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4. Framing the National Spirit

Viewing and Reviewing Painting
under the Revolution

Nora A. Taylor

Paintings, like monuments and memorials, serve as sites of commemoration in the form of portrayals of historic events or illustrious war heroes. In Vietnam, the National Museum of Fine Arts abounds with paintings depicting legendary battles against Chinese invaders and portraits of soldiers preparing to fight the enemy. Until recently, these paintings, and the artists who painted them, were given more prominence in exhibition spaces, galleries, and museums than paintings whose subject matter bore no visible relation to the revolutionary cause. These paintings and their artists were the Vietnamese art world's counterpart to war memorials and revolutionary heroes described in Shaun Malarney's chapter in this volume.

This chapter will not dwell on the obvious relationship between these paintings and commemorative monuments. Rather, it will focus on the shift that has occurred in art historical memory since the launching of the Doi Moi reforms in the late 1980s from the artgoing public's emphasis on revolutionary period paintings and artists who served the nation in war to artists who did not participate in state politics. In illustrating how the politics of memory have penetrated the art world and how the recent trend toward the marketing of art has informed the way people think about art in Vietnam, this chapter will join issues raised in Christoph Giebel's analysis of Ton Duc Thang's commemorative shrine and Laurel Kennedy and Mary Rose Williams's discussions of the revised view of Vietnam's past to suit the needs of international tourism.

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As in other socialist countries, the government of Vietnam spent much of the second half of the twentieth century promoting artworks that reflected communist ideology. Founded in 1957, the Vietnamese Artists'Association (Hoi Nghe Si Tao Hinh) was aimed at creating a national artistic workforce that would produce art to serve the propaganda needs of the government. Although hardly as large in number of artists or in the creative output as in China and the Soviet Union, the Vietnamese art community grew substantially during the years of hardline Marxist-Leninist policies, between 1954 and 1986. As in the Soviet Union and China, the artists who complied with the criteria set out by the government-sponsored artists'unions were favored in the eyes of the state. In addition to the preferential treatment they received, their works were also made more visible to the public in the form of posters, stamps, calendars, and newspaper illustrations. Likewise, those artists who chose to stay out of the unions or were rejected by the authorities received little attention. And similarly, more recently, as in Russia and China, the Vietnamese artists who have been receiving the greatest amount of attention since the government loosened its control on artistic production and allowed artists to sell their works in the open market are those who never participated in state propaganda campaigns.

Although comparisons with China and Soviet Russia are tempting, it is not the point of this chapter to discuss changes that occur when socialist institutions collapse in favor of the international art market. In Vietnam, the transition from a socialist to a market economy is neither as clear nor as straightforward as in Russia or China. Unlike in Russia, for instance, the socialist institutions set up in the 1950s are still in place; the shift in attitudes toward art and the selection of artists displayed in public exhibitions is not due simply to the transfer from official to non-official artists. Unlike in China, the artists now favored in art galleries are not necessarily reacting against their socialist realist predecessors. While China's new artistic stars are denouncing Mao through their paintings, no artist in Vietnam has so far cared to challenge Ho Chi Minh's supremacy in the public eye. In focusing solely on Vietnamese art, this chapter will suggest that this particular situation—although related to what is happening in Russia and China—has more to do with what is going on inside the Vietnamese politics of art historiography and memory than with a transition from socialism to democracy.

The case of a group of painters who have been selected by the new generation of art critics, collectors, and art aficionados as the forerunners of contemporary Vietnamese painting illustrates how memory in

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the art field is as socially constructed as it is elsewhere in Vietnamese national consciousness. The artgoing public, which includes collectors and noncollectors of art, artists, and nonartists, views this select group of painters as enablers of how they “feel” about their country. Their view is in opposition to the one offered by the state, which advocates socialist realism as the “correct” way to represent the nation's feelings. Socialist realism, a movement that originated in Stalinist Russia, was intended to embody the values of Marxist-Leninist-style socialism. It advocated art for the masses and pushed for artists to portray “positive” views of workers and peasants to convey the ideals of the proletarian class. In Vietnam, socialist realism was equated with patriotism, and works that depicted soldiers, farmers, and laborers were considered de facto “patriotic.” This equation of art with nationalism is not just formulated by the state. Many Vietnamese have described paintings as beautiful because they display what they consider to be accurate signs of what is “Vietnamese.” This would indicate that art has long been considered an appropriate vehicle for nationalism. But the public view of what is “Vietnamese” is different from the state view. The public has in a sense chosen to “forget” the state view and “remember” instead those artists who display none of the state criteria for nationalistic art.

THE CREATION OF A “NATIONAL
REVOLUTIONARY PAINTING” TRADITION

Westernstyle painting, or oil painting on canvas as it is known in the West, first appeared in Vietnam at the turn of the twentieth century, during the French colonial period, when artists came to Indochina from the me´tropole with their easels and palettes to paint the “exotic” Asian landscape. Victor Tardieu (1867–1937), an artist who had won a competition for painting a mural at the Universite´ Indochinoise in Hanoi, decided to establish an art academy in the colony to train local artists and artisans to become professional painters. In 1925, the Ecole des Beaux Arts d'Indochine (EBAI) was founded, and some twenty students enrolled. Most of the students were from local upperclass educated Hanoi families. A couple of students came from Cambodia and Laos, along with a few colonial residents. Classes in composition, anatomy, perspective, painting, and drawing were held in conjunction with a few classes in “indigenous” arts, painting on lacquer and silk.

