Expat Chic: A Commentary
the Times
The expatriates who lived in Ubud during the 1930s were a handful
of patrician, serious minded people - composers, painters and
scholars - whose work helped reveal to the world the beauty and
complexity of Balinese culture. The expatriate residents of today
are a swarm of hedonists and businessmen restaurateurs, jewelers
and film-makers rather more into marketing the culture than in
understanding it. Nonetheless, standards of cultural chic set
over 50 years ago are still being maintained.
Expatriate chic in Ubud began with people like Jane Belo - the
American anthropologist and observer of ritual trance - and Walter
Spies, the German painter, musician and dilettante par excellence.
Spies' charm was legendary, and anyone of any importance who came
to Bali in the 1930s came to visit him. His lifestyle was irresistibly
chic.
Cokorda Agung Sukawati, Ubud's ruling prince, granted Spies permission
to build' a house in Campuan. His double-story villa with outbuildings
and swimming pool later became the Tjampuhan Hotel, and must have
been wonderful fifty years ago. Spies had many Balinese dancer
and musician friends and could command astonishing performances
to entertain his guests. He and painter Rudolf Bonnet worked closely
with local artists and helped them sell their paintings to visitor
Above all, Spies had an impressive knowledge of the culture and
geography of Bali, as well as the affection of the local people
he thus made the perfect tour guide.
Spies' example attracted other Europeans to Bali to paint, to
compose and to study. Ubud soon became an outpost of artistic
and intellectual activity - as well as a glamorous stop on the
luxury liner circuit. Cokorda Agung Sukawati was a cosmopolitan
man who enjoyed foreign guests and made them welcome in the palace,
setting an irreversible precedent for tourism in Ubud.
By the time of the Cokorda's death in 1978, Bali had opened its
curly gates to the budget travelers of the world. Young Australians
by the thousands helped to make Kuta what it is - whatever it
is - today; and a new generation of Kuta expatriates fluttered
down to settle around Ubud. They built themselves little bamboo
huts out in the rice field (or next to the cemetery or wherever
else the. Balinese wouldn't dream of living) and furnished them
with batik curtains, little cushions and wobbly bamboo furniture.
These expats of the 1970s were back-to-earth mystics who wanted
nothing more than to become Balinese. They strove to dance like
the Balinese, play the gamelan like the Balinese, speak Balinese
like the Balinese, even get sick like the Balinese (fashionable
illnesses were supposed to be caused by black magic). They didn't
really try to paint like the Balinese, but they understood, like
Spies, that the painting was charming, and marketable.
Who were these new expatriates? Some were artists and scholars.
Others were would-be artists and drop-out scholars. The physically
and mentally ill also found a haven here: poet-inebriates; convalescents
of disease and divorce; the freshly-bereaved or newly-fired -
all sorts of people at odds with their fate came to Ubud for a
tropical-pastoral lullaby, and many found new vocations.
Some became amateur anthropologists in the emerging field of "Baliology."
(Say you are an amateur anthropologist and you get a grant to
write a thesis on "Patterns of Courtship in Central Bali"
- all you have to do is have lots of dates with Balinese of the
sex of your preference and keep a diary. If you can't get dates,
you can make a list of a lot of impertinent questions and pay
a student to go around the neighborhood collecting the answers.
This leaves you plenty of time to set up house, meet friends for
lunch at the Cafe Lotus, and research courtship patterns in Candi
Dasa.)
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