Word: vietnamize
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...arbiters of Asian art didn't always reward such experimentalism. In the great art academies of India, China and Vietnam, technical skill and an ability to reference the region's rich cultural heritage outweighed social commentary or renegade brush strokes. For centuries, Chinese students spent their school years laboriously copying the ink landscapes of ancient masters. The same held true in India, where artistic merit often was equated either with an ability to reproduce themes from religious epics or mimic the miniaturist details of the Mughals. In Vietnam, the 20th century's most promising painters attended the École...
...contrast, in Vietnam political expression is so perilous that self-censorship has become an art form among even the most daring painters. Those who do try to cross the line face swift punishment. Tran Luong is one of the country's so-called Gang of Five contemporary artists who first gained international notice in the 1990s for his underwater abstracts. Lately, he has concentrated on performance and video art, documenting the lives of coal miners and street children left out of Vietnam's experiments with the free market. For the past few years, Luong has also encouraged young artists...
...Still, some Vietnamese artists manage to exhibit thought-provoking works. Born in remote mountains that are home to disenfranchised ethnic minorities, Dinh Thi Tham Poong tweaks traditional folk art with contemporary touches. Her canvases capture the tensions between the natural world and the onslaught of Vietnam's economic reforms - all without appearing overtly political. The country's censors likely have a hard time understanding that Poong's whimsical figures scattered across traditional handmade paper could possibly be making a social statement. But it is only in such narrow margins that Vietnam's artists can safely operate...
...Asia's artists aren't immune to the rampant consumerism they like to mock in their own works. As Indian and Chinese art have boomed, smaller markets like Vietnam have benefited from a spillover effect. "People say, 'Oh, Chinese art or Indian art is too expensive, so maybe we'll try looking in Vietnam,'" says Suzanne Lecht, the American director of the Art Vietnam Gallery in Hanoi. "Artists who could barely afford anything a few years ago can now drive luxury cars." But the rapid cash inflow has put commercial pressure on these artists to churn out foreigner-friendly images...
...trade has become so frenzied in Vietnam that dozens of young painters are now employed by unscrupulous dealers to make copies of works by leading local artists. Le Thiet Cuong, for instance, paints deceptively simple rural scenes that evoke his childhood when he was evacuated to the countryside because of war. A prodigious painter, he is sometimes criticized for pumping out too much too fast. Yet part of his purported output comes courtesy of a bevy of knock-off specialists who hawk canvases adorned with his forged signature. Just down the road from a gallery that sells his real works...