The EBAI remained open until the 1945 Japanese coup against the French colonial government forced it to close down. Over the course of

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its twenty years of operation, it graduated 160 students, many of whom continued to paint throughout their lifetime; some became Vietnam's bestknown artists. When the school closed in 1945, one of its first graduates and subsequent professors, To Ngoc Van (1906–54, student at the EBAI from 1926 to 1931), decided to reopen it in the hills of Viet Bac, north of Hanoi, at the seat of the revolutionary army. There the school changed its purpose and scope. Young artists were recruited to turn art into a propaganda tool for the revolutionary army. The school became known as the Resistance Class (Khoa Khang Chien). Besides drawing and composition, students studied philosophy, politics, and the fundamentals of Marxism-Leninism. They held daily meetings to discuss art's role in society. Workshops were created for designing posters, stamps, currency, and other visual emblems for the new government.

The painters who followed To Ngoc Van to Viet Bac fell into two groups. In one were those who had already graduated from the EBAI prior to its closing and enlisted in the army out of patriotic duty serving as illustrators and/or revolutionary fighters. The second group consisted of painters who had not yet begun to study painting and, having joined the revolution, decided to study art simultaneously. The students who studied art in Viet Bac for the first time were given a diploma with the emblem of the Khoa Khang Chien.

The new school remained in operation for nine years. In 1954, after the victory over the French at Dien Bien Phu and the establishment of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, it reopened in Hanoi. From 1954to 1986, the thirtysome artists who graduated from this class were seen as having contributed some of the most important works of art in the history of Vietnamese modern painting. They were accorded recognition on a par with the soldiers who fought in battle, given certificates of praise, and, in the case of To Ngoc Van himself, awarded the title of “revolutionary hero” (anh hung). To Ngoc Van died of injuries he suffered at the battle of Dien Bien Phu and was subsequently honored as a “revolutionary martyr” who sacrificed his life (hi sinh) for the revolutionary cause. Concurrently, his contemporaries named him Vietnam's greatest artist. However, the current generation of artists and art critics claim he was given the title not so much for his artistic talent but, rather, for having died fighting for his country.

For nearly four decades, the Resistance Class painters produced paintings of soldiers, combat heroes, women warriors, and the good deeds of the army along with more conventionally patriotic landscapes and rural scenes. These works, intended to be accessible to the masses,

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were visible everywhere, not only in state art exhibitions, art publications, and journals but also on stamps, posters, and calendars. From 1954 until 1990, these painters were the most well known artists, and virtually all textbooks and art histories of Vietnamese painting until 1990 have focused on them.^[1] Such a monopoly on the orientation of painting was connected to the role that artists were given in society and the administrative structure that controlled their livelihood. The Arts Association was founded in 1957 as a subbranch of the Ministry of Culture and ruled by an executive committee elected by members of the association. Any artist could join if he or she fulfilled the requirements of submitting works to a jury and paying a small membership fee. Joining the Arts Association had many advantages. In a society lacking an art market, it provided the desired exposure to other artists'works, possibilities for exhibiting in the national museums—the only outlet for selling a work of art during that time—and abroad. The association seemed to be egalitarian in principle, offering possibilities for all artists to exhibit their work when, in fact, the selection of works was based on predetermined criteria. These criteria became the cause of disputes by the current generation of artists at the 1994 Arts Association congress.

The changes advocated by the current generation of artists in Vietnam are more easily understood if we examine the origins of the criteria created by the National Arts Association for selecting works of art worthy of the label “heroic,” “revolutionary,” or “national.” The selection the artists who were to receive the greatest exposure in the public eye was based primarily on political affiliation or personal participation in the nation's struggles against foreign imperialism. But several thematic and stylistic criteria were also established to determine the acceptability of the works of art to be displayed in public exhibitions. One of these revolved around the question of “national character” (tinh dan toc). The term was first used by Ho Chi Minh around the time of the August Revolution in 1945 to define the goals of the cultural policies established by the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. Ho Chi Minh had wanted art and literature to express the spirit of the Vietnamese people. He used the expression dan toc, meaning “nationality,” “nation,” or “national,” to describe the people of Vietnam, and the phrases tinh dan toc and van hoa dan toc to describe the “national character” and the “national culture” of the Vietnamese people.^[2] The term was again used in the context of literature to define that which best expressed the qualities that the prevalent political discourse desired to associate with the nation or “Vietnameseness.” In the visual arts, it was coined by the Communist

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Party in a pamphlet submitted to the second Arts Association congress in 1962, which stated that art must reflect the essence of both the past and present struggles of the people against imperialism and feudalism.^[3]

Artists did not always grasp the concept of “national character.” Nor did cultural politicians define it in clear terms. Consequently, many artists chose to ignore this issue, leaving it to the viewer or the judges at the national art exhibitions to decide whether their work contained national character. Still, they were obligated to include aspects of what they perceived to be an acceptable theme or style in their work in order to receive recognition from the Arts Association.

