GOLDEN KING

Our country's geographical location lies at the edge of the Asian continent, developing lengthwise and narrow widthwise. This location also makes it a confluence point for many rivers. After all, every river flows from west to east, eventually reaching the sea. Vietnam is a country of river estuaries, stretching from north to south.

Our homeland is surrounded by rivers and water everywhere.
The tide rises majestically, stretching across the vast shore.
(Poem by Tô Thùy Yên)

The Red River, the Ma River (Thanh Hoa), the Lam River ( Nghe An ), the Perfume River (Hue), the Thu Bon River (Quang Nam), the Con River (Binh Dinh), the Mekong River… Rivers connect the mountains and forests with the plains and the coast. Rivers are not only transportation routes, carrying people and goods, but also connect the cultures of different regions. What civilization has existed without a river? If we consider Vietnam as a cultural region, then each river creates a sub-cultural region, making Vietnamese culture diverse and rich. There is no place, region, or village in Vietnam that is not a craft village; handicrafts have been a tradition of the Vietnamese people for thousands of years, from pottery and bronze casting (Dong Son bronze drums) to rattan and bamboo weaving, silk weaving, wood carving, and papermaking… This article will focus on the lacquerware craft of the Vietnamese people – of Vietnam.

NGUYEN GIA TRI – Spring Garden of Central, Southern and Northern Vietnam. 1969-1989. Lacquer painting. 200x540cm. Ho Chi Minh City Museum of Fine Arts.

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Lacquer is a traditional material of the Vietnamese people. The oldest artifacts are a black lacquered oar found in a boat tomb in Viet Khe, Hai Phong, dating back approximately 2,500 years (excavated in 1961). Another example is lacquer-making tools such as steel paintbrushes, lacquer mixing tables, and lacquer bowls found in a tomb in Thuy Nguyen, Hai Phong, dating back approximately 2,000 years (excavated in 1972). Lacquer resin from the lacquer tree is the main raw material for the lacquer craft. Lacquer trees are found in many places, but the best quality is in the midland regions of Yen Bai and Phu Tho. While lacquer trees are found in many Asian countries, Vietnamese lacquer trees, belonging to the Rhus succedenes genus, are of very high quality, even better than those from some other countries.

Lacquerware products are familiar in Vietnamese life, from religious objects in temples and pagodas such as statues, horizontal plaques, couplets, arched doorways, thrones, palanquins, scrolls, boxes for imperial decrees, wooden gongs, offering trays… to household items such as cabinets, tables, trays, and serving dishes… Lacquer can be applied to many base materials such as wood, clay, stone, and bronze. The statues at Tam Bao Pagoda in Mia (Son Tay, Hanoi) with clay bases covered in lacquer are breathtakingly beautiful. At Dau Pagoda (Thuong Tin – Hanoi), there are two lacquered statues whose bases are those of two deceased Zen masters, dating back to the 17th century. This is an example of the very special way our ancestors applied lacquer. Besides lacquerware, there are also mother-of-pearl inlaid lacquerware, oil-based lacquerware… Major museums around the world display Vietnamese lacquerware works, such as the American Museum of Natural History (New York) and the Guimet Museum (Paris)…

In 1925, the Indochina School of Fine Arts was established. Besides teaching oil painting, the French teachers encouraged students to study traditional materials, including lacquer. Therefore, modern Vietnamese art has many masters associated with this medium, such as Nguyen Gia Tri (Spring Garden of Central, Southern and Northern Vietnam), Nguyen Sang (Pho Minh Pagoda), Nguyen Tu Nghiem (Saint Giong), Kim Dong (Pottery Kiln)... Thus, in addition to lacquer art, Vietnam also has lacquer art. This is also a unique feature. Subsequent stages of Vietnamese art development following the generation of Indochina masters have also seen successful artists using lacquer, such as Truong Be, Bui Huu Hung, and Dinh Quan…
Famous lacquerware villages include Ha Thai and Chuyen My (Phu Xuyen, Hanoi), Son Dong village (Hoai Duc) specializing in statues and religious artifacts, Cat Dang lacquerware village, and Dinh village.

Before 1975, Bang (Bac Ninh) and Binh Duong had the famous Thanh Le brand…
Vietnamese culture is village culture; Vietnamese villages create Vietnam, and the essence of Vietnam is the essence of the village. All the finest elements of Vietnamese culture and art originate from the village. The Vietnamese village is the village-nation, and Vietnam is the village-nation. From singing at the village gate to traditional opera in the village courtyard, to water puppetry in the water pavilions, Quan Ho folk singing in the villages of Kinh Bac, village festivals, to sculptures in village temples and pagodas, all are masterpieces of Vietnamese art… The village is the basic administrative unit of Vietnam. Speaking of a village means speaking of the village temple, pagoda, village gate, and village well, but behind the bamboo hedges of the village (broadly understood as the hamlet or village community) lies the spirit of community, mutual support and care – this is the soul of the village, the glue that binds villagers together, families together, and villages together to create a large village, bearing the name of the Vietnamese village, the Vietnamese nation. People often call this bond of affection and solidarity "unbreakable" – that's why it's so important.

