DSpace at VNU: Cutural exchange in Vietnamese contemporary art: loss or gain

the temptation to draw parallels between the strong presence o f indigenous traditions and folk art in Vietnamese contemporary art, and a similar situation in the surging interest in the

CONTEMPORARY ART: LOSS OR GAIN?

Iola Lenzi* - Natalia Kraevskaia

Borrowing across cultures is universal and historical, as old as the movement

o f human civilizations The great ceramic art o f C hina’s Yuan and Ming Dynasties,

o f global art historical primacy, was tributary not only to Persian technical knowledge, but to forms derived from Middle-Eastern metal wares(l) In early twentieth century Paris, the seminal painters Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque collected tribal statuary from black Africa which triggered new ideas prompting them to produce Cubism Cubism would then play a key role in the artistic revolution that was twentieth century Western m odernising)

Cultural exchange from one period to another is common as well, revivals o f older styles and artistic ideologies as frequent in Europe as in Asia The Renaissance, fourteenth century Europe’s return to Greek and Roman classicism, is amongst the most salient borrowings in art history, as well as in the broader world

o f ideas China too has a well-documented tradition o f artistic revisiting over millennia, archaistic works o f art -paintings, bronzes and ceramics- drawing inspiration from art o f the past-(3) Indeed, in the case o f China, formal re- appropriation o f the ancient has a canonic function(4)

The origins o f ideas, icons, and languages o f art are not always clear, the freer and more porous their geographic and cultural environment, the more likely they are

to mutate and re-emerge from one zone or period to the next, losing their initial identifying markers in appearance and ethos

Cultural transfer can be a messy or even violent business, one culture resisting the integration o f another, registering opposition by either refusing to acknowledge

it, or taking in totems o f the foreign wholesale as a form o f critique In other cases, assimilation is seamless, hom e cultures receptive to new concepts and visual

* Lasalle College of the Arts-Goldsmith, Singapore

** Assoc Prof Russian State University for the Humanities, Institute of the Oriental Cultures,Moscow

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repertoires, the latter rapidly digested and adapted, the alien indieenized and meshed with the local

In recent decades, globalization has accelerated exchange processes, fast and

neworks, and erasing boundaries This rapidity and brutality o f contact and peietration have sometimes provoked institutional reaction aeainst foreign iniuence, cultural protectionism frequent, particularly in contexts where outside cutures are perceived as hegemonic and so assumed to weaken local ones, once charly-defined national cultural boundaries now challenged This can be paticularly true when strong nationalist ideology is deployed to cement voune stites In France, where the State considers the English language - and by extension

CULTURAL TRAFFIC IN SOUTHEAST ASIA

In Southeast Asia, cultural infiltration and adaptation have been defining characteristics o f artistic expression over millennia Ethnically, linguistically and rtíigiously diverse, the peoples o f the region forced their respective indigenous cultures from the seeds o f Chinese and Indian ones, with European and Arab ntluences thrown in the mix From the earliest times, cultural exchange was pevalent, highly developed pre-colonial maritime trade routes binding insular and naritime Southeast Asia and linking the region to the world bevond A trade- irduced outward-lookins mentality, intra-regional migration, and a syncretic

a it ide to arriving faiths, have asserted cultural exchange as a vital regional force f,r thousands o f years Moreover, in the modern period -earlier in Philippines-, gjuiheast Asians were subjected to colonisation in name or spirit - in Siam-, new ideologies arriving with the European imperialists Thus, it can be argued that in sire ways Southeast Asia experienced the cultural effects o f globalisation centuries bfore the term was coined

Within the broader context o f syncretic Southeast Asia, contemporry Vietnam, with its long and continuous history o f movement o f populations ad

id e a s , s t a n d s o u t a s a place o f e x t r e m e c u lt u r a l in f ilt r a t io n , adaptation, and E-

projection outward Not surprisinglv, in Vietnam the search for a framing )f personal and national identity is today a recurring one, in visual art as in the v/ier arena To better understand the various strands o f influence, reception, E- projection, and their ultimate play in modern and contemporary Vietnamese Visul

art, th is p a p e r a t t e m p t s a n u n t a n g l i n g o f t h e l o c a l fr o m th e i n c o m i n g , a s W ell IS

discussing the different motives governing ways artists today interpret and ue indigenous and extraneous elements in their practice

