Bali Early Tourism
The Dutch policy of cultural conservation-ism resulted in large part from the fact that in preparing themselves better to fulfill their functions, certain of the Dutch colonial offi¬cials became distinguished scholars and appreciative connoisseurs of many aspects of Balinese life. Diligent Dutch research even refreshed the Balinese memory with regard to traditions and customs which might other-, wise have lapsed. Whether Dutch policy and practice did or did not have anything much to do with it. Balinese culture seems to have experienced a quickening influence which made the early part of the 20th Century an era of quite distinguished achievement in art and architecture and in all the ceremonial manifestations of Balinese life, which the greatly increased wealth of the rajas could more readily finance.
The Residency that sheltered Bali from missionaries and merchants also sought to shelter the island from world travelers. But foreign anthropologists, archaeologists, ethnologists, artists, musicians, dancers and actors and. eventually, sociologists, economists and political scientists inevitably and eagerly sought out Bali on missions often indistinguishable from tourism.
Tourism began in Bali in the 1920s. By 1930. as many as 100 visitors a month were experiencing the delights of the island. They came to Bali for a few days of romantic escapism: an assortment of artists and wri¬ters, aesthetes and expatriates, evencame to
stay.
One of the first and most famous was the German musician and painter. Walter Spies. He moved to Bali in 1926 after having already spent a few vears as bandmaster in the court of the Sultan of Yogyakarta. In Bali. Spies built himself a simple house on the edge of a scenic ravine just outside the town of Llbud, Gianyar. He proceeded to produce two or three paintings annually that were of such radiant and revealing beauty that he established a new aesthetics which the Balinese have since made their own.
Spies was joined in the early 1930s by the German novelist, Vicki Baum. who wrote A Talc of Bali, a story sufficiently romantic, tragic and authentic to rate as one ol the classics of Balinese studies. The Mexican artist-ethnologist. Miguel Covarrubias. and his American wife. Rose, moved in nearby to produce the great study. The Island of Buli. which remains unrivaled in English as an exposition of Balinese culture. Even Mar¬garet Mead carried out important anthropo¬logical inquiries in Bali. The painters, however, usually outnumbered the writers.
In addition to Spies, they included the Dutch painter Rudolf Bonnet and the Belgian. Le Mayeur de Perpres. All of these early Euro¬pean painters and most of their successors accepted Balinese understudies who have created their own schools of painting which now flourish throughout the island.
The Japanese Occupation
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