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Vietnam's salon de refuses

The Economist 06/17/95

PAINTINGS and statues of muscle-bound labourers and lantern-jawed workers still populate parks and government buildings in Vietnam. But elsewhere, heroic workers are out and nudes and abstracts are in. Artists, who five years ago would not have received permission to exhibit abstract art, now say they can paint what they like. "As long as it is not about Ho Chi Minh or the government, anything is all right," says one.

But the limits of liberalism may just have been discovered by Truong Tan, a respected artist employed as an instructor at Hanoi's school of fine arts. Diminutive and openly homosexual, Mr Tan confesses in his characteristic conspiratorial whisper to being "obsessed" by images of the penis. His preoccupations have just provoked a rarity in modern Vietnam--overt censorship of painting.

Visitors to Mr Tan's latest exhibition at Hanoi's Red River gallery will find one of the rooms empty of paintings, by order of the police: the only things on the walls are 12 signs saying "Excuse Me" in English, Vietnamese and French. While employees of the gallery nervously keep watch at the door, Mr Tan is willing to show visitors his forbidden pictures. A large canvas rolled out on the gallery floor reveals Jesus on a crucifix and a Buddha in the lotus position, both naked with exaggerated penises. Another painting, "Metro", was inspired by a recent visit Mr Tan paid to Paris. It shows men masturbating, having sex with each other and climbing in and out of an underground train, evidently a phallic symbol.

This kind of thing can be relied upon to enrage cultural conservatives from Houston to Hanoi. Some Vietnamese artists see Mr Tan as a self-publicist, deliberately seeking notoriety. Others argue that he has a genuine and original talent.

Debates of this kind are unusually important in Vietnam, where art is traditionally taken seriously. Whereas richer neighbours like Malaysia and Singapore worry that their material progress is not being matched by cultural achievement, the poor Vietnamese are proud of their country's reputation for producing artists and writers. Vietnamese art has recently become fashionable in Asia and is fetching high prices in the showrooms of Hong Kong. Galleries have sprung up in the centres of Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City.

But the casual browser is likely to be disappointed by the art on display: cliched images of peasants in conical hats jostle with uninspiring work in the style of impressionists and cubists. With much Vietnamese art stuck in a rut, Mr Tan can be seen as an innovator or a charlatan. But, in current circumstances, the Vietnamese public will find it hard to judge.