When Tolstoy was asked what the main idea of his “Anna Karenina” was, he said that to answer this question he would have to write the novel again. I am not Tolstoy, but also feel uncomfortable having to explain the obvious content of my article on the Philip Morris Art Competition. However some misunderstandings force me to accentuate certain points.

First, my main goal was not to provoke conflicts or make an aggressive attack on young defenseless artists, but rather to attract the attention of the public to the real “artistic” value of such events as the ASEAN Art Award. The discussion on Talawas and the responses I got in Hanoi and from abroad reaffirm that many people have similar views. My writing also shouldn’t be seen as a critique of personalities (most of the artists I don’t know personally), it’s more like blowing the whistle on a false-start after which, with more concentration, one can successfully run the distance (although I don’t accept championship strategies in art).

My other aim was to show that by using only the criteria of so called political and social concerns in the selection process for the exhibition, to the detriment of aesthetics, profoundness, originality and sincere artistic expression, not only puts this particular event on a semi-artistic level, but creates a dangerous tendency among the artists: We’ll do what you expect ^[1] .

Commissioned tears, pain for sale, soul on auction. You can place your stakes, but can you believe that those tears and pain are for real? Furthermore, by trying to follow a trend, the ASEAN Art Award in Vietnam is already lagging behind current fashion. Social evils and misfortunes are no longer front page news. This season the international art scene prioritizes globalization and contemporary geopolitics (these, probably, will be topics for the next ASEAN Art Award).

Elizabeth Schwalbe may think that I am again making a campaign against socio-political content in art. No, Elizabeth, I just want to say that the choice of theme can indicate the attitude but does not necessarily equal with it and an artwork is not only about “what”, but mainly about “how”. Sorry for the trivial reminder… Even if there were a dozen twisting figures in “Sars” they wouldn’t touch me like “The Cry” by Munch and wouldn’t really shock me like “The Echo of Scream” by Sequeiros.

Why? Probably because the emotional resonance depends not only on the capacity of the artist to absorb information from the outside reality, but also on his capacity to let it pass through himself and to bring it back into world in the form of a very personal message, enriched by personal feelings, impressions, ideas, experiences. Art is not a loud slogan glorifying or declaiming, but a complex system with its own set of codes and multiple levels of discourse.

For these reasons an ASEAN Art Award’s label ‘voted an art” can’t convince me that it is art. Moreover, what frightens me more than the monsters at the exhibition is the fact that the young generation of artists who used to criticize their older compatriots for their works commissioned by state official structures, themselves, of their own free will, are trying to satisfy the demands of a tobacco company competition.

At the end I want to say that my views as expressed in the essay Philip Morris damages your health are based not on my disposition towards traditionalism or sympathy for kitsch for tourists, but on my studies of contemporary art (which I like) by reading and visiting “famous museums worldwide” along with international triennials, biennials and other exhibitions. Maybe some will not agree with me. What more can I do? As the not unknown Miss Marple used to say, we had a similar case in our village.

© 2004 talawas

---

^[1]Of course, there are always exceptions to the rule. One of the paintings at the show which appeared out of context was “Incompletely valued precious rice-seed” (The title given on the picture label: “Hat thoc cua khong biet”) by Le Quy Tong. Perhaps in another time or place I wouldn’t pay it much attention, but in the monster-masks-blood environment it was like an island of escape with its unpretentiousness, its vital force, and its discourse about the familiar and eternal. In fact, it can serve as an example of how the theme of paddy-fields can be interpreted in a very different way from what can be seen in the tourist art shops.