Declining artistic interest cause for concern

The Ministry of Tourism and Culture launched a program of a thousand patent rights to protect and preserve national cultural assets, on the other hand, artist`s enthusiasm and interest have been alarmingly declining.

"The main purpose of this program is to protect art copyrights from plagiarism, but it is now feared it would cause a negative impact on the creativity of artists," Head of the Bali Cultural Agency Ida Bagus Sedhawa said here Thursday.

He said that in creating their artworks, artists used to get inspirations from the many forms of work of art in the society, beside, by creating collaboration or fusing two or more different arts into an interesting form of art.

He expected Balinese artists to keep on creating new creative works of art, without fear of the existing forms of art.

"We do not have to be afraid of seeking inspirations from the existing forms of art, as long as we are not copying them," he said.

Artistic collaboration is always been done by Balinese artists with their western counterparts, who happen to be on a vacation in the Bali.

Even the `Kecak` dance, one of Balinese traditional dances, which is already known in the international world, was born from two artistic inter-cultural dialogs of different arts, culture and ethnic backgrounds.

I Wayan Limbak (79), promoted a joint art show with a German artist, Walter Spies, near the Goa Gajah tourist site.

The inter-cultural dialog created a `Kecak` dance which then become a Balinese icon known across the world.

The unification and collaboration are expected to be done by Balinese artists in creating high quality works of art, Bagus said.