REMARKS ON THE VIETNAMESE SITUATION

Indigenous elem ents

Village culture

Vietnamese art originated and matured in the village, peoples’ innate aestiec sensibility reflected in the elegance o f everyday metal, bamboo or Woodn objects(6) Unlike China where the aristocracy had always patronized a ris e development, for many centuries Vietnam was a place o f anonymous village produced by peasants' craft communities According to Vietnamese art histoiias the most deeply-rooted indigenous national art consists o f the village comrrunl

house đình Its architecture varying from North to South, this domestic construDtin

exhibits richly multiform external decoration, and inside presents decorative eaivig including classical motifs such as draeons and dragon's heads, phoenix, faris flames and sometimes floral ornamentation, mythological themes, and siens

o f daily rural life These images in particular, in their rough technique, hunor irony, and directness o f expression, show the capacity o f ancient sculptcrso overcome the taboos o f social convention and manifest a creativity relatv<y uncommon in feudal Vietnamese society(7)

The multifunctional aspect o f the communal house should also be stressei le

đình a place for worshiping the village deity, conducting meetings about comnual

affairs, and holding celebrations It is arguably this synthetic approach to the Usof space, so typical o f Vietnamese mentality and practice(8), that later contributes o the ease and naturalness with which contemporary artists ally site, installation ad performance, as illustrated in Truone Tan and Nguyen Quang H uy’s 196

Waterbuffalo p erform ance, Dao Anh K hanh’s 2012 Slow Walk, and piects y

Hoang D uons Cam

m ệ t n a m h ọ c - KỶ YỂU HỘI THẢO QUỐC TẾ LÀN T H Ứ TU

Communal-house sculpture representing everyday agrarian life o f the 17th- 19th Cinury was rough rather than refined Yet it is this genre, quite different to the Cimnic and more iconographically standardised mythological and reliaious Cinings, that at the turn o f the twentieth century surfaces, adapted, in Dinh Cong Eat s and Nguyen N hu Y ’s sculpture, and Hoang Hong C a m ’s naive painting style, l<te- trivially imitated by Hoang Phuong Vi

Ancient civilizations/ tribal-minority influences

Many contemporary Vietnamese sculptors also find inspiration in the Sf:uptural legacy o f the great civilizations which once flourished on the territory o f ttodern Vietnam -Champa and the ancient Khmer empires-(9), while others exploit

tl e imagery and aesthetics o f tribal groups residing in Vietnam Thus the ritual art

of he ethnic tribes o f the Tay Neuyen Plateau in central Vietnam colours the C'ettive work o f Nguven Nhu Y His wooden sculptures resemble tomb figures fiom that area, reflecting the artist's naive approach to reality, as well as his Confident ability to abstract

In the last century ethnicity has been a problematic theme in Vietnamese art, its acceptance subjected to the prevailing political situation Even the works o f the revolutionary artist Mai Van Hien, and those o f Nguyen Sang, acclaimed as one o f fou- pillars o f Vietnamese modern art, suffered restrictions imposed by the Vietnamese Art Association(lO) From there on references to minority culture in the

visual art o f kinh (indigenous Vietnamese)had a complex, multilayered character:

apart from ethno-touristic drawings, artists such as Mai Any Dung produced works showing a deep knowledge o f and respect for the traditions o f different ethnic grcups; these works can also engage with the nation’s heterogeneous cultural identity, advocate the tribe peoples’ rights (Dang Anh Tuan and Nguyen Thanh

areas, such as does Dang Thi Tham Poong Tham Poona, descended from White Thai and Muong, speaks about the life o f the Northern hill tribes enriching her Visual vocabulary both with traditional symbolism and contemporary metaphors Alcng with her graphic evocations o f ethnic minority traditional costumes, Tham Poena sometimes includes real weaving or embroidery in her work as material reference to the tribal w om en’s position in modern society

Contemporary artists often mix indigenous Vietnamese culture with exterior elements, either local ethnic reference or Western ones, thus transforming the system o f conventional codes Nguyen Minh Thanh, for example, in his 2000 Nha

San Due installation The p a rty used Vietnamese flat rice pan-cakes to imitate

ancient Taoist drawings, placing them alongside real Dao shamanistic ritual masks

in order to accentuate the contradiction between desired eternity and ea temporality.