In 1962, at the second congress of the Arts Association, an attempt was made to define the components of national character to provide specific guidelines for artists to follow in the making of their artworks. No concise definition was drawn, but the general parameters of the issue were made clear. According to one definition, “national character is the way of life and expression of a community of people who live together over long periods of time.”^[4] Elsewhere, it was described as the “most natural element that constitutes humankind. So natural, in fact, that it defies all definition.”^[5] The general understanding of national character was that it exemplified the spirit of the Vietnamese people in their struggle for independence, their daily work, and their ancient historical culture. Daily life, history, and “traditional” culture were the themes that were considered “beautiful” and “true” by the Arts Association and therefore deemed to be most representative of Vietnamese character.^[6] The Communist Party's definition of daily life, history, and tradition did not always coincide with artists'understanding of those terms. Often, artists who thought they had displayed national character in their work were surprised to find out that their painting was not accepted by the Arts Association. Le Thi Kim Bach (born in 1938; student at the Hanoi College of Art from 1957 to 1960 and at the Soviet National University of Fine Arts in Kiev from 1961 to 1967) had one of her paintings rejected from a national art exhibition because, she said, the subject of her work, an old peasant woman, seemed overly sad.^[7]

Paintings that represented farmers toiling in the fields, soldiers going to the front, or factory workers handling machinery were considered to contain national character, as were paintings that depicted historical figures, war heroes, and legendary independence fighters. But, if there was any suggestion of misery or violence in association with these images, the painting would be dismissed as unpatriotic. In his essay on Marxism and Vietnamese culture, Truong Chinh, secretary-general of

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the Communist Party from 1941 until 1956, outlined the task of the artist: “to draw from reality what is typical, what people can see at first glance, gather facts, ideas and contradictions into a lively picture, and indicate the right direction leading to the correct Future.”^[8] Portraits were mostly considered trivial exercises in physiognomy and therefore irrelevant to the question of nationa, character, as were still lifes and interiors; therefore, they were not encouraged unless they were representations of important heads of state such as President Ho Chi Minh. Still, none of these topics were strictly forbidden unless they were thought in 3ome way to demean or degrade an aspect of national culture. Nudes and abstraction were the only subjects that were unconditionally banned from public display. Both were seen in official political discourse as “decadent Western bourgeois capitalist” notions to be avoided at all costs.^[9] To Truong Chinh, counterrevolutionary art forms such as cubism, impressionism, surrealism, and dadaism were “gaudy mushrooms sprouted from the rotten wood of imperialist culture.”^[10]

In the early 1960s, the regulations governing Arts Association artists were particularly strict and rigidly enforced. Several incidents involving artists and writers in the late 1950s had caused the Communist Party to pay close attention to the production of paintings and sculpture to ensure that artists were not going against the rules set by the Arts Association for the public display of artworks. The incidents in question involved a group of writers and artists who, at the first meetings of the Writers Association in 1956, had demanded greater freedom of expression and creative rights. These writers and artists were in fact asking to be allowed to produce “art for art's sake,” a notion that went against Ho Chi Minh's requirement for artists to follow the Maoist notion of “art for the service of the people.”^[11] After publishing four issues of two art and literature journals entitled Humanism (Nhan Van) and Masterpieces (Giai Pham), several of the contributors were severely punished and sent to prison for “betraying the interests of the Communist Party, the Nation and the people of Vietnam.” The painters Nguyen Sy Ngoc (1919–90; student of the EBAI from 1939 to 1944) and Nguyen Sang (1923–88; student of the EBAI from 1940 to 1945) were directly affected by their involvement in this affair. Nguyen Sy Ngoc was sent to a labor camp for two years, and Nguyen Sang was barred from employment with the Arts Association.^[12]

The other artists and writers involved were also banned from their previous positions and only gradually reintegrated into the artistic mainstream. The artists and writers involved in the criticism of the

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Communist Party's policy toward art and the publication of the Humanism and Masterpieces journals were Communist Party members. Nguyen Sy Ngoc and Nguyen Sang had participated in the resistance movement against the French and had joined the Viet Minh in the mid1940s. Their criticism of the party came at a time when they thought it was not only safe but also necessary to make changes in the party's cultural policy. Their comrades in China and the Soviet Union had recently admitted to errors in their handling of cultural matters. In China, the Communist Party had introduced a program of liberalization in art and literature known as “Let a Hundred Flowers Bloom” after Zhou Enlai's proclamation to artists: “Let a hundred flowers bloom, let a hundred schools of thought contend.”^[13] Whereas in China, writers and artists were allowed and even encouraged to speak out against shortcomings in their party's policy, in Vietnam, after months of debate, the party decided to repress any movement toward greater creative freedom. This conservative policy toward the arts greatly affected the morale of artists during the 1960s and 1970s. Many of them felt paralyzed and unable to create. Nguyen Sy Ngoc, for example, was unable to produce more than one painting a year for the remainder of his life and spent most of his time drinking. According to his daughter, “After his years in a labor camp, he was not the same. He ended up spending his days drinking. He basically drank himself to death.”^[14]

