ORIENTALISM/OCCIDENTALISM: The Founding of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts d'Indochine

and the Politics of Painting in Colonial Việt Nam, 1925-1945

Author(s): Nora Taylor
Source: Crossroads: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Southeast Asian Studies , 1997, Vol.
11, No. 2 (1997), pp. 1-33
Published by: Board of Trustees of Northern Illinois University on behalf of Northern
Illinois University and its Center for Southeast Asian Studies

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 ORIENTALISM/OCCIDENTALISM
The Founding of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts d'Indochine and th
Politics of Painting in Colonial Viet Nam, 1925-1945

Nora Taylor*

By focusing on the opening of a French art academy in Vietnam, this

article examines issues surrounding the early development of Western-
style oil painting by Vietnamese artists in the first half of the twentieth
century. In particular, the article discusses the different ways in which
a colonial institution, which was established to educate Vietnamese
artists in the fundamentals of classical academic painting, has been
interpreted by art historians in Vietnam and scholars in the West.
Vietnamese art historians have viewed the school as the site which gave
birth to a nationalist oriented painting tradition whereas Western
scholars have tended to either disregard it altogether or to see it as yet
another example of colonial repression of indigenous culture. In this
interpretation, Western scholars have in some sense clung to the
orientalist notion that only 'authentic' or 'purely indigenous' works of
art are to be taken seriously, while Vietnamese scholars have in fact
refused to see the ' occidentalized' components of the students' works.
The students of the colonial school, in emulating their teachers, in fact
produced an 'occidentalized' version of Vietnamese art whose base lies
in 'orientalism'.

Vietnamese art history is generally not well known outside of

Viet Nam. Most of the histories of Vietnamese art available to
scholars in the West were compiled by French art historians working
during the period of France's colonization of Indochina.1 Although

* Nora Taylor received her PhD in Southeast Asian Art History with a
specialization on Vietnam from Cornell University in January 1997. She is
currently a lecturer in Asian Art History at the National University of
Singapore.
I am thinking in particular of M Bernanose's Les Arts Décoratifs au Tonkin
[Decorative arts of Tonkin] (Paris: H.Laurens, 1922); Louis Bézacier's L'Art
Vietnamien [Vietnamese art] (Paris: Ed. de l'Union Française, 1955); and H.
Gourdon's L'Art de l'Annam [Art of Annam] (Toulouse: Collection "Les Arts
Coloniaux" [Colonial arts series], 1932).

Crossroads: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Southeast Asian Studies

ll(2):l-33
© Copyright 1997 by the Center for Southeast Asian Studies,
Northern Illinois University.

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Nora Taylor

well documented in other areas, these histories all stop with the last
decades of the 19th century and the arts manufactured in Hue under
the Nguyen Emperors, and virtually ignore the art produced during
the colonial period. Historical accounts of the colonial period are
common enough, but while Western historians have recently
examined the literature and architecture of this period, painting
until now has remained relatively unexplored.2 Vietnamese art
historians working in Viet Nam, on the other hand, have paid a great
deal of attention to the colonial period, for it is there that they see
their modern art tradition beginning. Even the Vietnamese word for
painting, hôi hoa, is considered to have originated in the 20th
century. Dissenting research interests among Western and
Vietnamese scholars may demonstrate a difference of opinion over
the role that painting played in colonial history, but for the most part
these differing perspectives indicate incompatibilities in the way
historical material is treated in the West and in the East rather than
any inherent anomalies in the material itself.
Western scholars of Vietnamese colonial history often consider
the colonial period as one of cultural domination by France where
local artistic statements were inhibited. These scholars may have
ignored art and culture because they believed them to have been
repressed. On the other hand, Vietnamese historians see the colonial
period as one during which art and culture flourished in the context
of rising nationalism and its corollary need to combat French
cultural interference. The two points of view are not necessarily
contradictory, but, as this paper will demonstrate, they have led to
labels being forced on material that is itself often highly ambiguous.
Thus, painting has been seen as either derivative of 'French' painting
or as typically 'Vietnamese.' In this paper, I would like to discuss
how these imposed historical interpretations have affected our
understandings of Vietnamese colonial-period painting. By
examining the advent in Vietnamese art of 20th century Western-
style oil painting and the establishment under colonialism of an art
school, the Ecole des Beaux-Arts d'Indochine (the Indochina Art School,

