Gunarsa: A guardian of Balinese art and tradition

By Mehru Jaffer

KLUNGKUNG, Bali (JP): It could only have happened in Bali. One little knock at the entrance of a temple to find the gods giving the devotees much more than asked for. In this case the temple is the Fine Arts Museum in Bali's princely town of Klungkung and the gift, Nyoman Gunarsa himself.

The museum, opened by one of Indonesia's greatest contemporary painters in his home, is unfortunately closed for the day, so Gunarsa decides to lead one up a picturesque garden path and into his kitchen, where he offers to make coffee with those same hands with which he paints.

Then he sits down to chat as if he has all the time in the world and those sitting before him are the most important people in his life.

Snug in the long room that runs along an entire side of the main house, with a sunlit Balinese roof and countless paintings of dancers swirling on the wall above with so much energy they seem ready to pirouette off of the canvases, Gunarsa compares the autumn of his life to the springtime of social and political changes being enjoyed by the country.

However, like a typical Balinese, Gunarsa speaks with wonderful detachment about the winds of reform and freedom that continue to blow across Indonesia.

He is proud of the students behind the reform movement, but is pained by the thugs who loot, rape and murder. He is happy with the change in government but unhappy at the growing restlessness at the grassroots level.

He is all for democracy but afraid too much democracy threatens to break up the country. He is overjoyed that East Timor achieved its independence, but cries at the destruction that accompanied the divided island's fight for freedom.

And caught in the midst of all this joy and sadness, all he can do is continue to paint. "I cannot give fiery speeches like Amien Rais or lead demonstrations. I can only provide happiness to people with my work," he says, echoing the age-old Balinese philosophy that work is considered as sacred as prayer and teaches one and all how to love and live life.

For it is believed that when people are happy they can achieve much more than when they are unhappy.

He neither likes nor dislikes former president Soeharto and has nothing good or bad to say about the present leadership of Indonesia. He feels that each head of state plays his role and passes away into the past after having made some gains and some losses.

His own responsibility is simply to maintain tambang, or the necessary balance between good and evil, which he is able to achieve only by painting.

It matters little to him whether the right or left is in power, or whether it is a man or woman at the helm of state. A leader, he feels, is not good or bad, but is propelled by existing circumstances to bring some order to a life of fluctuating, flowing and shifting forces.

As long as these forces are seen to be under the control of a person, he is supported by the people and accepted as a leader. When it is believed that chaos is returning to their lives, people are quick to take back the power they invested in the leader.

This is the cycle of life. It has been like this for eons and will continue to be so. There is little to get excited or become despondent over, shrugs Gunarsa.

It is this attitude which has prevented Gunarsa from bemoaning the fact that his daughter will graduate from an American university in June with a degree in veterinary science instead of fine arts.

She is a talented dancer who continues to perform regularly with Sekar Jaya, the famous Balinese dance group founded in the U.S. Soni, Gunarsa's son, has chosen to manage an English language newspaper published in Bali and paints tantric figures he has come across in his study of Balinese religion.

"But the drawings are strictly for my own pleasure, unlike my father who prefers to share his work with the world," smiles Soni.

Gunarsa's 12-year-old daughter is also a dancer and Gunarsa says he will also have to accept whatever she chooses to do later in her life.

Born here in April 1944, Gunarsa is glad to be back in Bali where he belongs, in the lap of Klungkung, a former kingdom and center of artistic activity, surrounded by villages rich in prayers and rituals and inhabited by generations of dancers, musicians, craftsmen and painters.

One of the favorite students of Affandi, the father of modern Indonesian painting, Gunarsa spent most of his working years in Java, immersing himself in the centuries-old Javanese culture under the influence of his great teacher in Yogyakarta.

Deeply rooted in both Balinese and Javanese beliefs, Gunarsa's greatest strength is his ability to paint contemporary versions of traditional themes.

A master of both figurative and abstract painting, Gunarsa became a sensation in the 1980s when he produced hundreds of wayang kulit, leather puppets, in the form of Balinese dancers and temple devotees.

"I try to paint the male figure but I fail to find the fluidity that exists in the female form," he says, adding that his thoughts are always full of women.

"Women from all over the world. I look at a face and I start to imagine what the rest of her might be like ... and then I paint. A profile is what stirs my imagination most. It can be an Egyptian, Indian or an Indonesian profile. The nationality does not matter, only the profile."

Then he talks about how ill he was last year after he suffered a stroke and a heart attack. "There was so much pain here," he said holding his head. When it is suggested to him that perhaps he got so sick because he had too many women on his mind, he agrees and bursts out laughing.

Grateful that he feels robust and ready to paint once again, he says that he finds himself standing at the threshold of a new phase in his artistic life. Inspired by the ethos of the reform movement and in celebration of the new millennium, he is inspired to explore the concept of freedom in his paintings, taking a break from his breathless dancers to concentrate on moksha, or liberation.

"Moksha is a Balinese concept, but I want to stretch it out to include unity, peace and harmony among people from all over the world," Gunarsa says dramatically, promising to put paint to his promise at the stroke of midnight on Dec. 31 while the world busies itself with song and dance.