Prints and p a per

Another still-subsisting indigenous tradition is woodblock printmaking wKci

is believed to have emerged in the 11th century as a means o f disseminainị Confucian Daoist and Buddhist ideas The religious and ritual vocation o f the prnti was later reinforced by Hanoi’s Hang Trong School prints which displaying obvbư signs o f Chinese influence, were a mainstay for several centuries, populari/in; Confucianism, Daoism and Buddhism In the art o f contemporary Vietnin, references to religious painting and prints if not widely popular, nonetheless remiii> revealed by Buddhist subjects, the prevalence o f the scroll form, and in wo'ki' composition Strong links to religious art are found in the works o f Le Quoc \ie , who subtly incorporates both modern formal elements and ideas into thỉ composition and concept o f his religious-looking art

Folk prints with non-religious themes were first produced in the 14-]5ti centuries by artisans from Dong Ho village in Bac Ninh province, becoiĩinỊ popular in the 18th and 19 century when similar print-making centres also appeirei

in Kim Hoang, Ha Tay province, and Sinh, near Hue These prints, featuring rinl social activities as well as historical heroes and events, served as a festive hcrrs decoration during the lunar New Year period The images o f animals and baby-bo}S with different domestic birds or fish constituted encoded wishes o f health, succeiS

in studies, and prosperity, amongst others for the coming New Year The traditionil prints appear unchanged technically and artistically over centuries, only tier thematic range widening as a result o f shifting realities Although Dong Ho piins

a re n o l o n g e r p o p u la r a m o n g th e l o c a l p o p u l a t i o n , t h e ir r ic h im a g e r y f in d s its ’V<y

into works by contemporary artists, playing a crucial conceptual role in Nguyen

Nhu Y ’s 2002-2005 Calendars series, and Hanoi artist Pham Huy T hong’s 2005-

2009 Updated series Both artists use the ironic tinge that is a distinctive feature of

Dong Ho pictures, but if Nhu Y transforms the traditional images with b e n e v c l e i t

humour, Thong redesigns their compositions incorporating signs o f present-day li e

to critique contemporary society’s consumerism, corruption, rich and poor dhicfc, and spiritual impoverishment

Ceramics

Among the indigenous artifacts which entered contemporary practice, ceramics also deserve mention, especially the m edium ’s use in installation at Vietnamese ceramic history goes back before Chinese domination Vietnamese

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potery combining indigenous elements with those derived from neighboring culures such as the Khmer Champa Indian, and especially Chinese(12) has

s u riv e d over time, admired and collected by elites, and cherished by commoners, its talus far above that o f other household utensils Central as utilitarian vessels, and connected to religion and ritual through function, ceramics constitute the essoice o f Vietnamese traditional life Their elesance and connection to traditional lifeare key features o f the realistic paintings o f Bui Viet Dung Buo Hoai Mai, and Phing Quoc Tri

I f ceramics feature as decorative devices in paintings, they can be used more corceptually in installation art Some, such as Nguven Bao Toan feature them cenrally in their installations As Australian academic Ann Proctor notes, in most

o f lis works " Bao Toan transposes everyday objects into a different space and imiues them with a new internal m eaning or I02ÌC w hich can either be related to a Daiist world view, village culture, life cycles, transformations or Vietnamese liteature"(13)

Le Quoc Viet develops a more literary approach to the use o f ceramics in his

insallations In his Wordless he includes I 72 plates and 101 balls with poems in

Chnese Han and Vietnamese Nom characters, thus borrowing not only the outward aeihetic features o f ancient ceramics, but also one o f its functional destinations - to coiserve court literary heritage over time

A number o f contemporary artists have chosen ceramics as their medium for prtducing sculpture The creative practice o f these ceramic sculptors was a subject

o f comprehensive research by Ann Proctor who examined it from the perspective oi' its craft or art nature, thematic variations, and the correlation o f tradition and midcrnity among others(14) Finally, contemporary Vietnamese artists, several of wlom discussed later in this paper, have used porcelain vessels as a support for thiir painting, conceptual principals motivating them to couple the ancient utlitarian medium with narratives commenting the everyday(15)

