At a market in Soc Son, a man sells fish and shrimp. With the help of a crude, homemade crutch, he limps off each morning in search of a fresh catch. The man, who appears destitute on first glance, is Nguyen Nhu Y, one of Vietnam’s most talented artists.
Known as ‘Crazy Y’ in the Vietnamese press, Y was one of the University of Fine Art’s most promising students before dropping out of his course for mental health reasons and moving to the mountainous northern region to live with one of the ethnic minorities. He later returned to the capital and was allowed back onto the course, where he prolifically produced primal, totem-like sculptures. However, since the loss of his left leg in a traffic accident two years ago, Y has returned to his hometown in Soc Son to live a hand-to-mouth life, fishing and selling his catch in the market.
In May 2012, in an effort to alleviate Y’s poverty and reintroduce him to the artistic community, a group of Y’s friends organised an exhibition at the Viet Art Centre on Yet Kieu. Featuring more than 70 pieces including paintings, sketches and drawings, it represents an absorbing body of work, yet it is but a fraction of Y’s notoriously prolific output. His totem sculptures have been described by Suzanne Lecht, the Director of Art Vietnam Gallery, as “primitive”, “unadorned” and “natural”, and share more than a passing resemblance to the power and stature of the Easter Island heads. His caricature-esque pastel works pop off the page as he matches colours with Hollywood-like knowhow, while his sketches of money, with the heads of famous people exchanged for the women in his life, are both crude and dizzyingly detailed. Also on show were some of his illustrated student notebooks. Endearingly they mostly feature cartoons of big-breasted women.
One Country, Two Tastes
The sight of such a talented artist living in a state of poverty is by no means an anomaly. Yet it still raises questions about the art scene in Hanoi, and more specifically, what kind of support and options exist for artists.
One artist enjoying a measure of success is Nguyen Duc Loi. He’s successfully sold his work in large quantities to buyers in Denmark, sometimes receiving orders for up to 30 paintings at a time. Common in Loi’s work are issues of land and money through his representations of buildings. Often he paints himself in, either as a workaholic, steam-punk automaton, or as an insignificant figure, adrift from society as he floats by holding multi-coloured balloons. Before moving onto a canvas, Loi makes sketches on his iPad. These sketches represent some of his best work: fantastical, multi-layered, sharp-lined images created utilising an ultra-bright, digital colour palette. They create a futuristic and otherworldly atmosphere traditional painting can’t quite match. Ever keen to experiment with new forms, he’s thinking about a future exhibition entirely composed of iPad sketches.
Sitting on the floor of the studio in his house, where canvases are stacked up along all four walls, Loi talks of the confidence that foreign buyers have given him.
“The Danish helped me believe that I can sell my work,” he says between bites on his wife’s homemade strawberry cake. “Vietnamese don’t buy my work. They don’t understand contemporary art. They only want to buy paintings that recreate old, classic styles.”
This is a recurring theme when discussing the economics of art in Hanoi: Vietnamese just don’t buy contemporary Vietnamese art.
It’s a completely different story in nearby countries such as China where the local market for the work of Chinese artists is developed. Even Southeast Asian countries like Malaysia and Indonesia have established pools of nationals investing in contemporary art. Without a local market, the main option for financial success for Vietnamese artists is to sell their work abroad.
Cap in Hand
One beneficiary of the foreign market is Le Quy Tong. His work is quality, bearing a strong resemblance to the German Anselm Kiefer in both palette and technique. Yet where Kiefer’s work consists of agricultural scenes or details of wood grain, Tong’s pieces depict industry, warplanes, speed and restructuring. He’s been rewarded for his work with high fees, as much as VND400 million for a large 2m x 1.5m canvas. Being sold mostly to foreigners via Apricot Gallery on Hang Bong, the relationship is a standard one in Hanoi whereby the artist and the gallery split the fee, fifty-fifty.
A point of contention with this mode of success is motivation. When a painter’s work begins to sell successfully, they are encouraged by the gallery to rehash the style endlessly. The result is a slew of extremely talented artists making art to order, and a slew of galleries on streets such as Hang Gai and Hang Bong specialising in selling these very works.
The studio in Tong’s spacious Hanoi house is filled with paintings which all bear startling similarities to each other. Often the same image is repeated with minor variations in the colour palette. To cast blame or accusations here just isn’t possible; like everyone else, Tong has a family to support.
For those who want to take risks and push boundaries, support is more likely to come from cultural institutions. In their careers both Loi and have Tong have received assistance from such organisations. In 2005 The British Council included Loi in an exhibition of installation art and Tong’s work has appeared in L’Espace, while in 2007 The Ho Chi Minh City Art Conference (Hoi My Thuat Tp. HCMC) gave Loi a grant. Unfortunately, the grant was only VND4 million, not even a month’s spending money.
While this form of support is doubtless important, Loi warns against relying on it.
Rather than focusing on self-improvement and creativity, “Many artists spend all their time asking for money and exhibitions from cultural institutions,” he explains. “I constantly work. I don’t go looking for funding first, I just constantly work.”
To Loi, there just fundamentally isn’t enough support from cultural institutions, be they foreign or Vietnamese, to go around. Many other young artists share this opinion, which is perhaps why so many artists have taken to diversifying. It’s an age old story, the one of the struggling writer who has to search out other work to be able to survive.
Loi, for example, has taken to designing furniture and bags for an Italian company, while other talented young artists who have already enjoyed a measure of success, such as painter Pham Huy Thong and illustrator Nguyen Thanh Phong, are working in interior design to earn money — a side line which is often more lucrative than their primary occupations. The result is that most artists, young or old, cannot devote themselves solely to their art
In today’s market, regardless of international support and the backing of prominent, less commercially-motivated gallery owners and curators locally, it’s a do or die scenario that affects everyone in the industry. Until a local market for original, contemporary art appears, creativity and risk-taking just don’t make sense.