Topic

CONTEMPORARY WORLD ART
AND VIETNAMESE ART

13h30-17h00, Friday, December 06, 2019

 Speaker: Artist Trinh Cung

Today, we rarely encounter artistic figures of the stature of Vincent van Gogh, Paul Gauguin, Henri Matisse, Henri Rousseau, Amedeo Modigliani, Marc Chagall, Joan Miró, Pablo Picasso, or Salvador Dalí. Nor do we any longer witness the flourishing of artistic movements that characterized European modern art during the early decades of the twentieth century.

Today is the age of digital civilization, multimedia art, Photoshop, and digital technologies that have profoundly transformed artistic systems from the classical to the modern. Amid this turbulent current, where does Vietnamese art stand?

Before 1954, Vietnamese painting largely gravitated toward realism and neo-realism, distinguished by indigenous materials, graceful lines, harmonious colors, sincere imagery, and a poetic, refined sensibility. After 1954, modern art increasingly influenced Vietnamese artists — particularly in South Vietnam — through new creative tendencies such as Fauvism, Cubism, and Abstract Art. Today, after generations of artists such as Nguyễn Gia Trí, Tô Ngọc Vân, and Lê Phổ; and later Tạ Tỵ, Thái Tuấn, Nguyễn Trung, Đinh Cường, and Nghiêu Đề, who are the artists contributing to the shaping of contemporary Vietnamese art?

Through both observation and scholarly inquiry, painter Trịnh Cung has offered many compelling reflections and interpretations on these questions.

The IRED Institute is pleased to introduce this roundtable event with the following details:

About Speaker

Painter Trinh Cung was born in 1938 in Nha Trang. In 1962, he graduated from the Hue College of Fine Arts.

In the same year, he received an Honorary Award at the First International Fine Arts Exhibition in Saigon, and in 1964, he was awarded the Silver Medal at the Spring Painting Exhibition.

• From 1970 to 1973, he taught at the Colleges of Fine Arts in Huế and Saigon. Since 1992, he has been invited as a visiting lecturer at universities in Vietnam and the United States.
• Between 2010 and 2017, he published several books, including Vietnamese Fine Arts and Related Issues and Observations and Questions on Fine Arts.
• In 2007, 2008, 2012, and 2019, he presented scholarly papers on Vietnamese art at University of Massachusetts, Singapore Art Museum, University of California, Los Angeles, and Haverford College.

Trinh Cung has long been regarded as one of the leading figures of Vietnamese fine arts, both before 1975 and in the contemporary era. Reflecting on his artistic legacy, poet Du Tu Le wrote:

“Looking back over more than half a century, I believe we have been fortunate to have an artist named Trịnh Cung. He was not only gifted in painting from his very first brushstrokes, but was also almost unique among painters in creating works that traversed the blood-stained historical journey of the nation. For this reason, at every stage of his career, his paintings have consistently embodied a profound literary quality — much like his essays and critical reflections on art.”