Museum Nyoman Gunsarsa

6th February, 2005, to N.G.M. - The Nyoman Gunarsa Museum, formerly the Museum Klasik Bali Maybe Sam Goldwyn and Nyoman Gunarsa never met, but these masters of modern-day chutzpah sure had a lot in common! Supreme Aries Artist Nyoman Gunarsa and his flamboyant wife Indrawati are Stranger in Paradise regulars — see ‘Appropriate Dressing’, Stranger in Paradise, September 2002 and ‘Behind the Shopping Section’, March 2004, for file photos — going back to my first trip to Central Java, in 1981, when I recorded the mayhem of their studio-home in Sleman, Yogyakarta. Gunarsa is now the Napoleon of modern Balinese art and museum—building; his wife a noble and ever-youthful Josephine. Over the past decade, Nyoman has survived a stroke, slander by Idanna Pucci in her new book and, the adoration of Claire Wolfowitz (the art-loving wife of super-hawk Paul). He has emerged as Bali’s most prominent artist. His museum, near his ancestral house on the outskirts of Klungkung, now occupies a huge 5 hectares with a three-storey museum full of classical Balinese art. There are expansive gardens, pavilions and ceremonial gates. Tonight I arrive in the main reception area, which is bedecked like Barbara Streisand’s wedding was (if it had been sponsored by Indomie). The perennials of Bali’s art world — Gung Rai, Suteja Neka, Made Bandem, Popo Danes — are all there, as is the Governor of Bali, and Taufik Wiraatmaja, the C.E.O. of Indonesia’s largest food manufacturer, Indofood, which is footing the bill for this most praiseworthy extravaganza. Nyoman is wearing a white and gold ensemble with a headdress that seems to be glittering like a Barong’s mud flaps. He is all pumped up — Michael Jackson meets Rambo sort of thing — as he leads us to the arena. We all stare in awe at the sky-sweeping lasers, the stage with N.G.M. in 4 metre-high letters, the crowd of 20,000 and Bali’s best Barongs and their attendant gamelan orchestras. It is a great night for Gunarsa: he has elevated the humble Barong dance to Nuremburgian scale. He deserves a medal (which is duly forthcoming when the Minister of Culture announces the award of Indonesia’s most prestigious cultural gong during his introductory speech). A single pin spot is playing on Gunarsa who sits, like Nero, in the front row. Will a white grand piano rise out of the stadium floor, we all wonder? The Noodle King gives a great speech about the good tsunami represented by Nyoman Gunarsa at the cutting edge of culture. The first Barong then struts and the audience sways — my faith in the survival of classical Balinese arts is restored.