Identification of The Character Figure s Visual Style i n Wayang Beber of Pacitan Painting

Abstract

This paper des cribes a transformation of wayang beber of Pacitan character figure s visual style and identification of its features. Wayang beber is one of wayang forms; it is a traditional theater art that originated on Indonesian island of Java It use s series of paint ed scroll as storytelling medium. Wayang beber is rare form of wayang, today it only could be found in Pacitan city, in east Java, and Wonosari in Yogyakarta. Wayang beber found in Pacitan called wayang beber of Pacitan. Wayang beber of Pacitan has distinc t visual style to depict human figure. This visual style is one of pinnacle of Javanese artistic tradition that has strong influence within Javanese society. It is a part of traditional artistic knowledge that should be preserved and developed. The main pr oblem for preservation is a lack of visual and textual documentation. Our research on this paper is focus ing on a study of the visual style of wayang beber of Pacitan character figure s The purpose is to compile an artistic knowledge for preserving wayang beber tradition. W e trac ed the origin of the visual style , and identifie d the distinguishable features. As a result, we found four important features on the visual style; those are stylized shape, distorted proportion, outline drawing, and polychromatic co lor.