2 For one example among several of analyses of the colonial period in

Vietnamese literature see Greg Lockhart and Monique Lockhart's
introduction to The Liçht of the Capital, Three Modern Vietnamese Classics
(Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 1996); for a study of architecture
during the colonial period in Viet Nam see Gwendolyn Wright, The Politics of
Design in French Colonial Urbanism ( Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1991).

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 Politics of Painting in Colonial Viet Nam

hereafter referred to as EBAI), this paper will attempt to engage in a

discussion over the significance of painting during the colonial
period as seen by both Western and Vietnamese scholars. In this way
it hopes not only to offer a much-needed perspective on colonial-
period painting but also to suggest some alternative methods for
understanding the ways in which Western scholarship affects local
interpretations of artistic expression.
Instead of considering the advent of painting in colonial Viet
Nam as due either to the imposition of foreign styles and techniques
on Vietnamese students by their French teachers or to an indigenous
desire to counteract the influx of Western culture, scholars might
better attribute the creation of this new medium of art to the cultural
and social ferment that surrounded the Vietnamese people's
rejection of certain Chinese elements in their culture, such as Chu
Nom characters and the fashion of tying one's hair in a long braid at
the back of the head. Prior to the EBAI, painting in Vietnam was a
Chinese art, limited mostly to calligraphy and taught mostly at
home by fathers to their sons. With the founding of this colonial-
period school, however, painting took on a new form. Like Quõc
Ngü, the romanized script that replaced Chiï Nom, painting became a
new language that merged local and foreign cultural elements.
An anecdote recounted to me by a painter who studied with
French instructors at the EBAI illustrates these developments. Trinh
Httu Ngoc (b.1912, student at the EBAI 1933 to 1938), described how
Victor Tardieu, the school's first director, initiated the practice of
taking his students to the countryside with easels and palettes in
hand to sketch the landscape. Their practice of drawing the rice
fields and bamboo groves startled the local farmers, who had never
seen painters work outdoors and were not accustomed to being
portrayed by them. What was even more peculiar, according to Trinh
Hü'u Ngoc, was the fact that some of the native artists began
emulating their teachers. In one instance, Tô Ngpc Vân, a student of
Victor Tardieu, was seen in broad daylight propping up his easel
and taking off his shirt, paintbrush in hand, in order to sketch a
funeral procession returning to the village. "Nobody took off their
shirt in public," Trinh Hfru Ngoc told me, "only Frenchmen, and now
To Ngoc Van."3 What this story tells us is that Victor Tardieu and
other French art teachers and painters brought with them not only a

3 Interview, March 1994

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Nora Taylor

new method of painting - that of painting outdoors or "en plein

air" - but also a new set of attitudes toward art-making. Artists were
now free to break social conventions and as the case may be, take
their shirts off in public to sketch a scene under the hot sun. To Ngoc
Van emulated the French artists not merely because it liberated him
from established patterns of behavior but also because it gave him
the opportunity to paint in the manner fashionable in France at the
time.

