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"His
creations are quite exotic to look at,
tradional but without academic influence.
His works have a frighteningly macabre
feel, his animal carvings eerie, his figurative
sculptures showing strange and frightening
forms, as well as beasts whose features
are indistinct"
The
detritus logs and roots commonly
found along the river's edge have a unique
artistic potential.
This
has been proven by the creative carving
of 1 Nyoman Tjokot, born around 1886 in
Jati village, Tegallalang, some 15 kilometres
from Ubud, Gianyar. Using all his sensual
powers he was able to find a story in
most any piece of wood, whatever shape
or size. He could carve his fantasy
using chisel and mallet, creating characters
spontaneously until he finished up with
a three-dimensional invention that even
he could not have predicted.
Without any kind of formal education or
training, Tjokot, son of I Gentar and
Ni I (inut, had an amazing grasp
of technique, enabling him to take any
shape of wood and carve it in such a way
as its proportions were represented
perfectly in the finished work, which
would always be a fine balance between
form and composition. With each
stroke of his mallet, a dialogue took
place between himself and his work,
deepening the character and expression
of the work as it progressed.
Tjokot was not born into a family of artists.
Neither of his grandfathers, I Wayan Tambun
and I Made Punduh, were sculptors.
His artistic inclination came naturally
and spontaneously without parental influence
or even encouragement from schoolteachers.
Actually it seems that nobody was responsible
for teaching him the amazing skills he
possessed, and it is safe to say that
he was entirely self-taught.
Something
of a hill-billy, Tjokot was down to earth
and lived quite modestly. He was
a small man compared even to most
Balinese. When he was twenty he
married a girl from the same village,
Ni Gonta, to whom he remained attached
until death, and who gave him seven children.
His fifth, I Wayan Ditu is no longer with
us, and neither is his second, a daughter,
Ni Made Santer.
The other five have made it their lot
to continue producing sculpture in the
style of their father. Although eccentric
in his work, in daily village life Tjokot
was an amenable soul. He was a priest,
generally officiating at weddings and
birth ceremonies, and he was also a healer.
He spent his leisure time pursuing the
traditional pastime of cock fighting,
although Dini rejects accusations that
his father was cock-fight-crazy: "When
father was working he would forget
everything, often falling asleep besides
his work. It's therefore wrong
to say he was always cock-fighting.
Tjokot was a notorious workaholic.
This we know from the writings of
GM Sudarta who wrote in 1974. "I
met him some months before he died
in Jati village. In order to get
to the village then, one had to travel
15km from Ubud on foot, over hills
and dales. He had been ill for some
time but was determined to live out his
remaining days in Jati. In
fact it was his last wish to die in his
place of birth embraced by his family.
In a wobbly old bamboo hut with
a low concaved roof 1 met him as he was
working in a stooped position, his knees
against his chest."
Right up to his dying moments he continued
to work on small carvings, even
though his legs were weak and his eyesight
fading. As old age over came
him, he still managed to wield hammer
and chisel.
Tjokot died at 83 years of age on the
1st of October 1971 as a result
of tuberculosis having wrecked his lungs.
He left little in the way of material
wealth for his children and grandchildren,
except a few prized sculptures which remain
in their possession to this day.
But despite being poor, he left behind
quite a big name, not only for his
family, but for Indonesia as a whole.
He also passed on a style which became
known as Tjokotism and which later enabled
his progeny to improve their standard
of living by leaps and bounds.
The style developed by Tjokot and introduced
earlier in this writing, can be described
as primitive, coarse, spontaneous, and
full of realism and strong personal expression.
All of his works were achieved with the
help of chalk and coconut oil, and although
this is done to prevent the wood from
warping and splitting, it allowed Tjokot
to be freer with ornament and to achieve
extremely subtle detail. This is
similar to the makers of Kris daggers,
who mix metals in such a way as to achieve
its distinctive colour and character.
As 'primitive' creations, his works are
highly exotic, traditional, and without
any kind of academic reference.
His works have a frighteningly macabre
feel, his animal carvings eerie, his figurative
sculptures showing strange and frightening
forms, as well as beasts whose features
are indistinct. This primitive style
has become known as 'Tjokotism'.
Tjokot was not particularly interested
in passing his style on to his children.
"Father only encouraged us to make
beautiful and interesting carvings, not
necessarily in his style. He said this
would help us to earn more rapid cash
that we would need for public and religious
holidays", said Made Dini, one of
Tjokot's children with whom the author
spoke and the owner of an art shop in
Teges.
Peliatan boasting the sign "Tjokot's
Son". Dini added: " However
because we often saw our father at work,
we inevitably started to copy his
style, even if we each branched off in
slightly different directions; brothers,
sisters, grandchildren and all."
The development of Tjokotism today no
longer happens along spontaneous lines,
because of limitations imposed from the
outside. A chair or table's measurements
will these days take account of the space
into which they are to be used,
and this places slight constraints on
expression.
Tjokotism didn't come from nowhere, and
it has to be said that Tjokot's work was
influenced by the Ubud style, which was
refined and sweet. Since there
were so many sculptors concentrated in
the Ubud area, Tjokot watched them
and began to imitate their style.
However, as soon as he had mastered technique
he quickly developed an idiosyncratic
approach that was unprecedented. The primitive
aspect of his work concurs with
his habit of meditating at Taro temple
some five kilometers from his village
where there are many primitive carvings
and stone relief. On his way to
and from the temple he would come
across pieces of wood suitable for his
craft and take them home to be worked
on. He also drew much inspiration from
lontar leaf manuscripts, which he was
also highly adapt at reading and
interpreting in his works. The day when
he realized he was an artist was
also the moment he felt that he had finally
discovered Bali in his work.
