The Elements Unearthed

Yogyakarta Day 1: Wednesday, August 2, 2017

A Chinese dragon batik to be displayed as art, done by a master.

On my first afternoon in Yogyakarta, Indonesia I walked from the Hotel Jambuluwuk to Malioboro Street. On the way, two people diverted me to a batik exhibition. Although I was a bit suspicious that so many people wanted to help me find the place, I wanted to buy some authentic batik, not just prints. So off I went.

Traditional Javanese fold art batik, for sale at the batik exhibition.

The batik workshop was just off of a main road that runs perpendicular to Malioboro Street. It is a school for training batik master artists. It takes four years to complete the program. Examples of student and master works were stacked up along the walls and hanging up everywhere, each in a temporary wooden frame labeled with a letter. The price list depended on the letters, and the pieces I really liked were too expensive for me. I knew I would probably spend more here than for all other souvenirs combined elsewhere, but I had found what I was looking for: true artistic batik, not prints. These are not for clothing but to frame and hang up.

Batik artist showing an example of his work. His designs are abstract and polychromatic. He also explained the process to us.

There were many styles, such as abstract works with mainly blues and purples, loosely drawn images in oranges, reds, and crimsons which I liked a great deal. Some were realistic, some were stylistic. I finally found the cheapest ones in a corner marked “K” and found a particular style of dotted outlines showing images of Buddhas and Ganeshas from Borobudur and Prambanan. There was a small volcano image done by the orange-crimson stylist that I picked out. I was able to put them up against an LED light to see how the light transmitted through the cloth.

Stacks of batik art awaiting sale at the “exhibition.” Prices depended on the status of the artist and size of the batik: student works sold for less than masters’ works, and smaller less than larger. You can see the styles of various artists here – the abstract artist of the previous photo on the bottom right, the folk art style at the bottom middle, and so on. I spent quite a bit of time looking for the least expensive yet attractive batiks that also provided a sense of Yogyakarta.

In a side room people were demonstrating how to do batik to the many tourists there. I was the only American, but there were Australians and Europeans from various places watching. A young man was talking about how batik is done while a woman demonstrated the process. I videotaped what he was saying. He was the artist who did the blue-purple abstract works. After he was done, another artist came up for the next group. He was the master who did the free-style red and crimson works, including the volcano I quite liked. I got some good photos and videos here.

A woman demonstrating the process of batik. She is dipping her canting pen into a pot of melted malam, or batik wax, and tracing the wax along drawn lines on the cloth. Some artists pre-draw intricate patterns, others draw freehand. Some paint dye inside the lines, others create a more general dyed pattern with the wax keeping areas white like a blueprint.

I decided, after quite a bit of searching, to buy three of the student projects with the dotted outlines – two Buddhas, one in shades of magenta with a craquelure finish and one in blues. The other was a yellow-green Ganesha. Then I decide to buy the volcano, which I showed to the artist. He confirmed it was one of his, and even posed holding it up – but he insisted on taking it out of its frame and putting the frame around himself, since he was the greatest work of art. Funny guy. Altogether I spent about $70 U.S. for these four pieces. That’s less than $20 each, which is not bad for original batik art. Perhaps if I had time to search I could have found cheaper stuff, but here I had the added value of meeting the artists themselves. Despite the agents pulling us in to this place, I did not feel ripped off or hustled while there. It saved me time and I got to see some truly beautiful pieces, as you can tell from my photos, which really don’t do them very much justice.

A piece of batik that I bought, and the artist who created it. This is a painting of Mt. Merapi, near Yogyakarta. He felt that he was an even greater piece of art, which is why he is framing himself. The piece of the dragon and the horses are also his works.

Altogether I bought four pieces of artistic batik, three by a student that had similar designs – two of buddhas from Borobudur and one of a Ganesha from Prambanan. For these pieces, the student used wax dots to follow outlines, but different areas of cloth were also waxed and dyed separately; the outer areas were also crumbled by had to make a craquelure pattern. The Gunung Merapi piece is on the right. My crazy leather hat is in front. I two other items were bought later, as described in my next post.

This is a nice piece – I like the play of colors, but it was a bit out of my price range.

A highly ornate piece where the colors are painted between the lines of wax.

Two different styles of batik: on the left, the design is pre-drawn on cloth and the wax added to the lines, then the areas between are painted in with dyes like a paint-by-numbers picture. On the left, a free-hand design is drawn with wax, then the entire piece colored in one pass. Sometimes a cross between these two methods is used by waxing over large areas and dyeing others, then alternating.