Victor Tardieu and the Foundation of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts

d'Indochine
Victor Tardieu (1867-1937) was not a particularly well-known
painter in France. Although he studied with the symbolist painter
Gustave Moreau (1826-1898) in Paris, he left no important works in
French collections.4 He came to Indochina in 1923, having won a
commission to paint two murals, one for the Université Indochinoise
(Indochina University) and the other for the Bibliothèque Centrale
(Central Library), both in Ha Noi.5 Upon completing the murals,
Tardieu decided to settle in Indochina. Presumably he was inspired
by the exotic landscapes and colors of Tonkin, like other French
painters at the time.6 It is said that when Tardieu visited villages and
observed local artisans at work he admired the skill with which they
carved statues, wove baskets, printed votive papers, and lacquered
altar-furnishings.7 It occurred to him that, given the proper setting,

4 E.Bénézit, Dictionnaire critique et documentaire des peintres, sculpteurs,

dessinateurs et graveurs (Paris: Librairie Grund, 1976), 78.
5 These murals no longer exist, but they have been described as depicting a
woman clothed in white and standing between the mandarins of the court
of Hue on one side and the people of Indochina on the other, as though she
were the "motherland " protecting her people. See Nguyen Quang Phòng, Các
Hoa Sï Trircrng Cao Dâng My Thuâî Dông Dwo'ng [Painters of the Indochina
School of Fine Arts] (Ha Noi: Fine Arts Publishing House, 1993),23.
6 For a summary discussion of French artists in Indochina see Nadine
André, "L'Indochine à travers l'art pictural, première moitié du XXème
siècle," in 90 ans de recherches sur la culture et l histoire du Viêt Nam (Hà Nôi:
EFEO, 1995),502.
7 Unpublished document prepared for the 70th anniversary of the founding
of the EBAI in 1995 and now housed in the archives of the Viên Nghiên Cfru
Lieh Sú' My Thuât [Institute for Art Historical Research], Hà Noi. No page
number.

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 Politics of Painting in Colonial Viet Nam

Figure 1
Victor Tardieu (Center) and his students.
Photo courtesy Nhà Xuãt Ban My Thuât Ha Noi
(Fine Arts Publishing House, Hanoi).

he could train artisans such as these to be 'artists.'8 He consulted

with the office of the then Governor General of Indochina,
Alexandre Varenne.9 and petitioned for the establishment of a school
where local students could be trained to become 'professional
artists.' His request was granted, albeit not without controversy, for
some administrators objected to the goals of the school, claiming that
local artisans could not be trained in art.
The EBAI officially opened in 1925 on the then rue Bovet,
across the street from the Musée Maurice Long, two decades after
the building of four of the colony's more prestigious cultural
institutions, the Ecole Française d'Extrême Orient, or EFEO (1902),
the Musée Louis Finot (1906), the Université Indochinoise (1908),
and the Ha Noi Opera (1911). These institutions had helped to base
France's presence in Indochina not only on economic and
administrative authority but also on educational and cultural
interest. Through them, France convinced itself that it cared for the

8 1 am using the terms 'artist' and artisan' as they appear in statements made
by colonial officials. One must keep in mind that the distinction between
'artisan' and 'artist' is rooted in the West, which has traditionally separated
art into the opposing categories of 'craft' and 'fine arts'. In Asia, these two
notions are not historically separate from one another.
Varenne was governor from 1925 to 1928.

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Nora Taylor

education of the local Indochinese and for the preservation of the

cultural heritage of ancient Indochina. At the time of the EBAI's
inauguration, the colonial administration took a similar attitude: it
believed that in building an art school it would help local 'artisans'
become educated in the 'fine arts'.
In many respects, the EBAI resembled other cultural
institutions established by the colonial administration. Its
management was French, most of its pupils were Vietnamese, and
its purpose was self-serving. In educating local artisans in the fine
arts, wealthy residents and art lovers in the Métropole would be able
to acquire genuine works of art to please their tastes for 'exotic'
images of the Orient.10 More than any other cultural institution
established by the colonial administration, the EBAI was intended to
appeal to collectors of Indochinese exotica by educating local artists
to produce paintings that could be hung in individual homes and
museums. Furthermore, artists could illustrate books and
magazines, which had become increasingly popular in the early
1920s.