Providing a historical context for recent developments in Vietnamese art, Aistralian curator and academic Ian Howard discusses ties linking rural culture and ccitemporary art particularly the latter’s predilection for craft and folk media, its

ex>erimentally(16) However, some artists also preserve decorative and folk elements in their works to satisfy market expectations, mainstream buyers, mostly fceigners, attracted by their exoticism and explicit Vietnamese features

The specific connections between rural and urban life, traditional and new ferns o f artistic expressions, and the continuing usaee o f local materials, frustrate

the temptation to draw parallels between the strong presence o f indigenous traditions and folk art in Vietnamese contemporary art, and a similar situation in the surging interest in the local and folk art among European artists at the turn of the

19 h century In Europe, the absorption o f folk elements into modern art was a reaction aaainst orthodox academicism and the rationalism o f industrial society, rather than an outlining o f national boundaries On the contrary in Vietnamese modern and contemporary art, the inclusion or derivation o f indigenous elements often indicates national identity Most importantly, unlike in Europe, in Vietnam this tradition was never interrupted

French influence

External influences on Vietnamese art are discussed in Boi Tran Huynh's work on Vietnamese aesthetics where she contends that pre-colonial art is not just a form o f pure 'unaffected' village art as some Vietnamese art historians view it, but a more complex synthesis o f various influences "resulting from migration and acquisition o f new territories", or from an infusion o f Chinese, Neo-Confucian and Buddhist elements into traditional village art( 17) This assertion suggests a broader range o f extraneous impacts to indigenous Vietnamese forms in religious, domestic, military, and royal architecture, infrastructure such as bridges, and in decorative patterns adorning buildings

Adapting new foreign elements, Vietnamese culture still retained its essential qualities, a central Chinese influence in visual art integrated with local art practice This consolidation o f indigenous features and outside influences in visua art created the base for future artistic developments in the colonial period, marked not only by Western or French influence, but also by the emergence o f Vietnamese modernism, both in visual art and literature

Literature

Cultural borrowings in Vietnamese literature first appeared as different scripts

These evolved as Classical Chinese (Hán Văn) and Chữ nôm (Chinese scripts

adapted for Vietnamese), the latter, though formed as far back as the thirteenth century, always failing to be eiven official status, and instead remaining a language

o f the elite and notable writers and poets(18) By the early twentieth century, both

Classical Chinese and Chữ nôm , which coexisted and covered different sphens o f language function, had been replaced by the Latinized script Quốc Ngữ vhich

though created in the seventeenth century, was not popular until its everyday isage was imposed by the French colonial government While some saw this cutural coercion as an implantation o f French/ Western values designed to uproo the

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Vietnamese from their ancient literature(19), others recognized the policy's educational role in the pre-and post-revolutionary fight against illiteracy, so supported

it as a means o f spreading nationalist literature, and later revolutionary ideas(20).With the transition to Quốc N gữ script, new literary forms with no equivalent

in traditional Vietnam ese literature appeared, and with these, the growth o f modern literature, including the novel and play, the first modern Vietnamese theatrical

production, A cup o f Poison (Chén thuốc độc) by Vũ Đình Long, put on at the

Hanoi Opera House in 1921 Am erican historian Wynn Wilcox speaks o f "the rising

use o f French and Rom anised Vietnamese {quốc n g ữ ), the increasingly

Europeanized education and cultural tastes o f the metropolitan elite, and the political realities o f colonialism in Vietnam", all plaving “a role in creating a demand for new forms o f th eatre"(2 1) Thus colonial language policy positioned Vietnamese intellectuals and writers in the context o f Eurocentric cosmopolitanism, opening a vast W estern literary tradition to them(22) Foreign cultural borrowings, mainly French, o f the' early twentieth century, were less due to colonial politics than

to the rejection o f old lifestyles and a new elite and intelligentsia’s wish to adopt a modern identity(23)

