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

CULTURAL EXCHANGE IN VIETNAMESE 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 China’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 modernising) Cultural exchange from one period to another is common as well, revivals of 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 reappropriation 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, home 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 183 V IÍT NAM HỌC - KỶ YÉU HỘI THẢO QUỐC TÉ LÀN THỨ TU 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 afprdable communication, cheap mass-travel etc facilitating circulation 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 A m erica n m a s s - c u lt u r e - a th r e a t to French la n g u a g e a n d c u ltu r e , la w s g o v e r n in g ralio broadcasting stipulate that at least 40% o f aired sonss must be in the native toigue durins prime hours(5) Whether this cultural manipulation fulfils its aim of ‘pOtecting’ French, is debatable And though the subject is beyond the scope o f this p£>er, it is historically apparent that institutional interference with outside cultural inluence, over time has little positive impact, and possibly a detrimental one on lo'al artistic expressions Conversely, cultural exchange, especially when nurtured frim the ground up by loosening controls in a variety o f spheres, can enrich creative h;oits, strengthening home culture rather than homogenizing or robbing it o f its inligenous characteristics 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 tradeirduced 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 #4 CULTURAL EXCHANGE IN VIETNAMESE Within the broader context o f syncretic Southeast Asia, contemporry Vietnam, with its long and continuous history of movement o f populations ad id e a s , s ta n d s o u t a s a place o f e x t r e m e c u ltu 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, Eprojection, and their ultimate play in modern and contemporary Vietnamese Visul art, th is p a p e r a tt e m p t s a n u n t a n g lin g o f th e lo c a l fr o m th e i n c o m in 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 elements 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 of daily rural life These images in particular, in their rough technique, hunor irony, and directness of expression, show the capacity o f ancient sculptcrso overcome the taboos o f social convention and manifest a creativity relatv