I went over to Bac Liem’s and received my first lesson. I arrived returning a book about some Vietnamese artists who were big time in the making of Vietnamese art history, Nguyen Gia Tri, Nguyen Sang, To Ngoc Van and Bui Xuan Phai.
I sat down and shared a cup of green tea with Bac Liem, and he asked me, “Thay hay la To?” (Teacher or Craftsperson?)
I replied, “Artist?”
He asked me again, “Thay hay la To?”
I replied, “What are you asking me? I’m not an artisian.”
Bac Liem smiled. “Do you want to go see a painting?”
I said sure.
So we went, along with my uncle Chu Hung.
We traveled a bit, out to Tan Binh district, which is right by the airport. We arrived at an enormous house where there was a kung-fu class going on as soon as you walked in.
To the teacher, Bac Liem points upstairs and says, “Paintings.”
The teacher replied, “Please, go on ahead!”
Upstairs was a breathtaking collection of Vietnamese art. Many of the paintings were made by the four artists mentioned earlier. Some of the paintings were the kinds that you see in art history books. One of the paintings was Bac Liem’s. It was a tediously made image of women in something that looked like a landscape in the spring.
We wandered through the collection.
The Mr. Miyagi character who owns this collection is named Tran Hau Tuan. He has been an art collector and kung-fu master for years. He teaches kung-fu in his living room to mainly foreign visitors. He also translates many Vietnamese texts into English. Before we left he gave me a book.
I said to him, “Thank you, your collection is amazing.”
He said, “Thank you, only people from Hanoi can do something like this. I keep this collection here so that foreigners won’t look down on Vietnam so much. Please come back and read anytime you want.”
We thanked him again and left.
The book he gave me is called “Reflections on Arts.” It is a collection of quotes from Bui Xuan Phai. A graduate of the Ecoles Des Beaux Arts de Indochine, Bui Xuan Phai is one of the most well known painters in Vietnamese art history. He was born in 1920 and died in 1988. He worked small and intimate and mostly painted scenes from the Hanoi streets and themes from Cheo (a kind of Vietnamese traditional opera). Here are some things that he said:
“Knowing how someone appraises or comprehends a painting will enable us to learn how they paint. How can one paint a beautiful work without being able to see Beauty?
A new kind of Beauty does not come with familiarity, it brings with it a certain sense of the unexpected, the unknown. First one finds it strange, gradually one gets used to it and start to discover its appeal. Beauty goes on existing, probably because it is always new.” (21)
“The essence of modernism is youth. The further Art progresses, the younger it gets, Art would be so withered, so old if its people wanted to regress (i.e. conservative)!” (31)
“Of course those with the so-called “unseeing eyes” will not be able to understand Beauty. How sad it would be for a great beauty to come across a myopic man without his glasses. A sharp eye for Art is quite a different from a sharp eye for… hygiene standards for example. Some people are illiterate despite their perfect eyesight. A person who is ‘blind’ to Art will not be able to bear a painting that’s difficult to understand.” (49)
“Sometimes the value of a beautiful painting is enhanced by a signature. Not because it’s a beautiful signature, but because of the name, of the person who painted it.” (71)
“Fine, carry on working, paintings, researching… eventually you come to produce something new, eventually you will come to understand others, to understand yourself. Without understanding yourself, it is easy to confuse between Beauty and Ugliness.” (73)
“Style is a form of sincerity. Your style is what you are. Hence it is such a bad thing to imitate any style. Your vision (like a pair of glasses) must be your own rather borrowed!” (101)
“Vietnamese vocabulary does not contain many words to clearly distinguish between the followers of the many disciples that exist in pictorial Art. Often they are all just called Painter for the sake of convenience. As long as you paint, you will be known as a painter, regardless of what you paint with or what you paint. And once you are called a “painter”, it seems that you are capable of doing anything at all.
Well, if you can paint anything at all then it would be difficult to paint certain something really well.
Is it possible that painting as a profession is not a highly regarded in our country as it is else where?
In other countries, the public tends to pay much attention to unique original talent. Because there is such profusion of ordinary talent that it is not possible… to take not of them all! For that reason, we should not be surprised when certain talents are frequently mentioned in the press. But don’t forget that there are extremely original talents that have yet to receive any praise. Maybe time is needed to see if a talent will grow greater or become smaller!” (123)
[Phai, Bui Xuan. Reflections on Art. Ed. Bui Thanh Phuong and Tran Hau Tuan. Trans. Thuy Anh and Stephen Gaksill. Truong Hang Giam doc NXB My thuat. HCMC, Vietnam, 2003.]
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