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August 2003 Newsletter |
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Welcome to the August 2003 issue of the Vietnam Art Gallery newsletter. This issue is dedicated to celebrating Hanoi, the vibrant art capital of Asia! =============== CONTENTS ===============
==== Bui Xuan Phai & the new painters of Hanoi ==== Art by some of Hanoi's best known contemporary artists. One of the great painters in this century, the Vietnamese artist Bui Xuan Phai passed away eleven years ago. He lived his life in poverty, and his talent was mostly disregarded by his contemporaries. He has gained a lot of recognition however, after his death – and so has thousands of artists who live in Hanoi, the vibrant art capital of Asia.
Nguyen Duy Nhi add to cart On 23rd June 1988 in the evening, Bui Xuan Phai painted a small, charming self-portrait and wrote underneath it: " The most important thing is now to stay well, and not be ill". Seven hours later, Phai died of lung cancer and Vietnam lost one of its greatest and most virtuose painters. Phai died without having experienced fame. He became known only in the 1990’s when Vietnam emerged from its isolation. Phai’s world view was limited to Hanoi, a place he rarely left. His surroundings consisted of yellow, colonial style houses with green shutters, cyclos, and Café Mai – a small Café where he enjoyed discussions about art and a place where he produced scetches while sipping strong Vietnamese coffee.
Nghiem Quang add to cart Bui Xuan Phai attended the Ecole des Beaux Arts d’Indochine which was established by the French colonialists in 1925. Only painting techniques and sculptoring were taught during the first years at the Academy. Traditional Vietnamese art forms such as lacquer painting, silk painting and architecture were later added to the curriculum. Phai received his education during the last years of the French colonial rule, and he has been able to convey the atmosphere of Hanoi where colonial influences mingle with the Orient as no other artist has. His paintings show simple lines, but the lines carry a message of a deeper understanding. A small oil painting by Phai was sold for as little as US$ 15 in Hanoi ten years ago. Today, the price has skyrocketed to US$ 7,000! And today, there are many who compare his paintings to masterpieces made by Picasso and Matisse. His representation of surfaces seems to be as good as Marquet, and the sub-conciousness as reflected in Hanoi street scenes is a remniscence of Mondrian and Klee. But his soul, as seen in several self-portraits - is more like Van Gogh’s. His paintings show a man with sad and piercing eyes which mirror his long experience with sorrow. Phai died in poverty before he received any recognition for his work, which also happend to Van Gogh. Phai's universe was Vietnam which experienced a long struggle against the French colonialists and later against the Americans. The year of struggle and war led to a limitation of expression of art. Most motives were restricted to the promotion of nationalistic and idealistic ideas. Lack of suitable materials such as canvases, made painting difficult. Phai utilised every kind of material he could find, like old letters, newspapers and cigarette packs.
Minh Phu add to cart Phai lived almost totally isolated in Hanoi. Restrictions were everywhere when Vietnam finally opened up after a long period of wars. Foreign visitors requrired a special permit from the Ministry of Culture if they wanted to pay a visit to Phai. Phai himself never paid much attention to the political cadres who with their narrow views of art made life difficult for Phai. He had to hide many of his abstract paintings and beautiful nudes. It was not until 1984, just four years before his death, that he finally was allowed to hold a solo exhibition. Today, the situation has radically changed in Vietnam. The country has gradually opened its doors to the outside world, and this has clearly benefitted the thousands of artists who live in Hanoi. Currently, there are more than 250 art galleries in Hanoi, and almost every street has an art-cafe. The new generation of artists produce art in hundreds of ateliers. It almost makes Paris look like a provincial town! Contemporary Vietnamese art has depth and a touch of freshness where East meets West. The art seems familiar and at the same time exotic - with a touch of Eastern mysticism.
Van Anh add to cart "Do you want to see something interesting?" says the young artist Tran Nhat Thang, who focuses on abstract paintings. He brings us to the Ecole des Beaux Art d'Indochine. Huge ceiling fans move slowly while art students consentrate on drawing the model in front of them with a piece of carbon. The only light in the room is a ray from the sun which falls on the young Vietnamese model. The interesting observation for Thang is that everything is so simple. Thang is only 27 years old and graduated from the Academy three years ago. His life is completely different from the life of Phai. Thang enjoys a much better life and occupies two floors of a large villa with a view over the famous Hoang Kiem Lake. "I mostly paint during the night since I need silence in order to concentrate. The darkness does not matter since I know how the colours look like during daytime" says Thang. The great national painter Phai was not permitted to travel much. However, the new and young generation of artists embrace globalisation. Thang prepares for his first exhibition in Paris. And he carries his mobile Ericsson phone in the back pocket of his Levis' jeans while Phai hardly could find paper suitable for writing or drawing.
