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!