His creative process rarely involved advance
planning. He simply picked up his
tools and began to chisel away, his imagination
being led by the form of the
particular piece of wood he was working
on, controlled at the same time by his
keen aesthetic judgment. Many of his works
are now in the permanent collection
of the puri Lukisan Ubud., such as Leak
and his Minion, Mother and Child, Grasshopper,
Tigerandher Cubs, owl Mother Canyinga
Lantern with her Child, Sita Kidnapped
by Rahwana, Garuda Eating Snake,
Begawan on a Devil's Back and the narrative
Bubuk Sah goes to heaven on
the shoulders of a tiger while his brother
Gagak Aking grasps the tiger's tail' (from
the folk tale Gagak Aking).
And in the Mabudhara Mandhara Giri Bhuwana
building of the Arts Centre in Denpasar
can be seen his creation Paksi (bird).
In the thirties the painter Gusti
Nyornan Lernpad would often
joke with Tjokot as he walked past Lempad's
house in Ubud carrying his carvings.
"Hey Tjokot. Where are you
taking that firewood?" Tjokot would
smile and walk on. Yet this was
not the only instance of mockery. Many
people considered him to be a little crazy
because of the way his work was at
variance with the prevailing artistic
clime in Ubud at the time: refined, technically
accurate and aesthetically beautiful.
The stubborn Tjokot didn't think of his
creations as firewood of course.
On the contrary, he felt that he was breaking
new and important ground, and the
day would come when Leinpad would accept
and value, even admire Tjokot's
steadfastness in his art.
In the thirties there were also two foreign
painters in Ubud, Waiter Spies and Rudolf
Bonnet, who straight away saw the strength
of Tjokot's work. They were extremely
supportive and helped Tjokot to convince
the doubting Thomas in the rather backward
villages, that this was a genius at work.
The coarse, unrefined, primitive pieces
he made were sold in reasonable
numbers, although not in quantities to
match sales of works by more orthodox
craftsmen. Tjokot's works were always
stashed in a dark corner, out of sight,
sometimes getting no further
than the warehouse.
After Indonesian independence, though,
Tjokot's vanguard style achieved a new
popularity. Art shops started to
stock his works, in particular Nuratni
Art Shop which was working in conjunction
with "Topic Traders", who introduced
Tjokot to the outside world. Collectors
from Europe and America rushed to buy
his work. In the forties Tjokot had become
an acknowledged maestro, and from that
time on visitors to Bali would go out
of their way to obtain examples
of his work. Pieces which had been
placed out of sight were brought out of
hiding and dusted down ready to
be placed in full view for maximal visual
enjoyment. Local collectors exhibited
a kind of snobbery with respect
to owning a Tjokot, and went out of their
way to show that they had at least
one example in their collections.
So many of his works were sold that when
he finally passed away there
were very few remaining, so that when
an exhibition was held in Jakarta
at the Museum of Fine Art as part of the
450th anniversary of the city, only eight
pieces were brought together,
to be shown alongside the work of
Gusti Nyoman Lempad and Ida Bagus
Nyana. They were : Gajah Mina (1966),
Sato Ngempu (1968) and Panca
Resi (1968), with the remainder of the
exhibition provided by Tjokotists (his
children) Sawat, Lantas, Nongos, Dim,
and two grandchildren I Made Kanten and
1 Made Gelis.
Several exhibitions brought heaps of praise
on Tjokot. In the above
mentioned exhibition, the organiser, Kusnadi,
wrote: "The late I Nyoman
Tjokot found a magical expressiveness
that was basically ancient Balinese in
essence, an aesthetic that
was introduced and maintained in his works
without any conscious thought of preserving
culture, a culture whose art often features
portrayals of magical beasts and devils."
Prior to this an exhibition of his work
along with that of mask maker Ida
Bagus Geledog, was held at the Queensland
Industries Fair in Australia, at which
time Nongos acted as deputy, running a
workshop to introduce Tjokotism to the
out side world. Then there was the
1970 Expo in Kyoto, Japan, where Tjokot's
work added zest to Indonesia's stand,
and his work was also included in a tour
of America in 1993.
In 1969 he was awarded the Wijaya Kusuma
prize by the Indonesian government which
included the sum of Rp 100,000 - at that
time the biggest award ever
made to an artist in Indonesia. A fine
achievement after so many years of poverty
and suffering for his art, When he received
the award on the 17th of August 1969,
the following announcement was made:
"This award is being presented to
I Nyoman Tjokot as a mark of respect from
the Indonesian Department of Education
and Culture, in recognition of work
done in the name of Indonesia by this
sculptor who has maintained his integrity
amidst the rapid developments taking place
in the Balinese arts.
According
to his son 1 Made Dim, half of the
money was spent renovating the house in
Jati, and the other half building an art
shop in Kesiman. Tjokot didn't only
receive praise at home. In the Sydney
Morning Herald, Saturday May 8, 1979,
Tom Bolster wrote: "'Today Bali's
two to three million people are
undergoing a new period of development.
It is a new colony, a colony of western
tourists. We see it in the
traffic on the highway. Pressure,
attitude, and a whole way of thinking
has arrived all of a sudden.
And yet as long as the mythical winged
lion stands guard at the gates of the
besieged, Balinese art and culture will
never be drowned in a sea of western thinking
and lifestyle. The product
of Tjokot's life work strengthened and
pointed to wards the steadfastness and
vitality that is such an integral part
of Balinese culture."
From
this we can see Tjokot as the lion at
the gates, especially for forthcoming
generations whose task is to keep alive
the creativity of Tjokot whilst faced
with an era of globalization.
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