Typology

The same author has proposed a typology of the “portable arts” for cross-cultural analysis (1) functional fine arts, which have great contemporary cultural significance to the people themselves, comparable to Balinese offerings and temple carvings; (2) commercial fine arts, made for sale to a specialized audience of patrons for connoisseurs, analogous to tapestries hung in Balinese places or ornamental carvings decorating the homes of the wealthy; (3) souvenir arts, made for sale to a wider audience, which in Bali include inexpensive carvings, paintings, masks, cloths, and jewelry; and (4) assimilated fine arts, including those attempts to copy or use the traditional arts of the outsiders by whom they are being influenced. The abstract paintings by the young painters of Ubud who use “western” colors and canvases, as well as styles to paint Balinese landscapes, fighting cocks, and portraits – or weavers who make tablecloths with Balinese designs on imported looms reflect this category. Graburn acknowledge that the typology poses some problems of classification, as with the Canadian Eskimo soapstone of dollars to the inexpensive, mediocre, hurriedly – done work of less careful craftsmen, which is “souvenir art”. A comparable range also occurs in Bali Graburn (1969) discusses the phenomenon of “airport art”.