A few years ago when a clutch of Bangladeshi painters exhibited their works at a local Karachi gallery, there was no common political or social theme or style. No message of any significance. However, I noticed there was a remarkable similarity between the creations of one particular artist with what can be found in Oaxaca, Mexico. It wasn’t as if the man from Dacca had spent any time in Vera Cruz and studied the creative impulses of the descendants of the Aztecs. He just happened to paint that way.

It is the same with Vietnamese artists. There is no uniformity of style or method. However, one gets the impression that if there had been at one time some kind of formal guide, some kind of creative thread that stitched together the fabric of Vietnamese art, it would be the principles of socialism.

Painters and sculptors and their works became frozen in time, denuded by broader contents in which they worked. In this sense, the art of Hanoi differed from what could be found in Taipei, Tokyo and Manila, where the slipstream of experience often appeared to have no other aim than to shock. It bore a closer resemblance to what was being produced in Shanghai.

I remember years ago seeing in a gallery in Atlanta, a superb painting of a junk in blazing red, folding its sails in the sunset. I implicitly assumed it was the work of a Chinese artist.

Actually it was Vietnamese and the artist had displayed his Chinese references with cunning irony.

During the last decade, Vietnamese art, both of the realist as well as the abstract variety underwent a change and started to take a more definite shape. This was largely due to the introduction of Doi Moi in 1986. This was Vietnam’s version of the Perestroika which Mikhail Gorbachev had introduced in the Soviet Union which spread to other members of the Warsaw Pact countries. Artists in this far eastern country were suddenly given more freedom of expression. This resulted in an efflorescence of creative activity and hundreds of painters participated in exhibitions in the three main cities of the country. With the evolution of a freer and more open society, foreign investment flowed into the land, and the increased prosperity gave a fillip to the local artists who were gradually beginning to acquire international exposure and recognition.

The interesting thing about Vietnamese oil painting is that it did not formally exist in the country before the 20th century. There was certainly a lot of art, but it was limited to sculpture and the intricate technique of decorating pagodas and temples. In this genre the craftsmen excelled. It was, however, the French that had harvested so many movements in art, who introduced the technique of oil painting to the Vietnamese, and early in the century opened an art school in Hanoi. In a sense, the French provided the blueprint for Vietnamese artists to follow. They asked them to paint nature in the traditional realist, impressionistic style which had made France famous and invoked the envy of the world. The foundations of Vietnamese art had well and truly been laid.

The 1945 revolution, the war against France, and the subsequent division of the country into North and South in 1954 polarised the style and technique in art in the two Vietnams. In the North, which came under the influence of the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China, artists clung stubbornly to socialist realism. Their art had to be meaningful and promote the cause of the worker and serve the revolution. In the south, on the other hand, because of American influence, art took a completely different direction and was influenced by western trends.

However, neither the Soviets, nor the Chinese nor the Americans were able to exert a lasting influence on the collective psyche of the Vietnamese artists, for most of whom survival was the cardinal issue after the wholesale destruction by the Americans. And in spite of Doi Moi, an interesting revival of traditional concepts is now taking place in the country. The pictures which appear on this page will give the reader an idea of what is coming out of modern Vietnam — a country that has faced incredible hardship, deprivation, and sacrifice.