In order to understand the role of “marginality” or “dissent” in the 1960s and 1970s, it is helpful to examine in further detail the differences between works of art that were considered “acceptable” and those that were not. One example of “acceptable” illustrations of “national character” is a painting by Mai Van Hien (born in 1923, student at the EBAI from 1943 to 1945) entitled Meeting (Gap Nhau, 1954; fig. 4.1). The painting was praised when it was exhibited at the first National Art Exhibition in 1955 because the subject of a soldier meeting a peasant woman illustrates the idea of community and solidarity between the army and the common people. In the painting, a soldier converses with a woman on the Dien Bien Phu Trail who has visibly helped to carry provisions for the soldiers. On her yoke are two camouflaged baskets that she apparently has been carrying for some time, as her bare feet and rolledup trousers indicate. The mood of the painting is reflected in the artist's simple descriptive style, which lends itself well to its content. The soldier and the woman appear friendly toward each other: the soldier is relaxed, his rifle is casually thrown over his shoulder, far from posing any threat to the woman, and the woman is smiling and concealing

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any physical effort she has endured in transporting goods for the soldiers. The soldier seems courteous and perhaps even a bit flirtatious. The scene is fairly straightforward, with no ambiguities either in the figures'feelings or in the subject matter represented.

In devising the scene of a meeting between a soldier and a peasant woman, Mai Van Hien was in effect describing the policy of integration of ethnic minorities and people from the countryside into the Vietnamese “nation” after independence from French colonialism. The feeling of camaraderie and equality between soldiers and peasants and between men and women as suggested in his painting also coincided with the goals of socialism outlined by the Communist Party to assimilate people from all classes and create a homogeneous society. Meeting was considered to contain “national character” because it illustrated one of the ideals of socialization and nationbuilding, which was to create a harmonious community. It also followed what Truong Chinh considered was “correctly expressing the feelings of the masses that are pure, sincere and exceedingly warm.”^[15]

In contrast to Mai Van Hien's painting is a work that was initially rejected by the Arts Association: The Enemy Burned My Village (Giac Dot Lang Toi, 1954; fig. 4.2) by Nguyen Sang. In this painting, a

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minority woman, having visibly fled her village with her child at her back and her mother and daughter behind her, solicits the help of a soldier stationed on the roadside. Unlike the friendly atmosphere of Mai Van Hien's painting, the prevailing mood of this scene is one of fear and unease. The soldier's rifle is still slung under his arm in a combat position as if preparing for attack. He looks sternly on the woman coming to seek help. There is no sense of camaraderie or solidarity between the two figures; rather, the painting seems to capture two strangers in a moment of fear.

In another work, Joining the Communist Partyat Dien Bien Phu (Ket Nap Dang trong Tran Dien Bien Phu, 1963; fig. 4.3), the same artist sets up a conflict between patriotic theme and means of execution. He has used a particularly severe way of representing his figures, drawing them with angular lines, enlarged limbs, and blank features. The composition is centered on the hand of the party officer who reaches out to the soldier seeking admission. Although the gesture seems welcoming, the look on the soldier's face is cold and dispassionate. The wounded soldier appears anxious and lacking in enthusiasm. His expression may betray his doubt or apprehension at joining the party. The soldier behind

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him also acts in a less than friendly manner as he prods him past the doorway.

While these two paintings by Nguyen Sang were never criticized directly, they were rejected from national art competitions. Criticism or rejection from national art competitions often meant that the work had been placed before an audience of workers and soldiers who, in the absence of any other formal criterion, were simply asked to decide how closely the subjects of the paintings resembled their habitat, moods, or customs. Sometimes, in lieu of a direct criticism, a humiliation campaign was initiated. Letters from workers and soldiers who found the work in question to be “untruthful” or “inaccurate” were published in newspapers. These letters were aimed at discrediting the author of the work in question, for if the masses did not understand it, then it was considered too “obscure” and therefore unacceptable.^[16] Nguyen Sang had painted both of these paintings hoping for a subsidy from the Arts Association, and although the National Museum of Fine Arts eventually purchased the two works, they were not displayed until shortly before his death in 1984. When Nguyen Sang contributed drawings and poems to the Humanism and Masterpieces journals, his name was put on a

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black list of artists who were not permitted to exhibit in public. Subsequently, the Arts Association and the Communist Party scrutinized all his works. He was told that they did not contain “national character” because they were too harsh, his figures too severe, his style too “Western.”^[17]

The rejection and subsequent acceptance of Nguyen Sang's views of history illustrate not only the fluctuations in the definition of “national character” but also the changing attitudes toward war and revolution in recent times. Nguyen Sang's vision is no longer threatening to authorities as they have gradually come to terms with the harsher realities of those years. Whereas in the past, as Mai Van Hien's painting illustrates, virtues of heroism and solidarity were considered the only legitimate representations of the struggle for independence, feelings of pain and apprehension have recently become equally acceptable.

