[DU* A^M]CONTEMPORARY ART IN VIETNAM

[Anthony Duc Le]

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ant...@uclink2.berkeley.edu or du...@uclink4.berkeley.edu

DU* A^M: VIETNAMESE-AMERICAN INDEPENDENT PRESS
SPRING 1997. COPYRIGHT

“Contemporary Vietnamese Art Is The Child of History” Jeffrey Hantover

BY ANNIE NAM HA DO

Appropriation of historical and social dilemmas by Vietnamese
artists arrives at a highly individual and diverse discourse of painting.
It is interesting to understand Vietnamese modern art in its full
contextual relationship to historical, social, economical, and cultural
perspectives. In this way, one senses how Vietnamese artists are able to
fuse Western art methodology from European classical masters and
contemporary art trends with a personal evocation of Vietnamese
traditions and experiences.
Obviously, the birth of modernism in Vietnam differs substantially
from the Western world’s introduction to modern art practices. Influenced
by centuries of invasion and exchange from nearby Southeast Asian counties
such as Burma, Thailand, Indonesia as well as India and China, ancient
Vietnamese art consists of numerous artifacts that combine these
influences with an indigenous manner. Likewise, extraction of Western
contemporary art principles enables a Vietnamese artist to produce his/her
individual style. Yet oddly, the fact that Vietnamese contemporary
artists have had to rely on external influences seems to place them on a
secondary tier. Australian art historian John Clark gives a historical
explanation for derogatory Western attitudes towards contemporary Asian
art:

..because many parts of Asia...were forced to redefin themselves
via their reaction or contact with, and often depredation at the hands of
an “other,” the forms of modernity its cultures adapted seemed to many
Euramericans to be derivative, secondary, disingenius, and inauthentic.