Its relatively small attendance notwithstanding - ten to fifteen

students per class during the first ten years of operation - the EBAI
wanted to make education of the natives its highest priority. In a
statement published by its administrators, the goals of the school
were expressed so as to make it appear that the French wanted the
natives to study their own culture rather than having to grapple
with French civilization and history. The statement reads as follows:

"II semble que notre rôle doive consister à conserver

dans le domaine artistique aux peuples dont nous avons
entrepris l'éducation, le caractère propre et l'originalité
de leur art national, à les aider à retrouver les éléments
qu'ils ont méconnus ou oubliés, et à exagérer leur

10 The French taste for images of the Orient ranged from fashion, such as the
high-collared tunic dress, or ko dai, to such things as adventure novels set in
the Far East, religious art objects from Asia, and architectural motifs.
Panivong Norindr describes the French fancy for tokens of Indochina as one
of fulfilling an imaginary vision, or a 'phantasmagoria/ as he calls it, of the
colonies and the East. Panivong Norindr, "Representing Indochina: The
French Colonial Fantasmatic and the Exposition Coloniale de Paris," Trench
Cultural Studies 6:37 (1995).

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 Politics of Painting in Colonial Viet Nam

personalità plutôt que de chercher à y substituer la

nôtre/'11

As benevolent and respectful as the wording may sound, however,

what this statement in fact implies is that the natives are incapable of
educating themselves. This illustrates what Benedict Anderson
observed in referring to the Southeast Asian monuments on display
in the colonial museum: "[T]he idea was entertained that the
builders were not of the same races as the natives. And the
reconstructed monuments said to the natives: our very presence
shows that you have always been, or have long become, incapable of
either greatness or self-rule."12 Much like those early French
explorers in Indochina who had difficulty believing that the modern-
day Khmers were the legitimate descendants of the builders of the
Angkor Wat temple complex, the fact that colonial officials felt
somehow obliged to 'educate' the locals in their own history sounds
paternalistic and condescending.
Victor Tardieu, however, saw things somewhat differently.
The accounts of those who knew him show him to have been
genuinely interested in local art-making techniques. Far from
patronizing artists and artisans, Tardieu appreciated their potential
to produce what he considered 'genuine' works of art. His students,

11 "It seems our role should consist of preserving the individual character
and the originality of the art of the people whose education we have
invested in, and to help them recover the elements which they have not
known or forgotten ana to emphasize their own personality rather than to
seek to substitute it with our own" -anonymous author in Les Ecoles d'Art en
Indochine (Hà Noi: Imprimerie d'Extrême Orient, 1937), n.p. The EFEO's
purposes were similar to these in that it aimed to educate locals in their own
historical and cultural heritage. But the scientific and academic orientation
of the EFEO made it inaccessible to most of the public. Unlike the EBAI, the
EFEO never offered courses to the native population. Instead, the goal of the
EFEO was for French scholars to study the history and culture of the
Indochinese civilizations through archaeological excavations and the
deciphering of stone inscriptions and ancient manuscripts. It intended to
recover the vestiges of past civilizations and restore what the EFEO scholars
saw as Indochina's prestigious place in world history. The Musée Louis
Finot was built shortly thereafter to display some of the archaeological and
historical discoveries made by the EFEO. The Musée Louis Finot aimed to
educate the local public in its own historical and cultural heritage, but it also
served to justify and glorify the scientific pursuits of French intellectuals. By
1925, the French hadalready made a lasting cultural imprint on the local
landscape, yet the majority oí the Vietnamese remained uneducated.
12 Benedict R. O'G. Anderson, Imagined Communities (London: Verso, 1991),
181.

