The Art of Vietnam

Tô Ngọc Vân, who also used the name "To Tu" (1908-1954), corresponded with the Spanish Cubist and exiled communist Pablo Picasso. In one of his most famous paintings Ha Noi's Standing Up (1946), completed shortly after the August Revolution and President Ho Chi Minh's official declaration of independence, he referenced the well-known song The People of Ha Noi by Nguyen Dinh Thi.

Girl with Lotus Flower by Tô Ngọc Vân

If you are a westerner reading this you may be forgiven for not being aware of this artist or his work. The art of the decolonising world is rarely a focus, if it is even mentioned at all, in western art history. Western art history books, of which I own several, will more commonly focus on the products of ancient cultures that have found there way into western museums and galleries. There is also a studied indifference to the art of cultures allied with official enemies of the west during the Cold War period. This is our loss.

The book Marxism and Vietnamese Culture by Truong Chinh, who was at that time the Minister of Culture, had a big influence on the development of a uniquely Vietnamese form of Socialist Realism in the years immediately after independence.

Ta Ty (1922-2004) experimented with more Modernist and Cubist forms, often bordering on caricature, during the years of the independence war against France. Working from some of the "resistance zones" in the north of the country was an experience that informed paintings like Longing for Ha Noi (1947).

Other artists who lived in the resistance zones were Bùi Xuân Phái (1920-1988) and Nguyen Tu Nghiem (b.1922), the former bringing a more Impressionist influence in contrast to Ta Ty's modernism. A major exhibition that took place in 1948 also saw the participation of Van Cao (1923-1995). A veritable Renaissance man of post-colonial Vietnamese culture, he would also become a noted composer.

Support from the Soviet Union was critical at this time, and extended to the cultural sphere following the French defeat at the battle of Dien Bien Phu. The mid-1950s saw a total of 91 Vietnamese students allowed to travel to the USSR to develop their craft, with Bui Xuan Phai even awarded the Leipzig Graphics Award from the government of the GDR, a country that also provided critical assistance in the rebuilding of heavily bombed cities like Vinh following the American War.

I hope this short overview will inspire people to research more deeply into a world so often ignored by mainstream western art history.

The 20th Century Art History of the East

Bolshevik by Boris Kustodiev

 One of the interesting things about looking at the Socialist Realist artists of the former Soviet Union, in contrast to the art being promoted in the "free world" during the same period (be it Surrealism or Abstract Expressionism all the way down to Conceptualism) is both the high level of technical skill and the unambiguous meaning imbued into every canvas, which needs no priestly caste of art critics to interpret "what the artist may be trying to say" for the benefit of us, the great unwashed masses.
    In fact, such a comparison is rarely (if ever) made by establishment art critics or historians in the west. Even the most revolutionary elements contained within the art of those working outside the socialist world (such as Picasso, Rivera, Kahlo or Siquieros), artists who were openly sympathetic to the cause, are often either explained away or passed over in conspicuous silence.

    Consider the clear and obvious meaning of such revolutionary works as Bolshevik by Boris Kustodiev (1878-1927) (above) or New Planet by Konstantin Yuon (1875-1958), both of which powerfully convey the world-changing excitement that came in the wake of the October Revolution of 1917 for so many people in Russia and the labour movement beyond. We can only imagine, over a century later, how it must have felt to witness the creation of the first worker's and peasant's state in history. 

    Contrast works like these with much of the work produced in Europe or North America since then (collectively described as "the west"), from the paint splatters of Pollock, to the endless soup tins of Warhol, to Hirst's dead animals, what we are left with is a western vision which to the average eye often appears so vapid and hollow that I am reminded of that line from Shakespeare's Hamlet:

    "It is a tale told by a madman, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."

A better description of the profit-obsessed individualism of late capitalism that brought about such sterile art movements as conceptualism would be difficult to find.

New Planet by Konstantin Yuon

    This is not to say that there is no value in leaving viewers to draw their own conclusions from a piece of abstract or conceptual art. Of course there is. The Australian artist Brett Whiteley is notable for working with both abstract and representational forms, while utilizing a stylistic approach that blends expressionism with Chinese landscape art.

    The primary point to remember is that there is little value (or freedom, for that matter) in routinely dismissing an entire genre of art that influenced millions of people around the world simply for ideological reasons. 

    

The Surrealists posed as madmen and women by taking their inspiration from the chaotic of dreams and children's games. The exception perhaps being artists such as the Mexican muralists, who by virtue of being based in what is now called the global south created a kind of cultural bridge between east and west, by blending the personal, dreamlike imagery of surrealism with the clear yearning for human progress embodied by socialism.

    By the 1940s and 50s the free form chaos of Abstract Expressionism was very much in vogue, covertly funded or promoted by the CIA through cut-outs like the Congress for Cultural Freedom (whose freedom?), seemingly as a representation of the apparent artistic freedom to be found for any emigres in the west. 

    It would be disingenuous to dismiss some of the restrictions that affected artists working in the USSR at this time. These ideological constraints within the socialist countries can only partially be explained by the mass mobilization for WW2, as the attempt to build a new world had a big influence in what themes are deemed acceptable, as it is in most cultures. To dismiss the entirely of the work being produced in Eurasia as propaganda however causes us to miss a great deal of talented and fascinating work. From the influence of Constructivism and Impressionism on the Socialist Realists, there was often more stylistic and thematic diversity than we are led to believe by western art historians.

    

Collective Farm Festival by Sergey Gerasimov

Sometimes those who had trouble fitting in with the party line of Moscow were simply sent to the outer reaches of the Soviet Union, such as the painter and teacher Sergey Gerasimov (1885-1964), who found himself sent to the ancient trading town of Samarkand in the Uzbek SSR. Here he would produce some of his most famous paintings of the old city, while artists native to Central Asia displayed their own unique colour palette inspired by the landscapes and the quality of light that illuminated them.