From Dông Son sculpture to Chinese influence
Vietnamese art is one of the most controversial and little-known Far Eastern arts, with the exception of the period of the bronze civilization, or Dông Son, which was discovered and studied between 1920 and 1960 in the Hanoi region by the École française d'Extrême-Orient. This civilization, known as the art of bronze, dates from -1000 BC, for the oldest remains, until the first Chinese incursions in the 2nd century BC. In its golden age, it probably extended from the Tonkin region to Indonesia, but its cultural unity is nevertheless in question. These peoples created a variety of bronze works, mostly ritual, many decorated with human and animal figures and cast in lost wax. The most common objects are drums, bells, ceremonial axes and sculptures, sometimes anthropomorphic. Very elaborate, they are of great finesse. Some relief motifs, including the spiral, remained present in the arts of the region even after the extinction of this civilization. Vietnam then came under Chinese influence, hence the easily identifiable analogies in architectural styles, ornamentation and writing. This influence was predominantly felt until the end of the 18th century, despite some attempts at independence between the 16th and 17th centuries.
Lacquer, an ancestral technique
This technique is said to have existed for over two thousand years. Lacquer is a vegetable matter, derived from the milky juice of the lacquer tree (cây son), a liquid that is preserved for two to three months in waterproofed bamboo baskets. The deposit is then mixed with resin, turpentine and dyes to obtain a coloured lacquer. It is a material that is very resistant to insects, salt water and heat. It can be applied on a multitude of supports: wood, leather, paper, canvas, basketry... It was a certain Trân Lu, patron of the lacquerers' guild, who, at the beginning of the 16th century, brought back the techniques of gilding and silverware from an embassy mission in China. The art of sanded lacquer was born around 1932 on the inspiration of a group of painters who had graduated from the École supérieure des Beaux-Arts d'Indochine. After composition of the drawing, it is covered with an opaque varnish (canh gian) which is then sanded down, revealing images and colours in effects never totally mastered.
The print, pillar of Vietnamese culture
Until the introduction of Western printing techniques in the 19th century, the Vietnamese used xylography and woodcut woodblocks in relief to print religious texts, court documents and popular images. The latter are particularly produced in the village of Dông Hô (Bac Ninh province) and Hang Trông Street (Drum Street) in Hanoi. The two manufacturing techniques correspond to two different styles.
In Dông Hô, the prints are printed by the application of an engraved veneer board. They depict traditional scenes: country life, traditional games, scenes of love and courtesy, scenes of jealousy... Zo paper (of vegetable origin) is used, coated with mother-of-pearl (diep). It is then coloured by successive applications of layers corresponding to the different colours and engraved on as many wooden boards. In Hang Trông Street, on the other hand, the drawing printed on industrial paper is coloured with a brush. The prints in Hang Trông represent mainly religious images (white tigers, saints) and betray a more marked Chinese influence. These prints are mainly made during the 11th and 12th lunar months to be sold during Tet, the Vietnamese New Year, where they decorate the homes. These prints, always made according to the traditional method, bear witness to remarkable craftsmanship. They can be bought in the shops in the old streets of Hanoi.Painting and modern art, at the heart of colonial history
The tradition of figurative arts has always been very much alive in Vietnam, as evidenced by the many popular prints. With colonization, Vietnamese arts in the 19th century were considerably influenced by the French artistic style, which flourished mainly in large cities such as Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City. At the beginning of the 20th century, many French artistic institutions were established in Vietnam, such as the Indochina School of Fine Arts, which was inaugurated in Hanoi in 1925 as a branch of the National School of Fine Arts in Paris. From then on, modern Vietnamese artists began to combine French techniques with traditional materials such as silk, lacquer or porcelain, and to hybridize pictorial codes, creating a unique blend of oriental and western elements. Modern Vietnamese art was thus born, illustrated by great painters such as Nguyên Sang, Nguyên Gia Tri, To Ngoc Van or Bui Xuân Phai.
