MIGUEL COVARRUBIAS

(1904-1957)

Food Stand in Bali

Footnotes

The authenticity of this work has been confirmed by Anahí Luna.

Provenance
Rachel Warrington Pease Collection, Sharpsburg, Maryland.
Thence by descent to the present owners.

Exhibited
Chicago, The Art Institute of Chicago, The Fifteenth International Exhibition Water Colors, Pastels, Drawings and Monotypes, March 12 – May 10, 1936, no. 101.



"He understood everything there was to know about Bali. I have never forgotten the brother from far-away Mexico: dark-skinned Miguel with the laughing brown eyes, who looked every bit as Balinese as the next man dressed in a 'kamben' with a flower behind his ear. To us he seemed to have a Balinese soul" (I. Gust Alit Oka Degut quoted in A. Williams, Covarubbias, Austin, 1994, p. 69).

Miguel Covarrubias, the Mexican painter, caricaturist, illustrator, ethnologist, and art historian, visited Bali for the first time in 1930 on his honeymoon with his wife, the photographer Rosa Rolando. Drawn to the Indonesian island after reading a 1926 book of photographs by Gregor Krause, they were initially accompanied by a Dutch guide and stayed in a Dutch-run Balinese hotel in Denpasar with other tourists. However, the pair grew disillusioned with the singular image of Bali they were being fed, electing to extend their three-month stay to gain a truer picture of the island. Covarrubias recalled, "As we became more and more familiar with our new life, and our ears grew accustomed to Malay, we made friends among the Balinese...We were already weary of the stolid prudishness of Dutch hotel life, and since we could not afford the high rates much longer, we looked for another place to live" (A. Williams, ibid., p. 62).

At the start of his career, Covarrubias drafted maps for the Mexican government's geographical office, often sketching caricatures of colleagues when bored. As an usher at the Lyric Theater, he advanced his caricature skills, drawing audience members during intermissions (A. Williams, ibid, p. 7). His first published caricatures appeared in Policromías, the student magazine of the National University of Mexico in Mexico City, in October of 1920. He then moved to New York in the summer of 1923, where his drawings of prominent society figures appeared on the covers of The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, and other notable publications. His illustrations for Vanity Fair's "Impossible Interviews" launched a thirteen-year working relationship between Covarrubias and the publication, embedding himself prominently in the New York scene of artists and celebrity culture and solidifying himself as one of the leading caricaturists of his generation.

This time in New York attracted Covarrubias to Bali every further as it represented the antithesis to his New York cosmopolitan lifestyle. In Bali, life was "simple, natural, highly spiritual, creative, and aesthetic" (A. Williams, ibid, p. 62). Finding comfort in the similar temperament and humor of the Balinese people to his own, Covarrubias submerged himself in the customs, culture, and communities of Bali, a vast difference from the role occupied by the traditional tourist abroad. Island of Bali, an ethnographic account of his time there, was published in 1937 and included 90 of his sketches and 120 of his wife's photographs of their travels. In a review published the same year, the book was lauded as "A finely executed masterpiece, a scholarly study magnificently illustrated by an artist who showed true genius as a writer, a draftsman, and a painter. It demonstrated his painstaking research, his accurate marshalling of fact, and the ordered results of key first-hand observation. The result was worthy of a trained ethnologist, but with the feeling and sympathetic understanding that might only be expected from someone of Balinese birth" (quoted in 'Biography of an Island Set in the Southern Seas,' review of Island of Bali, Sun, New York, November 20, 1937).

Food Stand in Bali presents a snapshot of Balinese market culture as experienced by Covarrubias. In the present gouache painting, five women crowd a table of assorted produce, bowls, bottles, and a lamp. The proximity of background figures situates the central table in the context of a larger market. As detailed in his 1937 book, Covarrubias valued Balinese markets as sensory meccas, sites of animated bargaining between sellers and buyers, writing "The thousand smells of coconut oil, flowers, spices, and dried fish combine to make the pungent smell so characteristic of Balinese markets. The soft browns and yellows of the women's skirts and bright colored sashes they wear, the graceful movements and unconscious beauty of their poses, make of the market a show as interesting to watch as their luxurious and spectacular feasts" (M. Covarrubias, Island of Bali, New York, 1937, p. 45).

Women were the primary presences and driving forces within the market scene: "The women are the financiers that control the market; one seldom sees men in it, except in certain trades or to help carry such a load as a fat pig. Even the money-changers are women, who sit behind little tables filled with rolls of small change..." (M. Covarrubias, ibid, p. 44). Women grew mathematically adept through handling money exchanges, requiring quick calculations. Thus, markets were venues in which women exerted control within the community. In Food Stand in Bali, the figures engage amongst themselves, as if unaware of or ambivalent toward the artist's eye. Covarrubias, both as a male and a foreigner (prices were higher for foreigners), entered the markets as an outsider observing and participating in a traditionally female space.

In Balinese society, the delineation between dwelling grounds and "unlived," or public, spaces held great importance. Markets occupied an integral role as a public meeting ground within the village, the "unified organism in which every individual is a corpuscle and every institution and organ" (M. Covarrubias, ibid, p. 42). Food Stand in Bali, centering one stand among many, suggests intimacy within the public sphere.

As an artist, Covarrubias felt strongly connected to the Balinese community, exclaiming that "'Everybody in Bali seems to be an artist...The artist is in Bali essentially a craftsman and at the same time an amateur, casual and anonymous, who uses his talent knowing that no one will care to record his name for posterity. His only aim is to serve his community'" (M. Covarrubias, ibid, p. 160). With no centralization of artistic knowledge in a specific intellectual class, ordinary people learned poetry, dancing, painting, and carving by emulating princes and feudal lords, imbuing the community with a collective artistic sensibility. For Covarrubias, learning these sacred artistic traditions further endeared the Balinese people and their home to him.

On January 18th, 1942, thirty-two gouache and oil paintings, adapted from sketches from his travels in Bali, were exhibited in a one-man show at the Valentine Gallery. In the foreword, revered Mexican artist Diego Rivera wrote:

"Bali, of all lands perhaps the least mechanized and the most civilized, held [Miguel] for months in its marvelous web. Now he has returned, bringing with him admirable objects, the works of artists of earlier civilizations. They form a background for his own work, yet he sees them with the vision of America, transforming them into a new beauty of his own" (A. Williams, op. cit., p. 69).

Indeed, this exhibition reflected a significant turning point in the artist's career. In addition to its shift in thematic focus, this series represents a turn away from illustration and toward painting, onto which he would increasingly focus his energies. Covarrubias' interest in Bali would also serve as the starting point for the production of ethnographic, pictorial travelogues.