Finding and losing Eden - Page 2
From Griffith REVIEW Edition 14: The Trouble with Paradise
© Copyright Griffith University & the author.
Written by Paul Hetherington
FRIEND DID NOT SETTLE IN BALI IMMEDIATELY. Instead, after two months at the Tandjung Sari Hotel at Sanur, he flew to Bombay to meet Lee-Brown and Gordon. They travelled briefly in India, then in Isphahan, Shiraz and Istanbul. He met the artist Justin O'Brien in Athens, journeying with him in Greece, where they were joined by fellow artist Brian Dunlop. However, a restless Friend soon decided that he was "homesick for Bali". He returned there, via Rome, in July 1967, buying land at Batujimbar on Sanur Beach where he began to build a house. In December, he returned to Sydney to finalise his domestic affairs and was asked by the Commonwealth Art Advisory Board to buy a collection of Balinese art for Australia.
By March 1968, he was back on the island, moving into his new house in May. He immediately retained a number of "houseboys" of varying ages. During his stay in Bali, the number of these boys and his other servants and gardeners, including some women, expanded to such an extent – during some periods there were perhaps twenty or more people – that he had difficulty managing them. Typically they were from poor families in nearby villages, and the modest wages paid by Friend represented a significant income in Bali, especially as he regularly gave many of them gifts. While sometimes authoritarian, he expressed a paternal affection and tolerance towards them (his occasional comments about his female servants tended to be dismissive and misogynistic). He encouraged them to learn to play the gamelan, and in this way created an orchestra with which he entertained guests. Nevertheless, homesick boys often deserted his household to return to their villages, and he dismissed those who made mischief or who refused to work as he wished. He also engaged in sexual relationships with several of them. As he had throughout his life, he saw such relationships as a natural expression of personal intimacy and he also continued to link his erotic experiences directly to his work as an artist. It is no surprise that the Balinese soon began to refer to him, somewhat ambiguously, as Tuan Raksasa (Lord Demon) – a phrase which recognised his role as guardian for his household, his European colouring, and his enjoyment of sensual indulgence.
Once settled in his house, and inspired by his new surroundings, he began work on the manuscript that would be published in 1972 as Donald Friend in Bali – the first of various illustrated books and manuscripts he produced on the island. These projects saw him extend the skills he had honed for nearly 40 years in his illustrated diaries and occasional publishing ventures into a self-conscious and highly sophisticated artistic practice – not unlike that of a medieval scribe and calligrapher, but with the licence to do as he wanted. Amanda Beresford has commented that working on illustrated manuscripts "allowed Donald Friend greater freedom than did his painting to explore ideas of diverse kinds requiring verbal as well as visual expression". An important part of his originality was to combine words and images in a series of shifting and suggestive relationships, where both elements depended on and were enhanced by the other – or, as he wrote: "One must take into account not only the shape of the area of writing but also consider the intellectual impact of the words that are written ..." Friend could make such a success of this enterprise because, as well as possessing rare skills as a draughtsman, he was highly literate. And his diaries remained important to the process; in them, he often rehearsed preoccupations that later received more formal expression.
He transferred much of his restless creativity into these projects, again demonstrating his extraordinary, protean versatility. On the other hand, and with a significant number of notable exceptions, his Balinese paintings tended towards an eviscerated superficiality. This was partly because he was prolific, producing many works to satisfy the demands of often short-term commercial imperatives, and it was also because there were times when he seemed to lose his way. He summarised this problem as early as 1969: "I am probably at the peak of my powers as a painter, and at the lowest ebb of my inventive faculty. Success and Reputation bring me, instead of jubilation, hosts of interruptions, mental fatigue and lots of money." Nevertheless, and irrespective of his numerous other achievements in Bali, his illustrated manuscripts – only some of which were published – confirm his place as one of Australia's significant twentieth-century artists.
THE NEARLY TWENTY-THREE-YEAR PERIOD FROM DECEMBER 1966 – when Friend left Australia for Indonesia en route to India – until his death in 1989 has become coloured by folklore. Friend was highly charming when he chose to be, and difficult, even curmudgeonly, at other times. His period in Bali accentuated these qualities, as he entertained numerous invited and uninvited visitors over more than a decade – most of whom took back to Australia, and other countries, stories about his luxurious living conditions, the beauty of his surroundings and his extraordinary way of life. As his celebrity status grew, he attracted to Bali other artists and writers – not to mention the wealthy who were in search of a congenial location for their holidays. The visits of Mick Jagger and the Duke and Duchess of Bedford, for example, added to the glittering aura of his reputation.
Yet, even before arriving in Bali, Friend had noted in his diaries how great the dichotomy was between the phenomenon of fame and the lives of the famous (although typically, in Friend's formulation, "fairytales" and reality remained blurred), and his public reputation disguised many private preoccupations, including significant difficulties and dissatisfactions: "Fame has not much connection with what you truly are: even less with what you think you are. Fame exists from the moment that many ignorant people realise you exist ... Some of us live as legends because the best way we know to tell the truth is to invent fairytales."
As Friend's years in Bali lengthened, he frequently confessed to feelings of loneliness and disaffection – issues that had troubled him throughout his life but which were now compounded by increasing age and ill-health. In adopting the island as his home, Friend had wanted the stimulus of new ideas and a fresh encounter with ancient mythologies, as if the life of humanity at large – to be discovered and understood in its particular manifestations in different countries of the world – would always be more stimulating to him than his Australian heritage. But it was as if he lost his Balinese paradise almost as soon as he found it, producing art for profit and distracted by numerous other concerns. It is no surprise that he concluded in 1979: "I have no more faith in the place." Bali had been his final attempt to make real his dream of Eden and, like all such dreams, in the face of reality it could not be sustained. ♦
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From Griffith REVIEW Edition 14: The Trouble with Paradise
© Copyright 2006 Griffith University & the author.