Bagyi Aung Soe, “Batik Painting”, Sanpepyu (February 1987), 59-60.
59 What is batik painting? (Batik paintings are not batiks printed on sarongs. They are paintings on cloth.) Batik painting is painted as designs with several colours on the cloth and used as tablecloths, stoles and bedsheets. In particular, it can be seen on the sarongs worn by women back then. Before that, in earlier times, they were worn as printed textiles. Those textiles were printed using wooden blocks with engraved designs applied in a repeat pattern. There were printed in either one or two colours. Then, Indonesian batiks with designs that are directly painted on the textiles appeared. In printed textiles, one engraved design can be printed repeatedly. That is called “Repeated Printing” [English]. It is the continuous and repeated impression of that one design. But for Indonesian batik, the design is drawn once all over the textile. It is “NON-REPEATING” [English]. It is also called “All-Over Pattern” [English]. For the colours, two, three or more are used. But the process is rather tedious. As each design serves only one sarong, the price increases. Local women cannot afford such expensive original batik sarong. It is a rather elitist product exclusive to well-off women. Nowadays, counterfeit batiks printed in Ayutthaya, Penang and Singapore come at prices that every woman can afford. The first batik painting I saw was an Indonesian batik. After the war, I saw batik paintings which were drawn by young painters [artists].1 But I guess it had only been a decade after the war. While their paintings imitated that old way of painting, they were modified by new “Method” [English]. That was also new tradition. Artists [painters] rarely painted like that in the past, and it was more likely to be “Folk Art” [English] created over the years by the common people and unchanged. They were not modified and classified as batik paintings as they are nowadays. As batik painting techniques came to be practised in almost every country, it became wellknown and “International” [English].
1
Characteristic of usage in the modern period, the Burmese word meaning “painting” is often used to stand for “art”, and likewise “painter” for “artist”. In this article, the original meaning of “painting” and “painter” is favoured. When translated as “art” and “artist”, “[painting]” and “[painter]” in square brackets follows, except when the Burmese word meaning “art” is used. Bagyi Aung Soe, “Batik Painting”, Sanpepyu (February 1987), 59-60. Translated by Pann Hmone Wai; edited by Yin Ker.
1
AungSoeillustrations.org