In Reply to: Buying paintings posted by beenthere on Friday, 12. November 2004 at 07:30 Bali Time:
Do not buy at first...look around and get an idea of what they want price-wise. Some work is very intricate, detailed watercolours with a myriad of fine lines and shades of colours. I bartered one painting down from a million rupiah to 750,000 and he would not let it go at that. Another metre-by-metre painting in acrylics I bought for 600,000. You will hear the story many times that the shopkeeper's husband/son/brother painted the picture personally and business is not good...smile and believe it if you want. I found a few shops in the actual Ubud market at ground level and off towards one side away from the large building, as well as many on the streets around the town. Monkey Forest Road that winds downhill to the main streets has some great gallery shops on it. BUT FIRSTLY I would suggest you first make a trip to the Neka Art Museum in Ubud (which displays the historical progression of Balinese art from the beginning to contemporary styles. My husband is not normally a gallery visitor, but even he found it very interesting. You may need a driver to get there, as it is a little way out of the main shopping/accommodation area - Ubud is actually a merging of many smaller villages over time. I loved the gallery, wandering around the different buildings, and it gave me a clearer idea of what was real indonesian art and what was stylised mass-produced stuff to sell to tourists. It costs 20,000 per person and children are free. We went in the afternoon because it was a nice cool way to spend the heat of the day. (Toilets there were okay too, though had no paper). If you do buy a painting, consider the advice I got back home from the shop that re-stretched my painting onto a frame(which incidently cost me more than the actual purchase). Have the painting rolled gently with the painted surface to the inside of the roll. The person who rolled and wrapped mine did it with the paint to the outside of the roll and it created lots of little hairline fractures in the paint.