REDEFINING “NATIONAL CHARACTER”
IN THE 1990s

In spite of reforms that had begun to be instituted in other sectors of society at the onset of Doi Moi, the Arts Association was slow in recognizing the need for liberalization in the arts. Nudes and abstraction were forbidden from public view until 1990. And it was not until the 1994 congress that a serious attempt was made to recognize those artists who had been marginalized for not participating in the revolutionary movements of the 1950s through 1970s. At the congress of the Arts Association in December 1994, the fourth since the organization's founding, young art critics advocated replacing the revolutionary guard of painters with the “nonrevolutionary” group of artists who either had been marginalized or had marginalized themselves from art circles for over thirty years. Objections arose over the dismissal of the older generation of painters. For example, the painter To Ngoc Thanh (b. 1940), whose father, To Ngoc Van, mentioned earlier, was considered the greatest of all revolutionary artists, exclaimed: “How can you forget these heroic painters when they sacrificed their lives for their country?” A young critic responded: “But they were such mediocre painters.”^[18] The debate continued, with one side arguing for revolutionary contributions and the other promoting talent and innovation. Until the congress, one rarely heard such outspoken commentary on artists'positions vis-à-vis the Arts Association. Although none of it was truly scathing— critics called the revolutionary period artists at times “boring,” “old-fashioned,”

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“untalented,” and “backward” —it was unprecedented to express negative feelings toward such illustrious artists in public.

At the 1994 congress, four artists in particular (Bui Xuan Phai, 1921–88, a student at the EBAI from 1941 to 1945; Nguyen Sang, 1923–88, a student at the EBAI from 1940 to 1945; Duong Bich Lien, 1924–88, a student at the EBAI from 1944 to 1945; and Nguyen Tu Nghiem, born in 1922, a student at the EBAI from 1941 to 1945) were hailed by young art critics and artists active since the mid-1980s as the “masters of Vietnamese modern painting.” Clandestine exhibitions and independent publications had been put out in their honor, but it took some time before the Arts Association recognized their contribution to modern Vietnamese art history. Today, works by these artists cover the walls of private galleries that have multiplied in recent years in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City and are highly sought after by a new generation of Vietnamese art collectors.

One question that arises from the debate at the congress is why these four particular artists were selected by critics as better representatives of contemporary Vietnamese painting rather than their more conventional colleagues. Where and when did the shift take place? And what kind of criteria was the new generation using to determine what constituted a “great” artist? A closer examination of the four artists'lives and works will reveal that the artviewing public of the late 1980s identified first and foremost with their personae, their antiestablishment ideas, and their bohemian lifestyles. Second, their works provided them with an interpretation of their own cultural identity that had previously been neglected but that rang truer to their experience than the revolutionary vision supplied by the earlier artists. In sum, what made the four painters the new “modern masters” was not only that time had changed people's perceptions of history and nationalism but also that these artists offered the public a different picture of Vietnamese reality.

Of the four painters, Bui Xuan Phai was best known for his poverty. He has been described as having a “face that reflects the grief of a lifetime”^[19] (fig. 4.4). People who remember him recall his gaunt features and how he had to exchange paintings for food.^[20] Yet he was also admired for his intellect. Those who knew him recall vividly the hours of stimulating conversation spent in his company. He was well versed in world art history, something of a rarity in a society that had been cut off from the international community since the end of colonialism in 1945. He had studied the works of French painters, often citing Albert Marquet and Georges Rouault among his favorites. He had friends

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among the writers and poets who made up the underground intellectual elite of the 1960s and 1970s and were habitual customers of Nguyen Van Lam's coffeehouse (Cafe´ Lam) on 69 Nguyen Huu Hoan street in Hanoi's old quarter. Nguyen Van Lam was a book restorer who collected books but also was fond of painting. Although coffeehouses were banned from the capital from 1959 to 1969, as were all small, private nonproductive enterprises, Lam continued to receive his friends and serve them clandestinely.^[21] Most of the writers and artists who frequented Cafe´ Lam had little spending money, having to live off food rations distributed by the state, which did not include such luxury goods as coffee. They paid for their accumulated debts with paintings or poems. The often unemployed Bui Xuan Phai was Lam's most loyal customer and subsequently turned Lam into one of the greatest collectors of Bui Xuan Phai's paintings in Hanoi.^[22]

Cafe´ Lam had the makings of a Paris cafe´ litte´raire of the sort frequented by Pablo Picasso, Henry Miller, and the surrealists in the 1920s. In Europe, this kind of establishment was attractive to people who saw themselves as marginal to the social mainstream. But, while bohemian culture may have a certain romantic appeal in the West, to the officials of a nation that had fought bitterly to rid itself of French occupation

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and dismissed all French culture as “bourgeois,” an artists'cafe´ could seem like a subversive activity. Furthermore, to a government that was trying to promote a working-class ideology, a cafe´ where intellectuals met and discussed art and literature at their leisure verged on the counter revolutionary.

Bui Xuan Phai's “sadness, reflecting a life of misery,”^[23] and his passion for painting produced his signature subject matter: scenes of old Hanoi streets (fig. 4.5). While his colleagues, members of the Arts Association, were painting workers, soldiers, and peasants for state art exhibits, Bui Xuan Phai painted the desolate streets of his city, in shades of gray and brown, over and over again, almost obsessively. Although his paintings clearly indicated an attachment to his homeland, it was not the sort of vision that the authorities accepted. His streets were void of life, as if he were mourning the loss of the activities that had filled them in a bygone era.