Though the "Civilising Mission" (Mission Civilisatrice) proclaimed by the colonial authorities had a dual goal -to enlighten as well as reap economic profit(24), it also led to progressive educational reforms These resulted in the establishment o f new schools, including some which introduced the teaching of crafts and applied arts in ways encouraging an expressive experimentation not generally part o f traditional guild training This innovation had the objective and result o f increasing and refining Vietnamese craft production (Bien Hoa School o f Applied Arts - 1903 G ia Dinh Drawing school in Saigon - 1913, among others) Particularly important was the 1925 Hanoi opening o f the Fine Arts College o f Indochina (L'Ecole des Beaux Art de rindochine-E B A I) H anoi’s first art school implemented European Art Academ y standards o f the day The study o f anatomy, drawing o f classical busts, field trips, faculties split according to medium, and a clear focus on Neo-Classicism in painting were the mainstay o f its curriculum, the latter also shaped by the tastes o f its principal teachers Victor Tardieu and Joseph Inguimberty

I f various m odernist trends recently current in Europe -expressionism, cubism, futurism, abstraction, Dadaism, surrealism e tc - were ignored by the curriculum, the school was still radically modern in the context o f Vietnam "Westernization” coincided with the young educated generation’s ambition to emancipate itself from Confucian limitations, replacing these with individualistic expression that in turn

prompted the emergence o f a new profession: artist-as-creator rather than craft- maker Further, the establishment o f EBA1 and other such schools progressively opened up the world o f art to non-elite Vietnamese This slowly increasing access to students from all strata o f Vietnamese society, through entrance competitions etc , would by the late twentieth century have an impact on the widening o f artistic practices and so the development o f local contemporary art.

With the introduction o f Western oil on canvas, French teachers also encouraged the development o f traditional crafts as well as the revision o f their aesthetic possibilities Thus, under the guidance o f Tardieu, N guyen Phan Chanh, not satisfied with oil, discovered Chinese silk painting, creating masterpieces on silk that incorporated Western drawing skills and the pictorial idiom o f Vietnamese folk woodblock prints(25)

Another achievement resulting from foreign impetus was EBAI-prompted experimentation on indigenous media, including the transformation o f lacquer from

a decorative medium to one o f fine art In Vietnam today lacquer painting is a significant part o f art production, but less than a century ago, it was used exclusively for crafting utilitarian objects, puppetry, religious and ritual sculpture, and architectural details In the 1920s artists from the Ecole des Beaux-Arts de l’Indochine were the first to use lacquer in fine art Inguimberty, who taught oil painting, having been exposed to the beauty o f lacquer religious objects and decoration o f Hanoi temples, in 1928 established the sch ool's department o f lacquer with the aim o f developing this traditional medium However, lacquer paintings were not considered o f real artistic legitimacy until the 1940th when the experiments o f Nguyen Gia Tri, a graduate o f 1936, surpassed his teachers’ expectations, these poetic and elegant works confirming lacquer’s fine-art status(26) Still today lacquer’s unpredictable effects attract, the m edium ’s decorative power inseparable from its artistic potency, this alliance in line with traditional Vietnamese aesthetic principles(27) At that time, along with the growing popularity o f lacquer and silk techniques, oil painting becam e deeply rooted in Vietnamese art, and even after the French left the colony, was regarded as a Vietnamese modern-art m edium rather than a foreign implant(28)

Though cultural institutions such as the EBAI, research centres (L'Ecole Francaise d'Extreme Orient), the University o f Indochina, the Hanoi Opera, museums, archives, and libraries were built by French colonial authorities as instruments o f political power(29), they would also contribute to the development

o f modern ideas and culture in Vietnam, solid foundations nurturing national fine arts, literature, and research activities In the case o f museum s, though their general

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concept and methodologies o f collecting, conservation, and public display were first introduced by the French, since the Geneva agreement the Vietnamese government has continued as custodian o f the national heritage conserved in Vietnamese museums, ensurine their endurina activity in the country New museums such as

H anoi's Vietnam Museum o f Ethnology, and Vietnam W om en's Museum have been created as well, showine contemporary V ietnam 's dynamic will to pursue cultural objectives(30)

INFLUENCE OF SOVIET REALISM

The Ecole des Beaux Arts de rin d o ch in e period, with its emphasis on hierarchical structure and academism, was followed by a Socialist Realism period, imprinted with all the communitv-inspired values o f before, enriched with new ideology Communist China's and the Soviet Union's influence led to shifts in art policy direction and increased control over art production In 1957 the Art Association was formed(31) Similar to the Soviet Artists Union, V ietnam 's Art

establishing the list o f artists allowed to exhibit at home and abroad, as well as the content o f exhibitions The Association also regulated the status o f artists depending

on the political correctness o f their work, deciding who was able to obtain art materials during times o f economic hardship, and defining art’s content and forma! criteria Themes o f war and revolution, glorification o f workers' labor, and the joys

o f peasant life, were deemed to appropriately express socialist ideology For decades socialist hegemony and rules in creative work limited artists’ search for self-realization Yet there were endeavors to step out o f this frame which resulted in the emergence o f unsanctioned creative works