Nguyen Duy Nhi add to cart "He is a promising artist with lots of talent, although he is still very young" says the gallery owner, Duong Thai Van. "I am afraid that the easy life which many young artists prefer, will ruin their talent before they mature fully". Hanoi has several thousand painters and sculptors who are increasingly being recognized in other parts of Asia and in the West. An immediate consequence is that art lovers and gallery owners flock to the city and buy the best pieces of art. Hence, prices have skyrocketed lately. Ms. Van's fear is that the flow of money will corrupt the young artists and make them unwilling to pursue their artistic development. There are some artists in Hanoi who have transformed their ateliers to a venue for mass production, and who are more occupied with easy money than by artistic integrity. Other artists have turned to an Asian speciality - to copy others, such as the old masters. Phai is of course targeted since his paintings usually fetch high prices in an international market. Most young Vietnamese artists however, have a genuine wish to create original pieces of art, and most of the young artists are highly creative and innovative.
Bich Ngoc add to cart VietnamArtGallery.com artists from Hanoi currently include Bich Ngoc, Le Thiet Cuong, Mai Long, Minh Phu, Nghiem Quang, Nguyen Duy Nhi, Van Anh. ====== Hanoi's artist of the month: "Minh Phu" ===== Minh Phu's beautiful, fertile golds, pinks and reds make us imagine what Hanoi must feel like in the fall — resonating with sounds and smells of home, family, animals, food, planting and most importantly, kite-flying! In his latest series of works, Phu invites us to enter seemingly everyday scenes that illuminate the participants and their moments frozen in time in warm and bright hues. Minimalist in execution, Phu proves with his entire collection that less is more: he frames everyday scenes rendered vivid with beautiful color and the occasional whimiscal addition adds welcome playfulness.  Minh Phu - "Naive 8" - $450 ========== Tailor-made in Hanoi ========== If you set fire to real silk, it will burn slowly and smell like singed human hair. Acetates and polyesters shrink from the flame and melt, smelling of chemistry. In the tailor shops of Vietnam, a new kind of traveller is setting alight strands of fabric with a pirated Zippo bought from a street kid, to see if their $50 custom-made suits really are too good to be true. Everyone you ask in Vietnam will have their own tailor. The elegantly outfitted policy officers of the non-government agencies wear soft shifts and sheaths in local silks they buy themselves at the fabric markets. Backpackers in the bia hois (beer halls) swear they bought an Armani knock-off suit for $US25 from one of the overnight tailors in the old port city of Hoi An. Of course, they're never wearing them - they had them sent straight back home. The young women off to work in Saigon on their Honda Dream mopeds wear perfectly tailored doll-size trousers and Britney-size tops from pop star Phillip Huy's emporium Huy MC. Thuy, the tour guide who shared a gondola with me on the trip up the Yen River to the Perfume Pagoda, said her tailor - "very good, very cheap" - made her green crepe shirt and black capris. Duon, one of the cyclo drivers based outside Ho Chi Minh's mausoleum, wants
to recommend a place for made silk, half price. The woman selling CDs from one
of the many piratical emporiums along Hang Bac Street in the Old Quarter has
business cards behind the counter for the woman who made her little black
dress. Determining value for money can confound travellers in a country where made-to-measure outfits cost between $US200 and $US25, depending on where you get the work done and who is asking. Most traders have a three-tier price system, for locals, expats and tourists, but even the most extravagant tourist price will be considerably less than you'd pay for similar back home. Fabric is everything, insist the expats, the ones who have made tailoring their local hobby. Make sure you get the best fabrics and everything else will follow. Frankly, if you do haggle the price of your pseudo Armani suit down to $US25, you're either wearing pure polyester or you're personally exploiting your own sweat shop workers. There are travellers obsessed with the combat sport of negotiating with the fast, cheap but shrewd tailors of Hoi An, but it's a sport best left to those who have a good knowledge of fabric, cut and finishes, and at least a smattering of Vietnamese. For those like me, whose sartorial expertise is limited to the bargain racks of high street at sales season, it's best to shop around for recommendations for a reliable English-speaking tailor in the big cities. I never burned my clothes during my stay in Hanoi, nor was I burned by "my" tailor, Phuong. She made me a black wool-blend suit so funky that