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Nora Taylor

some of whom are still alive, remember him fondly as 'Le Maître'
(the master) and claim that he maintained very good relations with
them. "We were a bit frightened by him at first," admits Trinh Httu
Ngoc, "but we grew to love him like a father."13 "He was very strict,"
adds Hoàng Lap Ngôn (a classmate of Trinh Hfru Ngoc). "He made us
work very hard, but we knew it was in our own interest."14 In
photographs of Tardieu taken at the school he seems to carry himself
like a man of stature (Fig.l). He has a large build and an aura of
authority, but his aspect does not necessarily reflect a need for
power over his students; rather, it may illustrate the conventional
pupil-teacher relationship at the time. Helen Michaelsen describes a
similar situation in Thailand where at that country's first art school
"the [foreign] teacher was respected as an unquestioned authority
because of his profession and experience."15 This sense of respect,
according to Michaelsen, accounts for the large number of works the
students produced in their master's style. Therefore, rather than
embodying the colonial oppression of native sensibilities, Tardieu
can be seen as the first Western teacher of art in a colonial society
where values and traditions are being called into question in the
process of 'modernization.'16
The EBAI's curriculum followed that of the Ecole Nationale
Supérieure des Beaux- Arts, founded in Paris in 1793, and included
classes in anatomy, composition, life drawing, and art history. The
course load was rigorous, with classes being conducted over the
course of a 40-hour week in which students studied not only with
Tardieu but also with such visiting French artists as Joseph
Inguimberty (1896-1971) and André Maire (1898-1984). Part of the
curriculum involved the field trips mentioned earlier. While in the
classroom, students were more or less limited to 'copying' models,
whether live or plaster molds of Classical Greek and Roman statues;
the field trips, however, provided them with opportunities to be a

13 Interview, March 1994.

14 Interview, May 1994
15 Helen Michaelsen, "State Building and Thai Painting and Sculpture in the
1930s and 1940s/' in Modernity in Asian Art, John Clark, ed. (Sydney: Wild
Peony, 1993),67.
16 The term 'modernization' here is meant to imply the process of acquiring
new ideas and expressions for the sake of development or
progress/Modern/ 'modernism/ 'modernity/ and 'modernization' are
terms subject to much debate, and I prefer to forego a lengthy discussion of
their many nuances here.

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 Politics of Painting in Colonial Viêt Nam

Figure 2
Joseph Inguimberty, "Rizière" (Rice Field) ca. 1940.
Photo courtesy Editions Cercle d'Art, Paris.

Figure 3
Luu Van Sin, "Cành Nông Thon" (Country Landscape) 1956
Scanned photo courtesy of Nhà Xuát Ban My Thuat Ha Noi.

bit more free in their selection of subjects. The choice of subjects

varied depending on the interests of both the students and the
teachers, but the predominant themes included peasant women,
farmers at work, village temples, and rice fields (Figs. 2 and 3).

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Nora Taylor

In having to depict their environment and observe the make-

up of the landscape and the habitat of their rural neighbors, students
were compelled to view their world with a different eye. And, as To
Ngoc Van's removal of his shirt illustrates, their social behavior
transformed as they took on the role of 'painter'. Viewing the
countryside for the sake of painting generates a set of relationships
between an artist and his or her subject that the casual observer does
not share. Similarly, while sketching live models, artists abandon
any personal relationships with the person seated in front of them
and look upon their subjects as objects of pictorial study. They alter
their behavior toward the person in question to conform to a
relationship based on that of artist toward his or her model rather
than those of man to woman, woman to man, or friend to friend.
These attitudinal adjustments were new for the students at the EBAI.
Artists in the pre-colonial period rarely sketched from real-life but
relied mostly on their imaginations. The idea of a woman posing for
an artist or of a painter going to the fields to paint was hitherto
unheard of.
While having to incorporate 'personal vision' or 'individual
taste' into their works, students were encouraged to follow certain
guidelines with regard to such matters as composition and
perspective. The works produced by the EBAI students effectively
merged Western art- making techniques with local subject matter. In
this way, painting at the EBAI resembled attempts made elsewhere
to blend European and Asian styles, motifs, and aesthetic
sensibilities in clothing, decoration, and architecture. The architect
Ernest Hébrard, was particularly skilled in bringing together Asian
and European design elements. In his rounded entrance-way roofs,
for example, he combined features from the arched porticoes of
Chinese temples with the square two-storied blocs of Italian
Renaissance Palaces to produce an architecture that is neither
typically Eastern nor Western but rather a hybrid which, for lack of a
better term, has been called Trench colonial' or 'Indochinese'. While
it is debatable to what extent French architects considered the local
context or meaning of these motifs, these architectural blends
illustrate some attempt on the part of the colonial administrators to
innovate designs using local resources rather than merely
transposing Paris onto Ha Noi. The resulting architectural designs
and works of art may have appealed to both Asian and European
tastes and sensibilities, but they catered overwhelmingly to the