Bui Xuân Phai (1920-1988), "the painter of the soul of Hanoi
Bui Xuân Phai was born in 1920 in the village of Kim Hoang, famous for its woodcutting tradition. He graduated in 1945 from one of the last classes of the Hanoi School of Fine Arts and helped shape the evolution of modern Vietnamese art, becoming one of the most famous painters of Southeast Asia in the 20th century. After the August Revolution (1945), Bui Xuan Phai took part in artistic activities in the service of the Revolution. Returning to Hanoi in 1952, he worked in his studio on his favourite themes: streets of Hanoi, family portraits, still lifes, out of step with militant painting. He teaches at the School of Fine Arts and gives illustrations to newspapers. In 1957, he embarked on an attempt to liberalize the arts and letters, which ran up against the notion of art at the service of the people put forward by the Party. The movement was suppressed by the government without hesitation: Bui Xuân Phai escapes the work camp, but loses his teaching post. From 1960 to 1988, physically diminished because of the privations endured in the maquis and deprived of financial income, Bui Xuân Phai leads a difficult life, but characterized by an unfailing fidelity to his vocation as an artist. The painter's fame is mainly posthumous. His best known paintings, depicting the streets of Hanoi bathed in a feeling of loneliness and melancholy, are highly rated on the art market.
Photography, an art that is gradually being liberalized
Photography was introduced to Vietnam in the second half of the 19th century by European and Hong Kong photographers. The first photographers used this medium to document historical sites, portray colonial administrators and the Vietnamese aristocracy or capture the daily life of large cities. The success of this technology lies mainly in its potential for disseminating information on Cochinchina, Tonkin and Annam by colonial administrators, but also in the importance of family portraits in Vietnamese tradition, especially in the Confucian practices of ancestor worship. With the Indochina War and the Vietnam War (1946-1954 then 1955-1975), the practices of studio photography diminished in favour of photojournalism or documentary photography, which mainly served to document and transmit the news of the time to an international audience.
Since 1986, with the liberalization of Vietnamese economic policies, there has been a diversification of funding sources and greater artistic freedom for photographers. In documentary photography, censorship continues to be a hindrance, especially for those whose work could reveal the underbelly of Vietnamese society. On the side of artistic photography, several generations of talented photographers have emerged, such as Bùi Xuân Huy (born in 1953), one of the first Vietnamese photographers sent abroad to study photography. His photographs of the streets of Ho Chi Minh City are full of ambivalence and bewilderment, they are a metaphor for the changes affecting his city and his country.A contemporary scene that is gradually asserting itself
After the end of French domination, Vietnam is faced with growing tensions between religions and political groups, which are characterized by a period of low point in creation. American interventions from the 1950s to the early 1970s completely turned the country upside down, preventing any form of artistic expression. A real cultural renaissance came only late after reunification in 1976, in the 1990s. The works of the artists who took part in the struggle for independence acquired great value, describing the history of the country and its uprisings and undertaking the necessary work of remembrance. Nevertheless, freedom of expression remains limited, and any statement that runs counter to the regime's ideas is repressed.
While artists still carry Western influences in their work, they integrate them critically and continue to parallel them with traditional techniques and approaches. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, cities such as Ho Chi Minh City and the capital Hanoi asserted themselves on the art market, while international collectors, gallery owners and museums showed a growing interest in Vietnamese art and the number of exhibitions dedicated to it continued to increase. In Vietnam itself, many art centres, galleries and museums have been developing in recent years, supporting local creation. Examples include the Factory Contemporary Arts Center and the Quynh Gallery in Ho Chi Minh City, and the Vincom Center for Contemporary Art in Hanoi. The French Institute of Hanoi is also very active in the field of contemporary creation, with a focus on intercultural exchanges. These recent developments augur a prosperous future for Vietnamese art.Street Art, an increasingly popular practice
While tourists are fond of street art, the government and local people are not always so fond. But faced with the enthusiasm of young urban people looking for an escape, who have only been practising it for a few years, tolerance is gradually developing, and we are beginning to see more and more frescoes blooming in the streets of Hanoi or Ho Chi Minh City. Nevertheless, this street art is still controlled by the state and subject to censorship - in most cases, the frescoes are therefore clean and neat, rarely critical, but rather bear positive messages.
Institutions have developed to support the movement, such as the Giant Step Urban Art Gallery, a platform for conversation and collaboration for local street-artists that presents both original works and a photographic archive. To name but one, one of the places not to be missed for its originality is Ao Dài Lane in the Duc Thang district, whose walls are covered with touching paintings on the themes of environmental protection, family happiness, mother-child bonding, and family planning. Their author is Cao Tri Thinh, a man who stands out in the local scene from the height of his almost 100 years!