To art viewers, those who knew him and the many visitors to both his house—for he was a hospitable and generous man—and Cafe´ Lam, his street paintings became synonymous with Hanoi during the economic hardships of the 1960s and 1970s. They captured the bleak, desolate, gray atmosphere of the city during that time. When Hanoians

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recall the urban atmosphere during those years, their picture often resembles a painting by Bui Xuan Phai. “There was no food sold on the sidewalk, no transportation, no colorful fabrics hanging outside people's windows, nothing,” is a common way of describing the capital during those years.^[24] Like Hanoi at the time, Bui Xuan Phai's paintings are empty of colorful markets, street stall vendors, and motorcycles. The only signs of modernity are his ubiquitous electrical poles that stand at each street corner as if to mock the government's campaign to develop industry in the city. In one painting, the only sign above a doorway reads nuoc soi, or “boiled water,” as if the artist were reacting against the heroism of wartime depicted in official art and making a statement about the deprivation of the population instead.

Bui Xuan Phai's paintings were rarely included in national art exhibitions and were seldom exhibited abroad in traveling exhibitions organized by the Arts Association. In the art history books and brochures about Vietnamese contemporary painting published before 1986, his name is never mentioned as an important figure in the Hanoi art scene. Although he was not accused of undermining Communist Party policy like Nguyen Sy Ngoc and Nguyen Sang, his family has described how closely the government watched him and the restrictions that were placed on him as an artist.^[25] The original objection to Bui Xuan Phai by officials was most likely a response to his eye for the negative realities of Hanoi life. His view of daily life was contrary to the utopian socialist vision of community living promoted by the state. His subsequent popularity may have been due to the fact that he dared to show what the government refused to see, and his popularity among painters today stems from the fact that he was determined to pursue his own path in spite of government regulations. Young artists today, trying to break free from past conventions, are in awe of the fact that Bui Xuan Phai refused to compromise his artistic ideals for political ones. They, and the artviewing public at large, see him and his paintings as encapsulating the spirit of the nation after the war. Today the war is no longer remembered for its glory but rather as a negative experience, which is why Bui Xuan Phai's paintings resonate more strongly with the public.

Bui Xuan Phai's persona is well captured in a 1964 portrait by his friend Nguyen Sang. In the painting, he is sitting at a table with the cafe´ owner Nguyen Van Lam, facing the viewer and with his chin resting on the palm of his hand. Mr. Lam, also facing the viewer, sits beside him with his hands clasped over his knees. Behind them is a sign indicating the price of a cup of black coffee: thirty cents (dong). Both the artist and

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the cafe´ owner seem calm and nonchalant in this scene, perhaps even slightly bored, and a kind of ennui or emptiness prevails. One is reminded of the portraits of absinthe drinkers in Paris cafe´s by such French postimpressionist painters as Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Edouard Manet, and Pablo Picasso, in which figures often appear afflicted with chronic melancholy or depression.

Art historians in the West have often attributed the affinity of painters at the turn of the century for life in the cafe´s and the decadence of society at the time to increased interest in “modern life.” Modern life in Europe referred to urban development, the increase of traffic in the streets, and consequently the surge in the pace of life. According to Marshall Berman, the swelling speed of daily life generated excitement for everything urban, along with an attraction for the dirt and smoke that it provoked.^[26] Artists and writers in Paris became fascinated with the decadence of society in art. The art historian T. J. Clark writes that “modernism can be described as a kind of skepticism, or at least uncertainty, as to the nature of representation in art.”^[27]

Nguyen Sang's characters seem at home amid the deterioration of Hanoi streets and the degeneration of Vietnamese society as he perceived it. The Communist Party had demanded participation in the revolutionary struggle, but writers and artists such as Bui Xuan Phai and Nguyen Sang were idling away their time in cafe´s. They were not employed by the state as other artists were, partly out of choice for not wanting to participate in the propaganda campaigns and partly by force for having contradicted the official cultural institutions. Instead of supporting the optimism for the future of the nation as declared in the governmentsponsored art campaigns, they represented the cynicism of the people who did not wish to follow the Party. None was more representative of this cynicism than Duong Bich Lien who shunned any exposure to the public and any affiliation with the Arts Association. Although he had taken part in the Revolution, after the restrictions imposed on artists in the 1950s, he deliberately withdrew from the political mainstream. His paintings became legendary for their grace and beauty (fig. 4.6), but he refused to show them to anyone but his friends.^[28] Unable to afford new canvas, he often painted over his paintings. His peers admired him for his talent, but he was described as “aloof” and “stubborn” when it came to exposing his work to the public. Today the younger generation considers him one of the “masters of modern art,” along with Bui Xuan Phai, Nguyen Sang, and Nguyen Tu Nghiem.