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 Politics of Painting in Colonial Viet Nam

Western population, since only the French could afford to purchase

paintings or reside in houses designed by colonial architects.
In spite of the economic disparity between local and foreign
residents, it is interesting to note how French colonial art is treated
in current Vietnamese historiography. Rather than pointing to the
foreign elements in these works, and especially in the paintings
produced by the students at the EBAI, most Vietnamese historians
emphasize their indigenous qualities as the products of Vietnamese
nationals. In a recent book about the founding of the EBAI published
in Ha Noi, the art historian Nguyen Quang Phong states: "It was a
miracle that a school opened by the French who taught there could
train a generation of Vietnamese artists capable of building national
plastic arts for Viet Nam. This miracle could be accomplished only
by true artists full of good will and professional conscience."17 He
states further that "European oil painting had all the possibilities to
express with faithfulness and subtlety the feelings and soul of Asian
Vietnamese painters" (25). In other words, in Nguyen Quang Phong's
opinion, the French teachers were not so much to be credited with
teaching 'French' painting as for enabling their Vietnamese pupils to
use European techniques in developing their own 'Asian' vision.
While the work of Victor Tardieu and his colleagues in
creating a Vietnamese form of Western painting seems consistent
with the view that Western scholars have traditionally held
concerning the influence of French culture on Vietnamese society, in
fact it is not. For one thing, both Tardieu and his colleague Joseph
Inguimberty (1896 - ?) are remembered by their students to have
been sincerely interested in Viet Nam - its people and its life. Nguyen
Quang Phong describes Inguimberty as being "just like a Vietnamese
painter who understands and loves his homeland."" Compared to
him," Nguyen Quang Phong continues," Georges Barrière, was only a
'French colonialist' painting indigenous landscapes and men with
the eyes of a person motivated by curiosity and losing all objective
realities which should have captivated the attention of any classical
painter."18 To give so much credit to these French artists for their
contributions to Vietnamese painting thus jars with current Western
scholars' perceptions of Vietnam's response to colonial education.
The common Western notion is that while many Vietnamese writers

17 Nguyen Quang Phong, Các Hoa Sï Trùcrng Cao Dâng My Thuât Dông Dwang
(Ha Noi: My Thuât, 1993),23.
18 Nguyen Quang Phòng, Các Hoa Sï, 23.

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Nora Taylor

of the colonial period would certainly name French authors, such as

Victor Hugo or Charles Baudelaire, as their greatest influences, their
colonial teachers, the ones who taught them to recite their history
lesson beginning with "[n]os ancêtres les Gaulois," had little
significant effect on their development as artists. Contemporary
Western scholarship has perhaps remained influenced by the French
'orientalist' approach to Vietnamese art, according to which only
'authentic' pre-colonial works of Asian art are worthy of scholarly
study. Perhaps recent scholars, too, have seen the efforts by
Vietnamese artists, and the EBAI students in particular, as being
imitative and derivative, and therefore not worthy of attention. In
attempting to prove these scholars wrong, Vietnamese art historians
have looked to the modern period for nationalistic traditions in art,
even though in doing so they in effect attribute the development of
their national painting tradition to their French educators, thus
setting that tradition within the context of French Orientalism, which
is to say within an aesthetic movement characterized by a taste for
exotic Asian landscapes.
It is interesting to note that art historians such as Nguyen
Quang Phong prefer to see the juxtaposition of French and
Vietnamese culture as concurrent adoption of French painting by
Vietnamese artists, on the one hand and, on the other, of Viet Nam as
a subject matter for art by the French. The cultural mix that took
place upon the advent in Viet Nam of such things as French dress,
the bicycle, the railroad, and European architectural motifs is
therefore considered by Vietnamese historians as being of lesser
importance than the affirmation (or reaffirmation) of national
sentiments that took place at the same time.19
Besides landscape painting, portraiture was very popular
among the students at the EBAI. Several examples of colonial period
works now hanging in the National Museum of Fine Arts in Ha Noi
reflect the training in figure drawing that the artists received at the
EBAI. Most of these works are likenesses of female models. "Thiëu
Phu" (Woman [1935],Fig.4), by Lê Phö, (b. 1907, student at the EBAI
1925-1930), and "Em Thuy"(1943, Fig.5), by Tran Van Can (1910-1994,