Excerpt from the painting "Spring Garden of Central, Southern and Northern Vietnam" by Nguyen Gia Tri

Culture is the glue that binds a nation's community together. Whether it's about shared origins, reconciliation, healing, or unity, everything must begin with culture; culture is the foundation.

As the world becomes increasingly open, interconnected, and 4.0-driven, the preservation of national cultural identity becomes even more crucial. The current period is the time to demonstrate the cultural resilience of each nation. Mixing and hybridization are difficult to avoid because the more enduring a culture is, the more fragile it becomes. Furthermore, the political situation in the region and globally is becoming increasingly complex. More than ever, this is the time when the strength of national unity needs to be emphasized. As mentioned above, culture is the glue that binds the Vietnamese people and the Vietnamese nation together; the history of the nation has proven this. Culture is also a common altar, a blessing for the nation; abundant blessings lead to a prosperous nation, and in a sense, culture is also the border. Losing culture is a misfortune, a loss of the nation.
As mentioned above, artist Nguyen Gia Tri (1908-1993) was the first to achieve success with fine art lacquer painting. He dedicated his entire life to lacquer painting. He inherited the essence of the nation's traditional lacquer craft and elevated and reinvented the techniques of fine art lacquer painting into lacquer painting.

Artist Nguyen Gia Tri was born in 1908 in Chuong My, former Ha Tay province, and passed away in 1993 in Saigon. He studied at the Indochina Fine Arts School, class VII (1931-1936). He painted in many genres, from caricatures to propaganda posters. He initially used pastels and oil paints before focusing on lacquer painting, which became the medium associated with his name. It can be said that he dedicated his entire life to lacquer painting, with representative works such as: "Rural Bamboo Grove" (1938), "Young Woman by the Lotus Pond" (1938), "Mid-Autumn Night at Ho Guom Lake" (1939), "Young Woman by the Hibiscus Flower" (1944), "Screen" (around after 1954), "Spring Garden of Central, Southern, and Northern Vietnam"...
Being a cautious and meticulous person, and working with a material as demanding and elaborate as lacquer, he did not leave behind many works.
"Spring Gardens of Central, Southern, and Northern Vietnam" is his last work. He began painting it before 1975 and completed it in 1988. Measuring 200 x 540 cm, it is a screen-like structure composed of nine panels joined together. This format suits the large-scale paintings the artist often used, sometimes allowing him to paint two different pictures on both sides. Therefore, this is his largest work to date.

As the painting's title suggests, he depicts an "imaginary" garden in springtime, with sunshine and wind, mist and fog, peach blossoms, temples and shrines, bees and butterflies, birds flying, peacocks dancing, and in this magnificent, shimmering spring scene, the focus remains on people, on the characters that have become his symbols since his earliest paintings: young women in traditional ao dai dresses. They are also spring itself, the fairies in that paradise spring garden. Some dance with fans, some play musical instruments, some sing, some ride lions; some lie down, some sit, some hold hands strolling through the spring garden, some dance a spring dance together. People and scenery, spring and spring in people's hearts, harmonize in rhythm, reality and illusion blend into one. All of this exudes the peaceful, tranquil atmosphere of a new day, a new season, a new year filled with laughter, music, singing, birdsong… full of vitality and joy. The limitation of lacquer painting is its limited color palette, only using vermilion, gold, and silver. Moreover, lacquer painting is not as easy to work with, creating light and shadow, or varying shades as oil painting. But Nguyen Gia Tri cleverly exploited these two disadvantages to make his lacquer paintings very modern. "Spring Gardens of Central, Southern, and Northern Vietnam," like his other works, consists of flat surfaces, graphic in style, suggesting form rather than volume. As he once confided: "With lacquer, you can't force it to conform to your style; you must respect it, understand it, and work in harmony with it."

In this work, against a backdrop of deep, rich crimson red, only the golden hues of raw gold and gilding remain. Instead of using silver leaf, he uses eggshells. It can be said that white is the dominant color in this work. From the technique of eggshell placement, he elevates it to an art form, where all the white areas are freely and expansively applied, overflowing beyond the confines of the form, refusing to be confined within the narrow framework of the shape. This escape from form is also an escape from the rigid constraints of reality, a departure from reality—a very new aspect not found in his previous works. With this free-form eggshell placement, the figures become more dynamic, the characters seeming to be in motion. Furthermore, this style of placement brings the white areas together, creating a very coherent color composition.

Another masterpiece in "Spring Gardens of Central, Southern, and Northern Vietnam" is that this work is like a chorus of lines—dashed, solid, thick, thin, red, and gold—blending, flowing, free, and unrestrained… full of magic and spontaneity. It's not a matter of outlines following a shape, but rather of lines that follow the shape to emphasize, evoke, and call forth the shape.

As mentioned above, "Spring Garden of Central, Southern, and Northern Vietnam" is merely an imaginary garden where girls from the three regions meet and celebrate spring. To reiterate, the painting was begun before 1975, so "Spring Garden of Central, Southern, and Northern Vietnam" is the dream of the artist, a son of the North who established himself in the South, always dreaming of reunification. True art always moves from the individual to the whole. A personal story must touch upon the collective. Nguyen Gia Tri's dream, the dream titled "Spring Garden of Central, Southern, and Northern Vietnam," is also the dream of a unified country shared by all Vietnamese people.

Le Thiet Cuong
(tapchimythuat.vn)