much closer to the flatness of the leather puppets ("kulit" means skin") than this thing does. It therefore seems like an awkward sculptural representation of a usably flat klitik puppet. (2025)