CategoriesCultural and Religious Styles
Indonesian Art
Art across the Indonesian archipelago, from bronze drums and Javanese temples to batik, wayang puppets and modern painting.
No works indexed yet · 10 related artists
No open-access works for Indonesian Art are in the index yet. They will appear here as more collections are indexed.
About
Indonesia's more than 17,000 islands hold hundreds of cultures, so its art resists a single story. Bronze kettledrums of the Dong Son type date back some two thousand years. From the 8th century, Hindu and Buddhist kingdoms on Java built Borobudur and the Prambanan temples, and the later Majapahit court fostered terracotta sculpture.
As Islam spread, courts developed arts that remain central: wayang kulit shadow puppets cut from pierced and painted buffalo hide, keris daggers with pattern-welded blades, and batik, drawn in wax with a spouted tool called a canting. Sumba is known for ikat cloths, and the Toraja of Sulawesi for carved and painted houses with soaring roofs. Modern painting starts with Raden Saleh, whose The Arrest of Pangeran Diponegoro (1857) answered a Dutch picture of the same event. S. Sudjojono and Affandi shaped a national modernism, and Yogyakarta is home to artists such as Heri Dono and Entang Wiharso.
Related artists
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