Vietnamese Painting from 1925 to 1945 from a Cultural Perspective

very general portrait images appear in folk paintings (Vinh Hoa, Phu Quy paintings...).

As mentioned above, portraits in traditional Vietnamese fine arts are mostly related to serving beliefs. The two portraits of Nguyen Trai and Phung Khac Khoan (during the Early Le Dynasty) are an example. These portraits were drawn from memory or imagination, serving the purpose of worship. Because of the idealization of the characters, these paintings are somewhat formal, forced and monotonous. The appearance, demeanor, costumes, and facial expressions of the characters in the paintings are similar, which is the reason why traditional portraits leave almost no impression. In addition, the small number of remaining paintings and technical limitations are barriers that prevent the development of traditional portrait art.

By the end of the 19th and early 20th centuries, portrait art still only appeared in the aristocracy and the ruling class, people in everyday life were absent. At this time, the European Classical painting style was applied by some artists who studied in France and returned, such as Le Van Mien, Thang Tran Phenh, Huynh Dinh Tuu. However, the remaining portraits were only found in artist Le Van Mien. His paintings still had the form of paintings with the purpose of worship, however, the characters were described more vividly thanks to the realistic painting style and the support of Western painting materials and techniques.

Since 1925, with the arrival of a class of artists studying at the Indochina College of Fine Arts, portrait painting has entered a new phase. The modern painting techniques they learned were very effective in depicting human figures. Cultural changes brought about a complete change in the concept of beauty. Dogmatic, formulaic, and heavy paintings were replaced by free-spirited portraits that seemed to light up with bright colors. The beauty of portraits during this period was not only due to the techniques, brushwork, and colors, but also the deep emotion of sadness and joy in everyday life hidden within the characters.

Maybe you are interested!

Images of ordinary people, once seen only in folk paintings, have now become the main subject of works. Vietnamese portrait paintings

This period depicted ordinary people in all aspects of society, portraits of young women, children, and old people appeared on the painting surface naturally as if they existed in life. The personality traits of each character were emphasized, so the portraits of this period were vivid and full of emotion.

The artists skillfully used the skills learned in school, combined with the national spirit and Eastern aesthetics to exploit the character's portrait with their own perspective. The characters in the portraits are often depicted with pensive, thoughtful faces in a small, romantic space. The artists' portraits are not detailed and specific, but are often very general and concise, containing aesthetic vibrations behind the color blocks and brushwork. Many successful portrait painters in the period 1925 - 1945, including To Ngoc Van, Tran Van Can, Le Pho, Le Thi Luu, Luong Xuan Nhi...

To Ngoc Van painted portraits of young women full of elegance, dreaminess, contemplation and sadness. The clear light and dark thanks to the strong block painting style is often seen in his paintings. The influence of Western aesthetics is inevitable. But unlike the colorful and unrestrained French Impressionist paintings, To Ngoc Van did not take the light on the face and costumes too seriously, did not play with details, the color blocks were clear and pure without many interwoven colors, the drawings showed careful consideration. The faces were simple and condensed, the eyes and lips were just general highlights, gently evoking the spirit of Vietnamese young women. The drawings were solid but not detailed, the near and far space followed the law of one-point vision, still revealing the Asian convention. To Ngoc Van's portraits became symbols of symbolism and aesthetics. Some of his highly appreciated portraits were Young woman with lilies (1943), Young woman with lotus (1943)...

To Ngoc Van's portraits show us a somewhat boring life, a sad mentality, running away from reality, which is the basic character of Vietnamese urban people in particular and colonial Vietnamese society in general at the beginning of the century.

Tran Van Can's portraits are more colorful, with thick and porous color blocks. The faces in his paintings are drawn vividly, naturally, and meticulously without getting carried away with the description of light. The color blocks tend to be flat but still stand out thanks to the very precise strokes. The space of his paintings is relatively realistic, expressed by a strong brushwork. His typical portrait work that is highly appreciated is the painting Em Thuy (1943). This is a direct drawing of a model, demonstrating a solid knowledge of European scholarly art, but still carrying the general spirit of Eastern aesthetics.

Tran Van Can's portraits often depict people in a very realistic way. His portraits reveal the distinct spiritual traits of each character, focusing on psychological depth.

Le Pho painted portraits on silk with a symbolic style, simplified shapes, and stylized faces that reminded us of Japanese woodcuts. This is an imaginary portrait style, so it is not realistic, the characters appear as if in a dream. The lack of realism creates freedom in composition, condensing the image and the light and dark areas. Le Pho's typical portraits are the series of silk paintings of young women from 1931 to 1937.

