This blog is meant to keep an ongoing documentation of my Fulbright research project on Vietnamese oil painting and lacquer painting. Please feel encouraged to comment on the contents and/or start a conversation about the issues raised in this project. For more information about me or to view my artwork, please visit www.tammy-nguyen.com.
PROJECT ABSTRACT
I intend to make artwork in Vietnam that utilizes Vietnamese oil painting and lacquer painting as subject matter. The juxtaposition of these two types of painting provides a lens to understand the power of traditionalism in Vietnam. This project will result in a show that will debut in Vietnam and travel to New York City and the edition of an artist book that reflects my experiences in Vietnam.
Vietnamese oil painting and lacquer painting differ in the arrangement of elements on the surface. This reflects the different types of education that Vietnamese oil and lacquer painters experience. Beginning over 2000 years ago, the secrets of lacquer painting were passed down among clans of artisans. Vietnamese oil painting started with the establishment of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts d’Indochine, a French art academy founded by Victor Tordieu, a colleague of Henri Matisse, in 1925. The establishment of this academy led Vietnamese oil painters to their visions with a Western painting sensibility that puts 3-dimensional depictions of reality on 2-dimensional surfaces for the first time. Impressed by Vietnamese lacquer arts, the French, in turn, appropriated the medium into the academy, and lacquer was brought into the dialogue of Western-style painting. The academy designated lacquer painting taught there as fine art and traditional lacquer painting as folk art. As products of two contrasting systems of instruction, Vietnamese oil painters and traditional lacquer painters have distinct sensibilities that not only construct their art-making processes but also motion towards differences in values, priorities, and opportunities.
The subject matter, however, of both Vietnamese oil painting and lacquer painting has a particular voice that embraces Vietnamese custom. For example, in an oil painting by Trinh Khoa entitled “Luong Van Can Street After the Rain”, a small street is depicted in an assortment of brisk blue, yellow, green, and grey brush marks. The brush marks suggest a movement through the streets and a sense of the daily hustling and bustling of the place. In “The Wedding”, a commonly depicted scene in folk lacquer painting, a country-boy scholar has won the hand of the king’s daughter after he has just received the highest scholarship. The elaborate composition of people, mountains, and trees executed in an extravagant manner imply the celebratory feelings of the moment. While these paintings have different subject matters they share a reverent attitude towards their culture.
The juxtaposition of these two schools serves as the basis of my inquiry. Starting from the point of commonality of Vietnamese values, I hope to understand the lineage of social separation between Vietnamese oil painters and folk lacquer painters through my art-making process. I am curious about where the paths of the artists’ content, practice, and culture meet and diverge because these relationships become primary to understanding the artist’s social location. Content is the painting, itself. Practice is how the artists make their paintings; this includes their process, their education, and their sensibility. Culture includes both the local culture that surrounds the artist and the overarching culture of Vietnam. I hope to see this content, this practice, and this culture in very full ways by making work that interacts with Vietnamese art culture, primarily oil and lacquer painting.