English-language books on the history of Vietnamese art are few and far between. Aside from a number of exhibition catalogues that have focused on the art of ancient Vietnam, the art of Champa, and a short list of books on modern and contemporary art, no comprehensive survey of artistic developments since the officially recognized birth of the independent Vietnamese state, under the Lý dynasty in 1010, has been published until now. After 2010, which saw the celebration of the 1,000-year anniversary of the founding of Hanoi, and the recent proliferation of exhibitions of Vietnamese contemporary art around the world, a reconsideration of its historical context seems to be in order.
Lest one would think that a look back at the long trajectory of Vietnamese art risks perpetuating essentialist notions of Vietnamese identity, Kerry Nguyễn-Long, a long-standing writer, researcher, and expert on Vietnamese art history from Australia, has brought us a multicultural view of what is surely one of the least monolithic cultures in Asia.
The structure of Arts of Việt Nam follows what appears to be an ordered chronology that is common to many histories of Vietnam and begins with the Lý dynasty and ends with independence from colonial rule in 1945. The chapters follow dynastic reigns, including the often overlooked Hồ dynasty, and cover a variety of art forms, from ceramics to wood carving, folk art, and painting. Nguyễn-Long undertook meticulous research among the extant literature both in the Vietnamese language and English through her own on-site visits. Her writing is clear, fluid, and informative. Each chapter is accompanied by extensive footnotes and color illustrations. The main body of the text is periodically interspersed with boxes that explain techniques, legends, or other stories that fall outside of the purview of official history but form the basis of much of the construction of Vietnamese art historical knowledge, such as the story of the arrival of the Buddhist monk Khâu Đà La (Ksudra) to Vietnam from Western India (p. 10); King Lý Thần Tông's ascendance to the throne (p. 30); and the history of village woodcarving guilds (p. 101), foundries (p. 157), metal inlay (p. 223), and lacquer (p. 255).
These boxes are important because they situate Vietnamese art on Vietnamese terms without adopting an overly nationalist narrative. This strategy follows up on the work of Vietnamese art historians of the late 1980s and early 1990s, around the time of Đổi Mới, or economic renovation, that tried to find a new narrative of Vietnamese art that reflected the postcolonial and postsocialist era. The art historian and former editor of Mỹ thuật (Fine art) magazine, Nguyễn Quân, along with his student at the time, Phan Cẩm Thượng, published two books that reassessed the evolution of Vietnamese art and found its origins in the village, challenging the previous colonial histories of Vietnamese art, such as Louis Bézacier's survey of Vietnamese archaeology, L'Art Vietnamien, published in 1955, which located the origins of the Vietnamese bronze age, otherwise known as Đông Sơn culture, in China.Footnote 20 Nguyễn-Long took pains to incorporate those ideas and present a balanced, organized, and well-written history of Vietnamese art in precious detail.
Vietnamese art history, of course, is not as tidy as it may seem, especially when it comes to the colonial and modern period and the messy situation of trying to account for both Northern and Southern Vietnam, as well as the multiethnic influences on Vietnamese art. This is well articulated in one of the more informative chapters on the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century proliferation of hybrid architectural styles and the influence of Khmer and Chinese culture on the southern part of the country.
Arts of Việt Nam should be the standard textbook on Vietnamese art history for any student or scholar of Asian art. Nguyễn-Long's prose is easy to read and flawless in its detail. But it still only skims the surface of what is one of the more complex art histories in the region. It is the hope of this particular reviewer that it will inspire colleagues to pursue in greater depth any one of the eras of Vietnamese art history. It also raises many questions about how to connect the seemingly fragmented regions and periods of art history. What are the continuities and what are the key disruptions in the evolution of Vietnamese art? Can one properly locate silk painting in a past-to-present continuum? If the origins of Vietnamese art are multicultural, multiethnic, and multifocal, can one properly define Vietnamese art?