In 1993, the Portrait of Bui Xuan Phai with Mr. Lam was sold to a

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private collector in France for the highest price ever paid for a modern work of Vietnamese art.^[29] Until it was sold, the painting had remained in Mr. Lam's cafe´, never having been displayed in state exhibition halls or the National Museum. Like Bui Xuan Phai's streets and Duong Bich Lien's romantic realist scenes, this and other of Nguyen Sang's portraits, with their singular talent for capturing emotions, have been a source of inspiration for the younger generation of painters who came to Mr. Lam's cafe´ yearning for a break from the constraints of socialist Realism.

Ironically, for the post-1986 generation of painters, Bui Xuan Phai and his friends became icons of the rejection of “nationalist” oriented art. In choosing them as their artistic “heroes,” the younger artists and critics were in effect rejecting the concept of national character advocated by the Arts Association. They had realized the limitation of the concept, but at the same time their designation of the three outside un-official painters as the legitimate rulers of the art world was based on criteria that were not too different from the previous generation's, that is, the need for art to depict the “national soul.” This fact only reinforces the plasticity of these conventions. The policy toward the arts after 1945was one of appropriation or elimination rather than construction. Political

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discourse was geared toward outlining what was forbidden rather than enabling artists to understand the challenge of creativity. Artists were told what their paintings lacked more often than they were offered suggestions for inclusion of philosophical or spiritual ideas. Negative elements were more easily spotted than positive ones. Confusion surrounding the definition of national character made it easy for artists to make mistakes and for negative feelings to settle in. Furthermore, the imprecise definition of national character accounted for the distorted reaction to it and the fact that it has not been discarded altogether. Unlike in China, there has yet to be an organized collective counterrev-olutionary movement in the arts in Vietnam.^[30] Many of the movements in reaction to official art in Vietnam took a passive rather than active form.

TRADITION AND MODERNISM

Art historical revisions after 1986 have not been limited to the fluctuations of reputation among artists but are also reflected in the choice of topics. Village and folk art, which had been the main source of artistic production before the colonial era, had been transformed after independence in 1945 to serve the ideals of socialism. Many artisans were forced to join collective labor forces and abandon their family trade. They were brought into the agricultural and industrial sectors, and household workshops that had operated for centuries were turned into cooperatives. As a result, village art virtually died, only to be resurrected at the initiative of descendants of village craftsmen in the late 1980s.^[31]

In the early 1990s, two art historians, intent on reviving the “village” aspect of Vietnamese art history, began researching the history of village art from the ninth century, at the end of the Chinese occupation, to the present. They published My Thuat o Lang (Art in the Village), which became one of the most influential art history books of the early 1990s.^[32] The book argued that the origins of Vietnamese art were, in fact, in the village as opposed to the view promoted during colonial times, which held that art originated in royal palaces or was stimulated by religious objects traded from abroad. The idea appealed to the younger generation of artists because it proved that art had a “national” origin yet was not a “state”-oriented production. In other words, village art was given a new interpretation. Instead of serving the state, imperial households, religious, foreign or government decrees, art could be more independent of politics. This gave artists the freedom to express patriotism without

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risking being interpreted as either “bourgeois” or “socialist” by pretending to avoid politics all together.

When the movement to reincorporate village art into the art historical canon began, artists started to use village motifs such as temple banners, buffalo herders, fish ponds, and folk heroes in their paintings. Some of these motifs, which were potentially sensitive in the 1960s and 1970s, became dominant in paintings since 1986. At first sight, the use of folklore seemed to indicate a break from the worker, peasant, and soldier themes of the previous decades. But, on closer examination, paintings of village festivals and popular legends have become, in effect, redefinitions of national character. By still maintaining elements that are identifiably “Vietnamese,” painters seem reluctant to abandon the patriotic ideal in art, even though they claim separation from a particular set of nationalist concerns.

The first artist to experiment with village motifs while maintaining links to “modernism” was the fourth of the “masters” of Vietnamese modern art mentioned earlier, Nguyen Tu Nghiem, born in 1922 and still actively painting. The label “hero” is reserved for the deceased, but Nguyen Tu Nghiem's preoccupation with village art mirrors Bui Xuan Phai's obsession with Hanoi streets. He has spent most of his career painting village folk motifs, making multiple sketches of the carvings that adorn the communal houses (dinh) in the villages surrounding Hanoi and transferring them to his canvases (fig. 4.7). He is not interested so much in the content of the sculptures as in their formal aspects. In explaining his work, he likens himself to Picasso, who saw African art as a form of “modernism.”^[33] Picasso emulated the simple shapes and geometric forms of African art and incorporated them into his experiments with cubism. The “primitive” look of Picasso's work became equated with “modernism.”^[34] Likewise, Nguyen Tu Nghiem incorporated village folk art into his paintings, giving them a “primitive” look that became equated with “modernism.”

In recent art criticism, Nguyen Tu Nghiem has often been described as both “traditional” and “modern.”^[35] To use village sculpture as a motif in a painting was a very daring act in the early 1980s, when Nguyen Tu Nghiem first revealed his paintings to the public. At first dismissed for lacking national character, he later won a prize at the National Exhibition in 1990 for his representation of the village folk hero Giong.^[36] Since abstraction and surrealism were forbidden, artists had not used motifs found in their native culture to express “modern” artistic concepts. Nguyen Tu Nghiem changed that. Furthermore, the

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fact that he used these motifs as symbols of modernism proves how alien they had actually become to contemporary Vietnamese. Like the African sculptures incorporated by European modernists into their works, the village carvings that Nguyen Tu Nghiem employed were removed from their original culture context.^[37] He was merely employing what he thought to be their interesting forms, not paying particular attention to the meaning of their content. The younger generation of artists found his idea brilliant. Imitating Nghiem allowed them to experiment with semiabstract shapes without deviating from their indigenous cultural sphere. They could maintain a national identity while still attempting to experiment with other forms. Sustaining “tradition,” so to speak, also gave them a guarantee against potential criticism from the Arts Association.