19 Issues of national identity and national sentiment in Vietnamese historical

discourse have been discussed at length elsewhere. See for example, William
Duiker, The Rise of Nationalism in Vietnam: 1900-1941 (Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 1976) and Patricia Pelley, Writing Revolution: The New
History in Post-colonial Viet Nam (Ph.D. Diss. Cornell University, 1993). There
is no need to go into these issues here other than as they relate to art.

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 Politics of Painting in Colonial Viet Nam

Figure 4
Le Pho, "Thiëu Phu" (Woman) 1935.
Photo courtesy National Museum of Fine Arts, Hanoi

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Nora Taylor

Figure 5
Tran Van Can, "Em Thúy" (Sister Thuy) 1943 .
Scanned photo courtesy National Museum of Fine Arts, Hanoi

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 Politics of Painting in Colonial Viêt Nam

student at the EBAI 1931-1935), both display fine draughtsmanship

and realistic detail. In each case the artist clearly studied his subject
carefully, perhaps having her pose over several hours, days, or some
still longer period. Yet one is struck by the lack of intimacy in the
portraits. The woman in Lê Phös painting looks blankly into space in
the direction of the artist. She engages in no contact or
communication and appears as a mere prop for the benefit of the
artist's exercise in portraiture. The generic title "Woman" reinforces
the lack of intimacy apparent in the painted image. In some ways
Trän Van Can's "Em Thúy" suggests a closer rapport between the
artist and model - the term "em," meaning younger sister, implies a
familial relationship, and "Thuy" seems to look more intently at the
painter than Lê Phö's woman - but "Thuy," too, is unresponsive to
the artist's gaze. She neither smiles nor smirks, nor does she seem to
shy away. Rather, she looks straight ahead at the artist as if
indifferent to the implications of his act. The intimacy of the title
notwithstanding, the girl seems to serve as an object of study for the
artist, as practice for his pen and brush. There is little indication in
either "Thiêu Phu" or "Em Thuy" "that the artist intended to capture
any quality inherent in the subject or in the condition of her life.
Other examples of such art include two well-known paintings
by To Ngoc Van (1906-1954, student at the EBAI 1926-1931) entitled
"Hai Thiêu Nfr và Em Bé" ("Two Girls with a Child," Fig.6) and
"Thiêu Ni* Bên Hoa HueT ("A Girl with Lilies," Fig.7), both of 1943.
These paintings reflect the artist's academic training in composition
and color harmony. The abundance of bright hues and flowers
makes the pictures cheerful and decorative. Unlike the portraits
mentioned above, however, the women's features are not drawn
realistically but are sketched with minimum detail. If the artist had
models, he subordinated their individuality to their surroundings,
presenting them as mere decorative motifs set against a floral
background.
Although To Ngoc Van seems a less perfect draftsman than
either Tran Van Can or Lê Phö, he has been considered by
Vietnamese art historians for the past 40 years as one of the greatest
painters to have come out of the EBAI. The reasons for his attaining
this privileged position have been discussed elsewhere and need

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Nora Taylor

Figure 6
To Ngoc Vân, "Hai Thieu Nu va Em Bé" (Two Girls with a Child) 1943.
Photo courtesy National Museum of Fine Arts, Hanoi.

