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BEAUTY MISCONCEIVED in Paintings that fail to reflect the NEW LIFE

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By THAI HANH¹
Ministry of Culture Arts Institute

How beautiful are the land and people of Vietnam! Beautiful landscape! Beautiful soul! The understanding, love, and creating of beauty originate from there.

Do we paint? On remote islands or at sites of artillery pieces, the Vietnamese soldier plants flowers of all colors to beautify the battleground. Although the truck driver’s compartment is small, there is still room for a picture of the late Uncle Ho. The flowers and picture go with them to the battlefield. While life is mixed with fierce battles and production is urgent, life can also be very slow and relaxed. We love noble ideals, love life, love flowers, love colors, and love paintings.

This sentiment does not exist only today, but has existed since time immemorial .

So many unique and precious works of arts have been left behind by our ancestors: the beautiful brass drums with engraved characters, the meticulously made Buddha statues, the outstanding works of engravings, and the lively pig and chicken paintings. They prove that they understood, loved, and created beauty.

Our ancestors loved spring, Tet scenes, chicken paintings, and red scrolls. Nowadays, while we do not lack red scrolls and chicken paintings, we have so many new and beautiful and interesting paintings. As we further continue and develop our ancestors’ arts, we now have soft paintings on silk, bright and gay oil paintings, plain and healthy woodcuts, and caricatures and sketches that describe the new men, the new things, and the heroic Vietnamese who are fighting the Americans for national salvation and socialist construction.

Not only are paintings seen in publications, exhibition halls, museums, community houses, information halls, or clubs, but they are these shallow, superficial, lonesome paintings that abuse the old style and contain daring colors are seen among the earthen statuettes covered by a thin layer of red paint; picture frames and mirrors painted odd colors; envelopes for use with letters, greeting cards, and invitations show ing very colorful, tasteless designs; and portraits with bright red lips and cheeks, weird hairdos, etc. — altogether they constitute a coarse counterartistic taste. Beauty is actually seen in the naive, simple, plain, fresh, soft, and gentle expression, instead of something weird, complicated, tastelessly colorful, shockingly bright, or striking.

But, unfortunately, there still exist paintings that lack esthetic value and are plainly unwholesome.

More unfortunate is the fact that some state agencies in local areas also hang such paintings in meeting halls, clubs, libraries, or state stores They even send people to Hanoi to buy such paintings which are put up as prizes in local areas. They indirectly create favorable conditions for the paintings to be circulated more widely.

To help improve the masses’ ability to appreciate beauty, we strongly hope that the agencies responsible, particularly the agencies in charge of culture and arts, would soon have appropriate measures to regulate management and to encourage reforms in the production and sales of paintings, portraits, envelopes, cards, invitations, special prints, and artistic photographs, as well as to strengthen propaganda and teaching among the people for appreciation of beauty. We also hope that the artistic workers and art lovers would become the nuclei of encouragement to promote understanding and love of beauty.

NOTE:
¹: Article by THAI HANH of the Ministry of Culture Arts Institute: “Viewing the Tet Paintings – Understanding and Love of Beauty“; Hanoi, Nhan Dan, Vietnamese, 13 February 1972, p. 33.
◊ Source: Tranlations on North Vietnam, Wealth – Education – Welfare, No 1135, Joint Publication Resarch Service – Department of Commerce, United of America, 14/1/1972, p.75-77.