The art critics of the 1980s hailed Nguyen Tu Nghiem's use of village folk art as “Vietnamese modernism.” His painting style resembled the European postimpressionist concern for form over content, and yet, iconographically, he was able to retain a semblance of “local tradition.” Nguyen Tu Nghiem's and Bui Xuan Phai's work was said to reflect the spirit of the people, but not in the sense that it had been known previously. Far from the heroism of To Ngoc Van's participation in the battle

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of Dien Bien Phu or Mai Van Hien's warm regard for class solidarity, the national character represented in the works of Nguyen Tu Nghiem or Bui Xuan Phai was one of melancholy, nostalgia, or alienation. These feelings manifested themselves as much in the artists'oeuvre as in their lives. To Ngoc Van sacrificed his life for the nation, while these artists sacrificed their lives for their art.

Naturally, as in post-Communist Russia and to a lesser extent in Deng Xiaoping's China, the market for art has also influenced what artists have chosen to paint. The state no longer being the exclusive patron of the arts, artists have had to cater to a new clientele of international art buyers. Many of the works on display in galleries in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City depict scenes of the Vietnamese countryside and village life, not as a political statement against the state nor as a patriotic message, but rather because those images seem to attract foreign buyers. Still, the shift in subject matter is similar to revisions occurring elsewhere as Vietnamese art in general, like the society at large, tries to derevolutionize itself and move on to a more global perspective.

CONCLUSION

For decades, Vietnamese officials defined national character as expressing the Vietnamese spirit in art and literature, but the basis for its definition was utopian and forced. Politics and aesthetics merged to dictate the criteria for acceptable works of art. Artists who did not display “national character” in their works were discouraged from producing art at all. But, by a turn in historical fortune, those who resisted the pressure were designated heroes in their own right by the generation of artists and art critics who came onto the scene in the late 1980s. They became known for their resistance to these restrictions and for their persistence in the face of strongly discouraging signals to abandon their way of painting.

In spite of revisions in the way artists have been given recognition for their work, political concerns are still at the heart of the selection of Vietnam's socalled master painters. Certainly nationalistic or patriotic concerns are still part of the process of naming which artists best represent the country's “soul.” In this way the choices of the late 1980s art critics are similar to those of their mid-1950s counterparts. At least in principle, that is, art is a potential force that could be used to shape consciousness about oneself, one's memory, or collective identity. But it

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is dramatically different in content. Whereas the state remembers the heroic acts of its people, soldiers, workers, or farmers, and their sacrifices for the good of the nation, the art critics of the post-1986 renovation period remember how the country mourned the loss of their relatives and neighbors to war and poverty. It is as if it had suddenly become politically correct to feel sad after thirty years of being told otherwise.

Bui Xuan Phai, neglected by the official art establishment for wanting to tell the truth, suddenly became Vietnam's greatest painter regardless of whether his paintings showed true mastery of the medium. To Ngoc Van and others of his generation were reduced to mediocrity in popular opinion after having received some of the nation's highest awards in painting simply because the revolution no longer held any significance to the younger generation of artists.

If one looks at “national character” merely as a tool to create propaganda out of art, it is easy to understand why the present post-1986generation of artists would be so opposed to the concept, considering their desire to distance themselves from revolutionary period policies. Many of them were born too recently to remember their country's struggle for independence. As Vietnam opens its doors to global markets, they are eager to join the international art community. Yet they have not rejected nationalist concerns entirely. In an attempt to forget the past and begin paving the way toward the future, they have instead chosen to remember the past in a new way. In commemorating the three painters who were not part of To Ngoc Van's campaign to revolutionize art, the artists and critics of today are making their own political statement about the role of artists in society.

By embracing artists who had previously been neglected by the Arts Association and spent much of their time in Hanoi cafe´s, the younger generation is calling for an artistic standard that is not based on socialist ideals. Bui Xuan Phai, Nguyen Sang, Nguyen Tu Nghiem, and Duong Bich Lien were not the most subversive of painters; others, such as Nguyen Sy Ngoc, mentioned earlier, were put into much more strenuous positions vis-à-vis the political mainstream. But, as Bui Xuan Phai's paintings of Hanoi and Nguyen Tu Nghiem's interest in village art reveal, they were nonconformist and unwilling to partake in the “revolutionary” view of art. Perhaps that was precisely why they were chosen. These artists were not politicized and yet were every bit as political. The younger generation has chosen to emulate them in order to be not

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antirevolutionary but simply nonrevolutionary. In doing so, they are trying to rewrite a history where war and revolution do not figure as prominently in the national consciousness.

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.