Among the artists who didn't accept the constraints o f Socialist Realism were Duong Bich Lien, Nguyen Sang, Nguyen Tu Nghiem, and Bui Xuan Phai

Undervalued during the socialist realist period, after doi m oi these artists were

recognized as 'Masters o f Modernism' or ' Four Great Pillars' o f art(32) Nguyen Sang, who depicted war and revolutionary combat scenes am ong others, and Nguyen Tu Nehiem with his passion for folk and tradition, were interested in modernist expressive idioms influenced by cubist forms Duone Bich Lien persevered with colonial genres such as portraiture and landscape, while Bui Xuan Phai explored a range o f themes which strayed beyond the borders o f 'correct'

i d e o l o g y , i n c l u d i n g still-life, nudes, Cheo traditional theatre, abstracts, and his

celebrated Hanoi street-scapes Phai, who from the 1990's was internationally famous, was still a decade a so considered decadent by Vietnamese art officials This was due to the painter's perceived pessimistic attitude, incompatible with

socialist realism 's positive spin on life, and his style's ties with European m odernist trends o f the earlv twentieth century.

THE C O N T E M P O R A R Y SITUATION

Vietnam's visual art w o rld p o st-d o i moi

For the last century, the course o f Vietnamese visual art has been inextricably tied to the nation's historical trajectory Twentieth century artistic practices have been pushed and pulled ideologically by forces both inside and outside the country visual culture, never immutable even in the most stable context, in Vietnam ’s case metamorphosed in ways unprecedented elsewhere French colonialism and particularly its art education system, nationalist revolt, North-South partition, the American war, Ho Chi M inh’s liberation, Southern exodus after the 1975 reunification, and seo-political ties with the ex-Soviet Union, have all left their imprint on Vietnam and her visual art practices More recently, as the nation has

opened economically further to do I moi, as Viet-kieu have returned to the country

after decades overseas, and in the wake o f V ietnam 's 2007 entry into the World Trade Organisation, exterior culture and values have once again washed over the country, testing its cultural porosity

Today V ietnam ’s visual artists, many o f them in contact with the outside world from both inside Vietnam and beyond her borders, have new ideas relating to their vocation as cultural players As contemporary practitioners rather than modernist painters, they do not describe or reproduce life in a literal manner, but instead are more interested in using their art to ask questions, project impacts, or navigate complex and multiple cultural realities so as to make sense o f the world What they present cannot be depicted through straight narrative, but instead must be referenced through different pictorial and conceptual strategies, many o f which involve a broad repertoire o f signs representing intangible ideas These signs and ideas used by contemporary artists to explain Vietnam in the world, and the world

to Vietnam, are frequently the product o f cultural borrowing, internal or external, and plucked from myriad sources, geographic, intellectual, and historical In the following sections, we attempt to distinguish, characterise, and analyse borrowing strategies employed by Vietnamese artists today

Giving local relevance to fo reig n borrowings- appropriating emblems o f consumer society: derivation, endorsement, absorption, or critique?

From the 1990s, various types o f incoming ideas have competed for attention

in Vietnamese visual art Consumer culture, with its emphasis on packaging, advertising logos, and brand-display-and-ownership as a mark o f social status, is

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am onest the most significant Originating in the prosperous West, as a result o f greater Vietnamese wealth at the turn o f the century, consumer culture permeates the country Even as in some developed economies intellectuals reject it, at the dawn o f the new millennium brand culture becomes localized and a central theme o f contemporary art

