Nyoman Gunarsa, not a man to rest on his laurels

Nyoman Gunarsa, not a man to rest on his laurels

Jean Couteau
Contributor
Klungkung, Bali

It is not himself, nor his works, that the celebrated Balinese
painter Nyoman Gunarsa first introduces to his visitor.

"Look," he says in his hurried way before his visitor has even
had the time to sit down. "Look what I have found".

He unwraps a small statue. "You wouldn't guess where I found
it -- abroad," he adds with a wry smile.

And he bursts into laughter.

Now I understand why I had to go through a maze of garden
alleys, stairs and corridors before I could find the artist's
studio far in the back of his residence complex in the village of
Banda, a few kilometers from Klungkung.

And it is why the first thing I saw in arriving at his village
was not a house, but a huge, three-story building -- the Museum
of Classical Balinese Painting.

There is no denying the meaning of all these signs: What
Nyoman Gunarsa puts forward is not so much himself as "Bali's
great artist", as the achievements of his culture. In Nyoman
Gunarsa, the artist of national fame yields to the "Balinese".
This is probably why he is so respected in the island.

Indeed, it is hard having Nyoman Gunarsa talk about his art.
His antiques, the management of the museum, trips abroad, an
upcoming celebration, the need to save Bali: his comments burst
out in all directions but this one, swamping his listener, but
also bearing witness to the variety of the artist's interests.

And once again, this reverberates in the man's setting: art
books on tables, unwrapped objects on cupboards, furniture
everywhere, photographs. The crowded world of a hyperactive,
somewhat hurried man.

In a corner of the room where we sip coffee, I catch sight of
some fitness equipment. He gives me a wink.

"We have to try to keep fit, don't we?" He was referring to
what has been his stint with illness. Four years ago Nyoman
Gunarsa suffered a stroke. He survived, although slightly
impaired. This had dramatic consequences: his brushstrokes, those
that had made him famous, could not be as swift as before.

Only exercising could help him out. And it did. Gunarsa, 59,
is now back where he was, fit and active, his painting as dynamic
as ever.

Nyoman Gunarsa has virtually invented "Balinese" modern
painting. Before he burst onto the national stage in the 1970s,
there was little modern Balinese painting worth mentioning, amid
banal Realism and the "broken glass" brand of pseudo-cubism made
locally fashionable by artists from the Bandung Institute of
Technology (ITB).

But Gunarsa chose to study, not in Bandung, but at the ASRI
Academy of Art in Yogya (1960-1967). There, modernism didn't rule
the day. All the lecturers, many of whom had participated in the
independence struggle (1945-1949), insisted on the need to resist
the West and "indigenize" modern art.

In Yogyakarta, Gunarsa also befriended the great Indonesian
expressionist Affandi, who taught him the expressive power of the
brush stroke. The lesson was not lost on him. Once on his own,
Gunarsa ended up combining Bali-inspired subjects with an
"expressionistic" manner more unbridled than that of his mentor
-- probably an indirect influence of American "Action Painting".

What is interesting is the way Gunarsa dealt with ethnicity.
To the dancer's son that he is, shaped as much by the stories of
the puppet show theater as by formal schooling, the reference to
Bali was a must. Yet he never depicted Bali the way its visitors
want to see it -- in a descriptive, exotic manner. He painted
instead the Bali he "felt": dynamic, full of life.

Hence the swift drawings, the sudden brush strokes across the
canvas that embody the essence of a dance or puppet movement. His
works typically consist of a softly hued background on which are
drawn in swift lines the canvas-size figures of Balinese dancers
or wayang (shadow puppet) characters. Such a conjunction of
softness of color, etherealness of form and dynamism renders many
of these paintings magically appealing.

By shrouding the expression of Bali into a modern garb,
Gunarsa thus succeeded -- the first among Balinese artists -- to
make Balinese art accessible to a wide national and international
public. America, Europe, Hawaii, Australia, Southeast Asia, Japan
-- Gunarsa's international successes are too numerous to mention.

This success did not lead to him discarding what he thought
were his duties. He could have long ago given up his position as
lecturer at ASRI, a position he held since 1967. But he didn't
before 1994, believing that he owed something to his students.

So he stayed most of his career in Yogyakarta, where he
trained many of today's most famous Indonesian artists. It kept
him far from his beloved Bali, so he built a cultural bridge.

He was one of the founding members of the Sanggar Dewata
painters' association, which has now more than 300 members, all
related to Bali in one way or another. He also opened his first
museum the Contemporary Art Museum.

Now back in Bali, Nyoman Gunarsa is no man to rest on his
laurels. He still paints, more than ever. But it is just one of
his many activities. His main concern is to salvage Balinese
culture. Hence the attention he gives to the Museum of Balinese
Classical Painting, for which he has single-handedly gathered no
less than 400 paintings, some dating from the 18th century.

He feared that all classical Balinese paintings, which
narrates the epics and stories from the Balinese past, would
otherwise end up in foreigners' hands, thus letting the Balinese
with an image-less cultural memory.

To the extent that he has built the collection, this museum is
already a success. But he wants more. Not only does he purchase
all antiques he can put his hands on, but, as head of the Bali
Museum Association (Himusba), he would like to reorganize the
museums of the island.

"They should collaborate with one another," he says, "each
should specialize on certain periods, styles or content, so as to
avoid repeat."

He also dreams of publishing a systematic study of his
collection.

In ancient Balinese tradition, men who attained old age, as
they grew in wisdom, would withdraw from active life and
concentrate in the study of the scriptures. They would thus
prepare for Moksa -- the moment when the soul merges within
cosmic oneness.

Interestingly, the title of Gunarsa's last book -- he has
already published three -- is also Moksa. So, the artist, whose
attention to Balinese culture already bore witness to a yearning
for wisdom, is now focusing on ultimate meaning -- his works more
essentialist than ever.

Yet he remains the hectic Gunarsa. This is why I am sure that
when he was recently given Indonesia's highest cultural award,
the Satya Lencana Kebudayaan, he accepted it with a smile, before
bursting into laughter. May you enjoy your wisdom for a long time
to come, Nyoman!