It is not surprising that some people feel indifferently or even
negatively about Asian art. What these viewers neglect to perceive is the
effect that an “autonomous cultural” effort to adopt, develop, and
re-position Western techniques can contribute to a highly sophisticated
pastiche.
Vietnamese culture has long been misunderstood and ignored by the
Western world. Prior to the American involvement in Vietnam, most people
had no inkling of where Vietnam was geographically located. Also, because
Vietnam was introduced to the Western world in such a negative context
perhaps it only propagated a more stigmatized impression. Only recently
has a conscious effort to establish a more progressive relationship with
the Western world allowed for a cultural understanding between the two
worlds. Still, it is difficult for Western viewers to evaluate Vietnamese
contemporary painting without a biased (Western) code of assessment.
Hence, Vietnamese art should be analyzed through various historical,
cultural, and economic contexts.
The art of the Western world was virtually unknown to Vietnamese
artists prior to the early twentieth century because art practice was
based solely on folk, religious, and high court art. French colonialism
from 1885 brought about the establishment of the Ecole des Beaux Arts de
l’Indochine in Hanoi in 1925.
Based on the presumption that “the Vietnamese as a race were not
capable of being artists, the purpose of the school was to train
Vietnamese craftsman who would then export their handicrafts back to
France.” However, this premise was contested by a self-conscious class
of artists who graduated from the art school before it was forced to close
in 1945 by a Japanese coup against the French. Not only were Western
concepts in technique, stylization, and media introduced to Vietnamese
artists, but also the idea of painting as a recognized profession was
brought into context. Along with these foreign ideas grew confidence
amongst the trained artists. A modernist approach to re-interpreting
Vietnamese traditions emerged. Perhaps the most influential painter to
have graduated from the Institute was Nguyen Tu Nghiem (b.1922).
Accordingly, “Nguyen went beyond the realism and symbolism ...” introduced
to him in formal training “...by returning to the motifs and style found
in Vietnamese pagodas, temples, and antique porcelain.” To Hantover,
Nguyen was the first painter to turn to traditional sources to shape a
modern Vietnamese art. In his 1977 painting “Rooster and Hen,” the
viewer is introduced to a motif he uses frequently--the twelve animals of
the zodiac. Solid, bold colors are distinguished by thick, black lines.
Nguyen felt that providing details was secondary to creating an art that
“describe[s] the whole..feeling and emotion of objects and events.”
Vietnam’s most famous artist, Bui Xuan Phai (b.1921-d.1988) was
also trained at the Institute. Like his contemporary Nguyen, Bui was
interested in proving that Vietnamese artists were able to produce works
that could even excel the art found in Europe. His involvement in a
movement for political and cultural freedom in the late ‘50’s resulted in
his ban from teaching at the Hanoi College of Fine Arts. Part of his
popularity amongst the Vietnamese stems from the romanticized hardships he
has gone through as a suffering artist. Bui often had to exchange his
artwork for food and painted on whatever material that was available to
him- matchboxes, newspapers, cardboard, or old schoolbooks. Bui’s more
popular subjects included Hanoi street scenes and scenes from Vietnamese
opera theater (cheo). Artist Nguyen Quan describes Bui’s ability to
“seduce” viewers “..by his interior worlds, his personal vision.”
Both of these important artists were among the first formally
trained with Western ideals. Yet instead of exclusively embracing
Western methodology, both sought to create Vietnamese art with a modernist
flavor.
Since the partition the North and South in 1954, Northern and
Southern artists had been painting in divergent paths. In the North,
“..Ho Chi Minh chided artists for subject matter distinct from the
“reality of everyday life ... Nudes, still lifes and abstraction were at
best frivolous and self-absorbed, at worst subversive acts against the
Revolution.” Whereas in the South, artists were able to experiment with
the “currents of twentieth century Western art. Cubism, futurism, and
abstraction could all be found in
the flourishing gallery scene of Saigon in the 1960’s and 1970’s.” In
the later 60’s, an independent group of artists created the Young
Painter’s Association in Saigon. These artists were able to enjoy a more
expansive exploration of art. One of the founders of this group was Ho
Thanh Duc. Ho was known for his use of collage, which stemmed from a
poverished background. “Without money for paints, [Ho] took labels from
cigar boxes or tore up the magazines that had colors he needed and
transferred the visual effects of these small bits of color to his lacquer
work.” One senses that this technique would have been too “frivolous”
for the more repressed artists in the North. The Northern and Southern
artists were turning in different paths in modernist painting. However,
artistic development changed when the Vietnam War began.
To maintain patriotic sentiment during the Vietnam War and to
encourage art practice in general during the war, the Viet Cong military
held art classes in underground trenches. At this time, artists involved
in the Communist revolution were exclusively encouraged to focus on
patriotic themes. The end of the Vietnam War in 1975 resulted in the
Communist takeover of the whole country. It may be appropriate to
recognize that the Communist government was directly responsible for a
sort of “artistic standstill.” Artists who were assumed to have
rebellious tendencies were arrested and sometimes detained in
“re-education” camps, which were actually facilities that humiliated and
dehumanized detainees in oftentimes torturous circumstances.
“Propagandist social realist art agendas were imposed” and “cultural army
units” were formed to enforce and ban artistic involvement in
“unpatriotic themes.” When the South fell to the Northern government, many
citizens were fleeing the country as refugees. Consequently, many
Vietnamese citizens have been emigrating to western countries since then.
Among the artists who were able to emigrate was Do Yen Ha. Mrs.
Do, with her husband and three sons, left Vietnam in 1975. The processes
of assimilation prevented Mrs. Do from furthering her artistic goals until
a few yeas ago. Juggling the responsibilities as a mother and career
woman, there was virtually “...no time left to paint,” she says. “Now that
my children have their own careers and lives, I’ve found a new sense of
liberation and stability that I’ve never felt before.”
Likewise in Vietnam, painter Trinh Kim Vinh feels that female
artists are faced with many external pressures that stem from traditional
cultural expectations. Trinh contends that there exists many obstacles
and “..a lot of difficulties for women artists. I had to raise my three
children while my husband was in the battlefield. But I raised them and
painted too. When I went somewhere to paint, my children went with me.”
In Vietnamese households, women are expected to raise their children in a
socially “correct” manner, take care of the household , and even provide
income.
Yet aside from these setbacks, both women are able to work for
their artistic fufillments. Mrs.Do exhibits her oil paintings at a
community gallery in San Jose. Mrs. Trinh teaches painting at the School
of Fine Arts in Ho Chi Minh City and creates lithographs. Thus, it is
necessary to consider the differences in social expectations that
Vietnamese artists face.
With the Sixth Party Congress’ announcement of “Doi Moi” or
“Renovation” in 1986 and recent economic advancements, Vietnamese artists
have been exposed to more opportunities. The first abstract show held in
May 1992 enabled artists to exhibit paintings that they had previously
only been able to show to family and close friends.
Artist Dinh Y Nhi exemplifies the outcrop of new generation
artists who are able to enjoy more artistic freedom than the generation
before them. For economic reasons, Nhi paints with gouache on paper. The
physical fragility of her works echoes the sensitive subject matter that
she paints. Nhi’s paintings are mostly in black and white, a technique
that she says helps her to “look for simplicity in [her] paintings.”
Child-like stick figures are warped and elongated, often painted
stylistically but with individualistic features. Nhi combines a mixture
of the real and imaginary in her haunting portraits.
The correlation between the new generation artists and the
artists of the Young Painters Association of the 60’s is apparent. Both
movements suggest a return to individualism and exploritative
expressionism, rather than a collaborated social vision. In a less
politically tense environment, artists are not demanded by the government
to create social realist works.
Another perspective to consider when evaluating the integrity of
Vietnamese contemporary art is how Western theories influence or affect
artists and their interpretation. Clark argues that a Western viewer may
“..arrive at more open codes for the interpretation of Modernism” through
contemporary Asian art. This occurs when one realizes that
“..post-modernism which in Euramerica is the extension and critical
relativization of Modernism, is doubly relativised in Asia..” In other
words, a sort of post-post modernism can be derived in Asia because post
modernism itself would be criticized.
The sentiment that Vietnamese contemporary art is only a derived
version of Western modern art is demeaning and wrong. Preconceived
notions of Vietnamese culture is partly responsible for the negative views
that many Westerners have. C. David Thomas, founder of the Indochina Arts
Association(IAP), was also curator of the 1988 exhibit entitled “As Seen
By Both Sides.” Referring to the purpose of the show, Thomas said that he
“..wanted to show the Americans that the Vietnamese got haircuts too- that
they were just like us.” The allusion that the Vietnamese are barbaric
peasants who do not cut their hair is completely outrageous--an idea that
perhaps was propagated by negative exposure that the country received
during the American-Vietnam War. Another example of ill-derived
perceptions was articulated in a travel guidebook to Vietnam written by
the Lonely Planet Publishers:

There is a noticeable tendency now to produce nude
paintings..which might
indicate ...an expression of long-surpressed kinky desires.

Although it is true that nudes are perhaps too rampant in Vietnam, it is
debasing to assume the above opinion. A more reasonable explanation would
be derived from economic desires. Throughout history, Vietnamese artists
have been able to utilize outside influences to create an indigenous art
form. In the late twentieth century, Vietnamese contemporary artists
continue to amalgamate outside influences with a “personal vision” to
further explore the realms of painting.

Annie Nam Ha Do is a third year student in the Integrated Biology and
Art History departments at the University of California, Berkeley.