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.

Revisiting Hanworth's Largest Outdoor Street Art Gallery 2020

It may not be the lanes of Melbourne or the east end of London, but I keep returning to the stunning work being produced in this outdoor space beside a crematorium in south west London.

Most appealing to me is the large number of artists incorporating characters into their work.

Some are far more reminiscent of cartoons than "traditional" graphotism with its elaborate sense of design.

 

Drawing with Russ Ep.2 - Light and Shade

The second part of our new series of web tutorials teaching the raw basics of drawing that pretty much anyone should be able to master.

Drawing with Russ Ep.1 - "I Can't Draw!"

My first YouTube tutorial, aimed at complete beginners, in which we explore how much you can convey with a stick man.

Anti-war Art

The creation of art that attempts to convey the sterile horror of war has a long history indeed.

Vasily Vereshchagin (1842-1904) was a Russian landscape painter of the nineteenth century and, for a time, an official war artist for the Russian army. His paintings often reflect his own direct experiences. 
He is often categorised as an anti-war artist because of the devastated landscapes he painted drew closely upon his own direct experiences, and were depicted in his distinctive crisp, unflinching classical realism. These paintings are like a "morning after" image, displaying the sterile destruction of life and civilisation that remains once the heat of battle has died down.

Vereshchagin dedicated 'The Apotheosis of War,' to "all great conquerors, past, present, and to come." It can be found today in the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow, which houses a great deal of his works. 'The Ruins of the Theatre in Chuguchak' (below) can be found in the Russian Museum in St Petersburg.
What makes paintings like these so powerful and disturbing to me is how often images like these have been repeated and recreated in the real world in the century and a half that has elapsed since their creation.

The lifelessness of Vereshchagin's landscapes are echoed by those of the British war artist of WW1 John Nash. The hideous mound of skulls in 'The Apotheosis of War' has been seen in the twentieth century too many times to count, perhaps most infamously and presciently in Cambodia of the 1970s.
In the last century we have seen the power of photography replace painting to convey the reality of war to the public. Think of those photographs of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which the Australian journalist Wilfred Burchett, who defied a ban on western reporters visiting the cities following the US atomic bombing, described as "a warning from history".
In the twenty-first century independent journalists like the British photojournalist Guy Smallman have produced similarly stark images on landscapes in Afghanistan. 
Others increasingly rely more on video, which can be easily distributed via social media to anyone with an Internet connection. For example, this footage shot by the British independent journalist Vanessa Beeley of Daraa al Balad in Syria I feel captures the same spirit of Vereshchagin's unblinking vision, which bears witness to our own inhumanity.

Today some of the best anti-war reportage is that which is created by the perpetrators themselves, and it is merely left to conscientious individuals to alert the general public to its existence, as US Army Private Manning did back in 2010.

Historietas y Tebeos - Comics in Mexico

Since the Spanish-speaking world covers everything from Spain itself to the whole of South and Central America that isn't Brazil or French Guyana, I am going to focus on the comics of one country for starters: Mexico.

When looking for the roots of Mexican satirical cartoons one place to begin may someone like the nineteenth century political lithographer Jose Guadalupe Posada (1852-1913). Posada's influence was of course not just confined to cartoonists but also extended to the wider culture, perhaps most notably to the muralists that emerged after the Mexican Revolution of 1910. 

Figures like Diego Rivera, Jose Clemente Orozco, David Alfaro Siqueiros and Fernando Leal, not mention the iconic surrealist painter Frida Kahlo, often referenced some of the same cultural iconography that Posada had popularised years earlier, and they certainly shared similar politics. 

One of Posada's iconic characters

A later artist to draw upon the political radicalism of Posada and the muralists was the cartoonist Eduardo del Rio (better known by his pen name Rius) (1934-2017). "Rius" created satirical comic strips in the 1960s like 'Los Agachados' as well as many books that reflected his left-wing sympathies and critique of the Catholic church, of which he was a member for many years. His 1981 book El manual del perfecto ateo (The Handbook for the Perfect Atheist) even got him excommunicated, while his history of the Catholic Church probably didn't help things either. Its called Pope Puree (which I understand is a kind of play on words of the Spanish term for "mashed potatoes"). 
Rius also carries the curious distinction of being the first author outside of the Soviet bloc to be published by Izvestia.

"Drugs: The U.S.A's Big Business"

(a cover for Los Agochados de Rius)

One of his most widely read books is Marx para principiantes (Marx for Beginners) which helped launch the whole "for beginners" genre.
Rius remained active for most of his life, helping launch the magazine El Chamuco in 1996 with other creators like El Fisgon, although sadly this version of the magazine folded in 2000 before its eventual re-launch in 2007. 

Art in El Salvador

I have to confess to a quite extensive ignorance, until very recently, of the rich artistic culture of the tiny Central American country of El Salvador. Above the main entrance of Westminster Abbey, here in London, there stands a rendition in stone of Archbishop Oscar Romero, who was assassinated on March 24 1980 by a CIA-backed death squad while saying mass, in the early stages of what would become a horrific, decade-long civil war.

So my abiding impression of this tiny country was one of darkness and pain.

What a delightful surprise it was, therefore, to discover the work of an artist like Fernando Llort, a Salvadoran artist who died only this year. Llort, described by some cultural institutions in the country as El Salvador's National Artist, produced bright, colourful, joyous paintings and murals, as well as a range of handicrafts. They have been described by some as reminiscent of the playfulness of Joan Miro.

Llort originally studied architecture before moving to Europe to continue his studies in theology in France and then Belgium, before settling on art while in the USA. To escape the tense political situation in the cities and large towns of his home country, Llort and a group of other artists moved to the town of La Palma, in the mountains up in the north of El Salvador, quite close to the border with Honduras.

Here they led a simple life, getting to know the landscape and people of the town well, and where Llort began to paint in the simple, two-dimensional primary colours he would later become synonymous with, where nature blends with day-to-day rural life. They carved handicrafts out of wood and sold them from their own Semilla de Dios (Seed of God) workshop, inspiring a local handicrafts movement, with many more cooperative workshops soon opening up in the local area.

Llort maintained his connections with the local handicrafts movement around La Palma even after he was forced to return to San Salvador.

You can see the work of Fernando Llort on his official website: https://www.fernando-llort.com