Presented directly, in the art o f some it is integrated without alteration, ostensibly as a manifestation o f contemporary life The Hanoi painter Ha Manh

treatment o f incoming cultural codes In his pictorial narratives, obviously

positioned against a backdrop o f international brand identifiers -Louis Vuitton Mickey Mouse, Hello Kitty- Thus the artist sets up an easily-leeible dichotomy o f cliche, pitting the outward clues o f tradition, as denoted by archetypal clothing, against a clearly demarcated stage-set o f external cultural markers(33) The parable

is non-committal, the paintings glibly disengaged despite their supposed satirical stance However visually seductive, -luminous palette, technical virtuosity-, they provide commentary about packaging, not content, visiting the banal fact o f cultural infiltration, but not its effects In their vacant lining up o f well-understood emblems

o f conspicuous consumption, contrasted with a pastiche o f the local, such works, made all over developing Asia, offer a crude cultural criticism Derivative OÍ this genre, they are generic in appearance as well as message, so for all their borrowings, fail to illuminate Vietnam grappling with transformation

Some artists however use totems o f consumer culture critically, to foster a thinking, resistant response to the perceived negative impact o f social and moral changes ambushing the nation The semiotic and structural differences between the paintings o f Ha Manh Thang and Nguyen Van Cuong(b 1972) reveal contrasting perspectives

In his inks, murals (now all erased), and ceramics o f the late 1990s Hanoi artist Nguyen Van Cuong's appropriation o f foreign/contemporary/urban icons articulates an involvement not apparent in Ha Manh T h a n g 's works a decade later

Cuong’s fetishising (1998 Franklin series) o f the image o f Benjamin Franklin as

depicted on the American dollar bill -a universally-understood symbol o f Capitalism, particularly meaning-laden in Communist Vietnam-, and his ongoing

representation o f black-suited male karaoke bar crawlers(1997 Karaoke ser es),

exhibiting lascivious and sadistic behavior with naked, bound women their subjects, testify to the painter/performance artist‘s(34) indictment o f V ietn am 's fin-de-siscle

moral decay But C u o n e 's imagery does not intend a critique o f Western values

oer-se (by the late 1990s th e a r t is t has travelled extensively and has first-hand knowledge o f lifestyles and value codes on three continents beyond Asia), but rather

a questioning o f Vietnam 's uncritical appetite for the worst attributes o f material society, it is the wholesale transplantation o f materialism that is problematic to

Cuoniĩ, who describes the phenomenon as Cultural Pollution^35) Unlike the static

paintings o f Ha Manh Thang C uona's weavinas o f signs -Franklin, karaoke microphones, mobile telephones, TV sets, whiskey bottles, hypodermic needles- into hyperactive pictorial narratives, challenge their audience on the effects o f cultural exchange These paintings, their Vietnamese text - ironic or vulgar- targeting home audiences so anchoring them in the local, transform the foreign into the familiar, thus eliciting discomfort and response about the rationale and impact o f sociocultural shift, and its attendant loss Through their meshing o f icons, they encase actively, the viewer made responsible for the promise and compromise o f today's Vietnam

Cuona exploits form to heighten message, his mixed realistic/cartoon- expressionist painterly style, sophisticated composition, and juxtapositions o f symbols -sexual depravity with indigenous imagery including farmers, oxen, monks, official loudspeakers, traditional architecture- jolt in their integration o f violence into the everyday In its dance o f references and subverted meanings, Cuong’s startling lavering o f two worlds translates the ambiguous choices facing

Vietnam ese citizens at the turn o f the century, the w orks universally relevant in

their articulation o f problems inherent to a slobalised world o f inescapable cultural intersection In pictures that materialise Vietnamese an^st as tradition is abandoned for the new, the artist plays a double role, that o f participant -sadistic master or alternately victim-, as well as external voyeur, mere observer o f debauchery This insider/outsider perspective, speaking o f the complexity o f social responsibility confronting active and passive citizen attitudes, creates psychological tension, so increasing the works’ impact Further, Cuong’s choice o f media supports his ambivalent view o f.V ie tn a m ’s cultural and societal dilemmas at the turn o f the

century: do paper and porcelain, particularly indigenous to Vietnam, are used

repeatedly, their fragility and association with ancient artistic practices suggesting Cuong’s loyalty to his ow n Vietnam , while also saluting traditional society’s ability

to assimilate contemporary/imported/urban vices(36)

Presenting another type o f cultural borrowing, recent works by Hanoi artist Nguyen N ehia Cuong (b 1973) marry brand logos appearing on domestic and foreign packaging with the female nude(37) Incorporating advertising; imagery into his pictures such that text and insignia are vagina and breasts o f his corpulent