Naissances et renaissance de la peinture sous verre à Java

Abstract

Jérôme Samuel, Institut national des Langues et Civilisations orientales, Paris Naissances et renaissance de la peinture sous verre à Java This paper deals with reverse glass painting as a Javanese popular art, mainly in Central Java and in the Cirebon area. First, the author examines the foreign roots of this art (China, Japan, Europe and the Middle East) and the conditions which facilitated its spread in Java during the first decades of the XX th century. He argues that Islam played a significant role, through a wide range of pious pictures, as well as the increasing accessibility of glass as a material for paintings. Reverse glass painting reached a peak during the 1930s, which coincides with the first significant scientific paper devoted to that popular art. The second part of this paper focuses on recent developments of reverse glass painting. Since the late seventies, it seems to be out of favour in popular Java, but the antiquarians and the cultural establishment have shown some interest for it. Nowadays, reverse glass painting is still alive but it has lost most of its traditional features.