Meeting new people while traveling is often enjoyable and rewarding, but sometimes that "free" lesson or exhibition is anything but.
“Free show, mister! Batik lessons! Free demonstration!”
The men who hang out in front of Yogyakarta’s Keraton are not, as many of them hope you will assume, employees of the sultan’s palace. Nor is what they are offering by any means free.
Tourists to the historic city in the middle of the Indonesian island of Java will discover this soon after they stop to talk with one of the men. When he does not lead you into the palace, but immediately heads away from it – sometimes quite far, with tourists in tow threading a path past shops, across busy streets and down narrow alleyways in the heart of an old neighbourhood – it soon becomes obvious he does not work for any palace tourism bureau, but is an agent of an art dealer. He was not waiting, as he implied, to teach visitors about local culture. He was there to sell stuff.
This became apparent during a recent visit to Jogja when we allowed one of these agents to bring us to a shop that was a good 20-minute walk from the palace. At first he was friendly, helpful and informative, as were the shop attendants to whom we were introduced, but as soon as they realized we weren’t going to buy anything, but were there only for the free show and demonstration (which never happened), their attitudes grew cold and unwelcoming.
This is not to say that the artwork lacks value or beauty, or that the agents and artists do not have the right to earn their livings. This is to warn anyone who falls for the misleading pitch that the “free” quickly becomes highly expensive.
I learned this the hard way several years earlier during my first week in Indonesia. I was walking along Malioboro, a popular shopping street near Jogja’s central train station, when a vendor with a soup cart called out:
"Hello Mister! Where you from?"
Having time on my hands I approached the man and confessed I was Canadian. “Mister” is often the only English word many Indonesians possess, but this vendor had quite a few more.
"From Canada! Toronto! Brian Mulroney! CN Tower!"
Once he offered these proofs of knowledge he claimed he'd been in Canada for a couple of months in the 1980s, but the more I asked Jocko (as he introduced himself) about his time there, the less he wanted to talk about it. He was more interested in me.
"You staying here?"
He gestured towards the fancy hotel behind him. I laughed and said it was beyond my means. He asked me if I liked Indonesia. I said yes. These preliminaries done, Jocko got down to business.
"You know batik?"
I did, of course. Batik is one of the unique artforms that makes Indonesia famous. It involves painting on cloth using a wax-removal technique and it appears on clothing and on many wall-hangings and table-coverings.
"Have you seen the batik exhibition? Last day!"
Batik is exhibited everywhere in Yogyakarta, especially on Malioboro Street, but as he was referring to a specific exhibition, I said no.
"Then you must!"
He took me himself. He led me away from his soup cart, through a labyrinth of parked motorcycles, across the street choked with relentlessly moving cars, along a queue of horses and buggies, onto a sidewalk packed with tables displaying cheap souvenirs and finally up a narrow flight of stairs to two large rooms filled with wall hangings.
Jocko introduced me to the curator and then left. The curator welcomed me, sat me down at a small table, served me jasmine tea and demonstrated how batik is made by daubing hot wax onto a partially completed piece. He explained how the paint is applied in successive layers to produce the intricate patterns. After he finished he said that the many paintings hanging on the walls had been made by artists from all over Indonesia. He claimed I was lucky because I had come on the very last day of the exhibition.
"Tomorrow we go to Sumatra."
He invited me to look around and I made a big mistake: I saw something I liked. Most of the art looked traditional - no images, just swirling patterns rendered in earthy colours. Other pieces looked modern, like the surfers outlined in florescent blues and yellows. What caught my eye were three tall panels, each depicting the same two women in a style that seemed halfway between new and old.
Once the curator noticed my interest I had no hope of leaving without a purchase. The artist, he said, was the famous Darien who just happened to be downstairs. He fetched him for me. After Darien arrived he did not leave my side. He had painted these recently, he said. The women were his favourite models - twin sisters from Yogyakarta, he explained. He said they were now well known because of his attention.
Finally I asked: "How much for one of the paintings?"
Darien wrote the figure on a slip of paper: US$350.
I balked visibly and said, "Thanks, but I'm just a poor writer."
Darien countered by asking me to name an amount I could afford, adding that if it was too low there would be no hard feelings. All right, I responded, and came up with a figure I was sure he would turn down. I liked the paintings, but I just wasn't in the market for artwork.
"One hundred dollars," I offered.
Darien accepted.
A few weeks later I was again on Malioboro Street walking past the same stairway. A man at the bottom called out to me.
"Hello Mister! Batik exhibition! Last day!"
Author's note: Portions of this story have previously appeared in print.
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