Luong Xuan Nhi is also known as a portrait painter with many beautiful works. His portraits are very realistic, but still general. The image of the young woman in his paintings is very elegant and urban, representing the women of the urban petty bourgeoisie in Vietnam. Some typical paintings are: Portrait of a young woman (1938), Girl and lotus (1940), Portrait of a young girl (1938).

There are also many excellent portrait paintings such as Young Girl by the Fish Tank, Feeding the Birds (1931) by Nguyen Phan Chanh; Young Girl (1934) by Mai Trung Thu; Vietnamese Girl , Thin Curtain, Washing Hair at the Pond Bridge (1937), Girl by the Sofa (1934) by Le Van De; Young Girl (1937) by Nam Son; Girl (1934) by Le Thi Luu; Muong Girl Bathing (1940) by Tran Phuc Duyen...

It can be said that the portrait art of Vietnamese artists has conveyed the shape, soul and character of the Vietnamese people in a way that cannot be mistaken for anything else. The mark that Vietnamese portraits bring is undeniable, they are works that carry within them tangible, talented, simple and profound memories of an entire historical period. But more importantly, portraits of this period had an equal view of people in all social classes, this is a great change of humanity in the perspective of artists.

Vietnamese portrait paintings in the period 1925-1945 were full of vitality and excitement, creating famous works and authors of the country's painting industry, demonstrating cultural absorption and transformation, forming the unique characteristics of Vietnamese portrait paintings.

2.1.2. Living pictures

Living activities are all human activities in life, daily life. Because Vietnamese culture during the French colonial period had changed greatly compared to before, the people's living activities were gradually changed to suit the new fashion, cuisine, lifestyle, interior, architecture... imported from the West. This was reflected in art forms including painting.

Daily life painting is a genre of painting depicting activities in human life. The themes of daily life are very rich and diverse. All aspects, all activities of business, living, emotions, entertainment, festivals... of people and communities in daily life are exploited and built into paintings by artists.

However, compared to other art forms, painting is limited in the scope of the work on a flat surface, and is itself a “static” art form, so the reproduction of living scenes or the space of that context also has its own characteristics. The dominant trend of living paintings is authenticity and liveliness, although there are many expressive techniques, but realism is still the main style.

Before 1925 in Vietnam, scenes of daily life were rarely depicted in paintings, perhaps because the “secular” aspect was always disregarded by feudal ideology. Therefore, images of daily life and cultural aspects rarely appeared in traditional fine arts.

After 1925, the genre of painting that attracted the attention and achieved much success in Vietnamese painting during this period was life painting. Artists sketched and drew life directly, recording those marks and blending them with their imagination in their memories. Personal taste or “personal taste” was expressed on the basis of new knowledge of composition and perspective, creating an effective harmony between Western artistic techniques and indigenous themes (74). The main subject of life painting was people, the characters in the paintings were typical, distilled from real human activities with their psychological developments and diverse relationships in life.

The content of Vietnamese daily life paintings from 1925 to 1945 is innocent characters without poeticization, they are “not resentful, not telling their stories” in a space that is often quiet. The characters that appear most often are probably the silhouettes of young girls in flower gardens, under the porch. It is called “shadows” because they are often not described in too much detail, from their figure to their face, they are condensed, characteristic but not specific. The characters in ancient costumes, wrapped in ancient scarves, seem to have come from ancient literature to real life, both vivid and concrete, yet vague and distant, making the viewer feel lost in a dream. There are also scenes of children playing in the countryside, festivals, beliefs, family life and other normal life activities. Daily life paintings often show us the simplicity of space and the slowness of time, perhaps reflecting the characteristics of Vietnamese society during the colonial period.

Although the daily life paintings of Vietnamese painting in the period 1925 - 1945 are somewhat "aesthetic" in the way they exploit images, they still touch the hearts of viewers because of their authenticity and romance. Daily life paintings are created from the artist's deep human perception of life and the times. Reality

The present was vividly recreated in paintings, replacing religious themes that were bound by dry conventions, even though the artist was in the 1925 period.

- 1945 has not yet fully expressed the life marks of a nation in misery in the historical context of being occupied and wanting to rise up to change. The artists of this period still only depicted scenes of daily life, confined to family life, but it is enough to see the artist's feelings for the life of the homeland, depicting the cultural life of the Vietnamese people in the early 20th century (28).

Aesthetically, the paintings of this period are highly artistic and modern. The knowledge of fine arts learned from Europe has been expressed, giving the paintings a very natural and realistic quality. The depth of space is very focused on, but very simple and not meticulously described. The composition of the paintings of this period is often structured by large, strong and condensed blocks. The characters are often concentrated in the middle of the painting to create balance. The shapes of the characters, objects as well as the space where the event takes place are shown very generally. The solid and refined images create the aesthetic paintings of this period.