I now need only the imperious expression to run an art gallery. I was introduced to Phuong at her store, Vinh Xuong Silk, by my sister, who came to Hanoi for a week and stayed for several months, like many expats. She'd sent word home that she wanted fashion magazines she could use for inspiration at the tailor's, so I'd arrived with a suitcase full of glossies and very few clothes. Vinh Xuong Silk is on Hang Bong Street, the continuation of the traditional silk street, Hang Gai, in Hanoi's Old Quarter. It's a lively warren of 36 skinny market streets of ancient provenance, which looks like Montmartre as drawn by Dr Seuss, full of narrow Parisienne buildings in mildewed pastels, with wrought-iron balconies full of laundry, canaries and balcony beer gardens. Like almost every store along this narrow strip of meep-meep motorcycles and hustling hawkers, Vinh Xuong Silk, at number four, is just a skinny doorway smothered in the same quilted jackets and embroidered pyjamas everyone sells. It's only down the narrow hallway that I emerge in the real shop, a tiny space lined floor to ceiling with bolts of linen, silk, cotton and velvet. The wall fan shifts the damp air back and forth across the room. A small colour television broadcasts Vietnamese game shows. A Frenchman in khaki is asking about the orders he had faxed ahead from Paris. The smell in the air is, unmistakably, pungent with real silk. With her black hair pulled back in a ponytail, dressed in capris and T-shirt, Phuong looks even younger than 24, but she has been running her own tailoring business since she was 19. She learned the trade as a schoolgirl from her older sister, who was a tailor for many years, but now cooks in a Saigon restaurant. Once, Phuong would have been one of her sister's piece workers, working the sewing machine overnight for foreigners who needed their clothes within a weekend. Now Phuong oversees the labours of several other women who help to cut and sew and hem and iron the orders that pour in every day. I have brought a few pieces to be copied, including a beloved lined wool vest. "Oh yes, this is lovely," Phuong says politely when I put it on so she can see how it hangs. Then she frowns slightly. "The seams at the front are not even," she says, pinching the darts at the front. Sure enough, the seams are slightly crooked. "Do you want me to copy this or to fix it?" Fix it, I whisper, and copy it. I start thumbing through her catalogue, everything from sober business suits to copies of edgy Japanese designs. My husband's linen shirt would cost $US12, my black linen pants and silk vest would be $US7 each, and the lined wool blend suit in the inkiest black Phuong could find would be $US45. She seemed disappointed that I hadn't dived into her bolts of embroidered blues and reds and greens. "This is for Melbourne," I told Phuong. "It's cold and dark and needs black clothes." I was measured for my suit on a Wednesday afternoon, feeling like the great white whale as my tiny tailor learned the secret of the circumference of my thighs. I returned for a fitting on a Friday afternoon, slipping on the black jacket, hopelessly hot in the Hanoi humidity. The sleeves slid down just-so, the covered buttons slipped behind their covered seams, the pockets angled perfectly. Oooooh, said the Frenchwoman in the corner, smiling her approval. Oooh, I said, doing a twirl. It's not ready yet, said Phuong, eyeing it critically. When I arrive for my final fitting the next morning at 9am, I bring along a new friend, fresh off the plane for a business trip. As I pay the crazy-cheap price for a suit so nice I don't want to lose any weight, my businesswoman friend pulls her favourite trousers out of her daypack. "I'm leaving on Monday, is there any chance?" Phuong just smiles. "Of, of course," she says. "Please, sit down." As I hail a motorbike taxi to my hotel, the suit folded on my knees, Phuong takes out her black pencil and starts sketching on the back of a receipt book for another wide-eyed western customer. (taken from The Age newspaper, http://www.theage.com.au/cgi-bin/common/popupPrintArticle.pl?path=/articles/2002/12/13/1039656214717.html) ========= The Best of Hanoi ========= This month it was only appropriate to give you a selection of art from our artists in Hanoi. Here are some of our favorites!  Le Thiet Cuong - "Rain" - $800 - more >>  Nguyen Duy Nhi - "Still life 23" - $130 - more >>  Bich Noch - "Nude 1" - $160 - more >>  Nghiem Quang - "Fishing" - $160 - more >> ============== Artist Roster ============== Our database of up-and-coming artists has doubled in the last few months and we now have over 750 original art pieces in our
database -- one of the largest virtual galleries on the Internet! Here's a rundown on the artists you'll find in our pages.
Think you can pick the next Bui Xuan Phai?
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