NOTES
Parts of this chapter were presented at the annual meeting of the Association for Asian Studies in Hawaii, April 1996, as part of a panel entitled “Past Forgetting: War and Revolution in Vietnamese Memory.” Some of the ideas formulated here are included in my dissertation, “The Artist and the State: The Politics of Painting and National Identity in Hanoi, Vietnam, 1925–1995” (Ph.D. diss., Cornell University, 1997). Research was conducted between January 1993 and August 1994 and was supported by the Social Science Research Council Southeast Asia Program, through grants from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, The Ford Foundation, and Fulbright-Hays. I wish to thank these institutions and the artists, art historians, and friends in Hanoi, too numerous to list, who made my research possible. I also thank Hjorleifur Jonsson, Neil Jamieson, and Hue-Tam Ho Tai for comments on earlier drafts of this chapter.
1. Nguyen Quan, Vietnamese Plastic Arts (Hanoi: NXB My Thuat, 1987); and Nguyen Quang Phong, Cac Hoa Si Truong Cao Dang My Thuat Dong Duong [Painters of the Indochina Art School] (Hanoi: NXB My Thuat, 1991). [BACK]
2. Tran Dinh Tho, “De Co nhung Tac Pham Nghe Thuat Tao Hinh Dam Da Tinh Chat Dan Toc” [“In Order for Works of Art to Have a Warm National Essence”], in Ve Tinh Dan Toc cua Nghe Thuat Tao Hinh [Concerning National Sentiment in Visual Arts], ed. Tran van Can (Hanoi: Culture Publishing House, 1973); see also Patricia Pelley's discussion of the origins of the “national essence” in Vietnamese history in her “Writing Revolution: The New History in Post-colonial Vietnam” (Ph.D. diss., Cornell University, 1993). [BACK]
3. Tran Dinh Tho, “De Co nhung Tac Pham,” 6. [BACK]
4. Ha Xuan Truong as quoted by Tran Van Can in Ve Tinh Dan Toc, 9. [BACK]
5. Tran Van Can, Ve Tinh Than Dan Toc, 11. [BACK]
6. See, for example, Nguyen Do Cung's essay in the same volume cited in note 2. [BACK]
7. Personal communication, conversation with Le Thi Kim Bach, December 1993. [BACK]
8. Truong Chinh, “Marxism and Vietnamese Culture,” in Selected Writings (Hanoi: Foreign Language Publishing House, 1977). [BACK]
9. Cited in Cu Huy Can, Culture et politique culturelle en Re´publique socialiste du Viet Nam [Culture and Political Culture in the Socialist Republic of Vietnam] (Paris: UNESCO, 1985); and personal communication, Thai Ba Van, art historian in Hanoi, November 1993. [BACK]
10. Truong Chinh, “Marxism and Vietnamese Culture.” [BACK]
11. For more indepth discussions on the intellectual debate over “art for art's sake,” see Georges Boudarel, Cent fleurs e´closes dans la nuit du Vietnam: Communisme et dissidence, 1954–1956 (Paris: Jacques Bertoin, 1991); and Hirohide Kurihara, “Changes in the Literary Policy of the Vietnamese Workers'
12. Information on Nguyen Sy Ngoc was given to me by his daughter Nguyen Minh Huong, April 1994. [BACK]
13. The Chinese “Hundred Flowers” movement was eventually repressed as well. For further discussion on the cultural situation in China during this time, see Julia Andrews, Painters and Politics in the People's Republic of China, 1949–1979 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1994). [BACK]
14. Personal communication, conversation with Nguyen Minh Huong, April 1994. [BACK]
15. Truong Chinh, “Marxism and Vietnamese Culture.” [BACK]
16. I am grateful to Duong Tuong for his stories about the process of criticism of artists'works. Truong Chinh, in his “conditions” for the realization of a work of art, mentions that all artists must determine the audience for its creation and test the works by the reaction of the masses. Truong Chinh, “Marxism and Vietnamese Culture.” [BACK]