Paintings such as Playing checkers (1931) , Winter planting (1939), Going to the pagoda (1933) by Nguyen Phan Chanh; Two sisters (1934), Mother and child (1937) by Le Pho ; Father and child (1935), Two young women before the screen (1943) by Tran Van Can; Young women in the garden, Young women with hibiscus flowers (1944) by Nguyen Gia Tri... are typical paintings of the genre of daily life paintings from the period 1925 - 1945.

2.1.3. Landscape painting

Humans exist in nature, so the relationship between humans and nature is one of the most basic features of cultural life. Organisms (biotic) and non-biotic (physical and chemical environment) form the ecosystem. Humans exist in nature, exist with nature, so since ancient times, landscape has been one of the most basic objects of reflection in the art of painting. Landscape painting is a painting of natural scenery such as the sky, trees, mountains, rivers, houses, fields, lakes, and can add people, objects, or animals. Landscape painting can be drawn directly in front of nature, or drawn from memory or imagination.

Landscape painting is not just a purely objective view, inspired by nature, considering nature as a great teacher, but landscape painting is sometimes a mixture of emotion and scenery, sometimes it is the scenery that gives rise to emotion, but sometimes it borrows emotion to describe the scenery.

As a country located in a tropical climate zone with lush green trees all year round, our country's nature is extremely rich and contains many poetic and lyrical landscapes. According to French scholar P. Gourou, our country's nature is "a natural constant of Vietnamese culture, it creates the characteristics of Vietnamese culture - the plant civilization, or the rice civilization" [72, p.19]. The diverse ecosystem creates cultural features, living habits, beliefs, customs, meal structures...

The landscape of our country creates unique and distinctive features that are the attractive subject of Vietnamese artists in the period 1925-1945, which is inevitable. However, Vietnam does not have classical Chinese-style painting with the flourishing development of the ink-wash painting style. In our ancient fine arts, landscapes only play a secondary role in conventional paintings (such as the four-panel painting, the four-season painting). The scattered observation with many viewpoints (also known as "flying bird" or "walking horse") of ancient fine arts greatly limits the space in the painting, but now it has been replaced by the European perspective through new aesthetic lessons, natural landscapes can be painted in paintings as if they are endlessly absorbed into space. Vietnamese artists from 1925 to 1945 were initially influenced by the Impressionist style of painting taught by French teachers, with a scientific perspective combined with the seemingly endless expressive ability of new materials (oil paint, watercolor, gouache). Sunlight, clouds, mist, sparkling rivers or gloomy forests, rice fields, village roads, temples, pagodas, and mausoleums appeared on the paintings in an extremely rich, gorgeous, and dreamy way.

Although influenced by 19th century French painting, Vietnamese landscape paintings from 1925 to 1945 had their own unique techniques and perspectives. Landscape paintings during this period were not at all influenced by Chinese landscape paintings, nor were they mechanically modeled after European Impressionism. The uniqueness here, of course, must first come from the Vietnamese landscape, which entered

The soul of Vietnamese artists from folk songs, from communal houses, and from kapok trees is deeply imprinted in them and cannot be erased. But basically, the difference is the result of integrating the advantages of two aesthetic concepts, Eastern and Western.

The imprint of French Impressionism can be seen in the landscape paintings of this period, but the artists used the Vietnamese perspective to create a harmonious fusion in their works. The landscapes were no longer just a simulation of external objects, for the artists, painting landscapes was a way to express their feelings, where their hidden emotions were expressed, containing sadness, joy or loneliness.

Although landscape paintings of this period applied the principles of European perspective, the scenery was often trimmed, selected and arranged very "economically" (actively arranging objects according to a reasonable available principle) in a conventional way, creating an interesting feature. It was a simple and romantic approach to nature with subjective elements rather than pursuing the objective beauty of the West. The result of this intersection created a very unique style, evoking Eastern aesthetics.

A relatively clear feature is the characteristic of landscape paintings of this period, typical scenes of the countryside with fields, cotton trees, bamboo groves, village ponds are familiar images of the countryside that are always shown. These images may represent a specific region, or they may represent the Vietnamese countryside in general.

Landscape painting in Vietnamese painting flourished in the period 1925 - 1945, artists recorded their trips to the countryside, the diversity of the scenery was an endless attraction for them. In addition to the paintings drawn on materials such as watercolors of the early days, a series of excellent landscape paintings drawn on more durable materials were born. Nguyen Dang Bon painted the unlacquered lacquer screen Lang Pagoda Scenery , Pham Huu Khanh painted the lacquer screen Countryside Scenery , Tran Quang Tran painted the lacquer screen Kim Lien Village with bamboo bushes and water shadows around 1932 - 1937. There were a few artists who painted on silk but not many of their works survived due to time, the nature and limitations of the materials.

Vietnamese Painting from 1925 to 1945 from a Cultural Perspective - 7

Comment