17. Information on Nguyen Sang was given to me by Phan Cam Thuong, art historian and professor of art history and theory at the Hanoi University of Fine Arts, April 1994. [BACK]
18. My information on the discussions that took place at the fourth Arts Association congress stem from secondhand sources. As a foreigner, I was not admitted to the meetings. Participants, however, periodically convened outside the assembly hall and reported to me and other uninvited enthusiasts on the debates taking place inside. [BACK]
19. Jeffrey Hantover, “Bui Xuan Phai,” in Bui Xuan Phai, ed. Nguyen Quan (Ho Chi Minh City: HCMC Arts Association [Hoi My Thuat T. P. Ho Chi Minh], 1992). [BACK]
20. I am most grateful to Viet Hai, director of the 7 Hang Khay Street Gallery, for his numerous anecdotes about Bui Xuan Phai during the fall of 1993. [BACK]
21. There is some discrepancy in the exact dates of the banning of coffee-houses among the people I spoke to during my field research. Nguyen Van Lam himself cites a ten-year period, but others have said that was an exaggeration on his part; the coffeehouses, according to them, were closed for only a few years in the early 1960s. Conversations with Nguyen Van Lam during the summer of 1993 and subsequent conversations with Duong Tuong during the fall of 1993. [BACK]
22. Nora Taylor, “Masterpieces by the Cup: Top Art Collection Hangs in Streetside Cafe,” Vietnam Investment Review, no. 129 (March 21–27, 1994):27. [BACK]
23. Jeffrey Hantover, Uncorked Soul: Contemporary Art from Vietnam (Hong Kong: Plum Blossoms, 1991), 41; and Thai Ba Van in Bui Xuan Phai in the Collection of Tran Hau Tuan, ed. Nguyen Quan (Hanoi: Red River Publishing House), 1991. [BACK]
24. I am particularly grateful to Mai Thuy Ngoc for all her stories about Hanoi during the war and in the years following it. [BACK]
25. His wife has used the word criticized when she mentioned the Arts Association's
26. Marshall Berman, All That Is Solid Melts into Air (New York: Penguin, 1982). [BACK]
27. T. J. Clark, The Painting of Modern Life (Princeton N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1984), 10. [BACK]
28. Information on Duong Bich Lien was given to me by his nextdoor neighbor and close friend, Nguyen Hao Hai, author of several articles on the painter. [BACK]
29. Information on the price of the painting was given to me by Nguyen Van Lam and confirmed by Viet Hai, director of the 7 Hang Khay Street Gallery in Hanoi, December 1993. [BACK]
30. For the past several years, Chinese artists have formed a movement in reaction to official art commonly called “cynical realism,” or “Maopop.” The movement is aimed at poking fun at utopian images of Communist Party leaders and commenting on the working class's lack of education. See, for example, Andrew Solomon, “Their Irony, Humor (and Art) Can Save China,” New York Times Magazine, December 19, 1993. [BACK]
31. I am grateful to Nguyen Dang Che and Nguyen Dang Dung of Dong Ho village for information on the situation with folk arts. [BACK]
32. Nguyen Quan and Phan Cam Thuong, My Thuat o Lang [Art in the Village] (Hanoi: NXB My Thuat, 1991). [BACK]
33. Personal communication, interview with Nguyen Tu Nghiem, April 1994. [BACK]
34. See William Rubin, Primitivism in XXth Century Art: Affinity of the Tribal and the Modern (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1984). [BACK]
35. Hantover, Uncorked Soul. [BACK]
36. Vu Huyen, “Notes on the 1990 National Arts Exhibition,” Vietnamese Studies 3 (1990): 100–102. [BACK]
37. Thomas McEvilley's comments on the Museum of Modern Art's Primitivism in XXth Century Art: “Doctor, Lawyer, Indian Chief,” in his Art and Otherness: Crisis in Cultural Identity (New York: Documentext, 1992), 27–56. [BACK]