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 Politics of Painting in Colonial Viet Nam

Figure 7
To Ngoc Vân, "Thiéu Ni* Bên Hoa Hue" (A Girl with Lilies) 1943. .
Photo courtesy National Museum of Fine Arts, Hanoi

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Nora Taylor

only be summarized here.20 Tô Ngoc Van became a leader in the

revolutionary movement after 1945. He took a number of art
students to the seat of the resistance movement in Viet Bac and there
founded a school offering instruction in political painting and
socialist-realism. He died from injuries incurred at the battle of Dien
Biên Phú in 1954 and has been hailed as a hero ever since. In
contrast, Nguyen Sy Ngoc (1923-1990, student at the EBAI 1939- 1944
is remembered by fellow students to have been an excellent
draftsman. As a result of having objected in the mid-1950s to a
Communist Party policy restricting freedom of expression, he is
never credited in art history books printed before 1990 as having
produced any significant works during the colonial period. Yet,
many of his portraits from that time show a greater degree of
sophistication in terms of modeling and treatment of form than
some of the works of his better-known contemporaries.
In an undated nude figure hanging in his widow's collection,
one senses his serious attempts at shaping the human figure in a
realistic manner (Fig. 8). Like his colleagues, he has chosen to
employ a model to pose for him. Perhaps out of concern for her
modesty, he has asked her to keep her eyes closed, or perhaps he has
decided to capture a momentary shutting of her eyes. Either way,
one senses from the skill with which he renders this figure that
Nguyen Sy Ngoc epitomized EBAI training and was one of its bes
pupils. The fact that he is not remembered as such can be attributed
to the Vietnamese art historians' overriding concern for nationalistic
themes: Only those painters who contributed to the independenc
movement are recorded in history books.
Contemporary art criticism would consider the idea of having
women pose as mere decorative objects or as depersonalized portrait
subjects as a kind of 'exoticism' or 'orientalism'. Certainly if the
artists were European they would be labeled as such, but the fact
that they are Vietnamese means something different. The trend
toward depicting women dressed in kimonos and portraying
women from different cultures and races was widespread in France
among the post-impressionists, most notably Edouard Manet and
Paul Gauguin. In the context of Viet Nam, however, I would argue
that such portrayals of women are not motivated by orientalist

20 See Nora Taylor, "Framing the National Spirit: Viewing and Reviewing
Painting under the Revolution/' paper given at the Association for Asian
Studies conference in Honolulu, Hawaii, April 1996.

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 Politics of Painting in Colonial Viet Nam

Figure 8
Nguyen Sy Ngoc, untitled, n.d.
Photo courtesy family of Nguyên Sï Ngoc, Hanoi

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Nora Taylor

sentiments but by a type of 'occidentalism' that led the artists to

imitate the visual effects created by Western painters. The manner in
which the EBAI students portrayed women - in contrast to their pre-
colonial counterparts, who carved statues of female deities from
their imaginations or in accordance with collective standards of
representation - is entirely the result of the artists' encounters with
Western art. This contact, which was manifested in architectural
works and fashion trends as well, created a style of painting that is
neither 'Asian' nor entirely 'European' but both. The sporadic
colonial exhibitions in France enabled some French artists to see
views of Indochina, just as the occasional exhibit of French art in
Indochina allowed Vietnamese artists to see the works of French
painters. But these instances were too infrequent to sustain the
argument that the impact of French art on Vietnamese painting or
vice-versa was in any way hegemonic. Furthermore, the majority of
'French' works to which Vietnamese art students were exposed were
attempts by French painters to capture the look and feel of the
'Orient'. Therefore it would be difficult to qualify those works as
typically 'French'. Still, the predominant method of painting
employed by artists who studied at the EBAI followed Western
pictorial conventions of setting up an easel and modeling figures or
landscapes based on real life scenes and this generated a different
form of art-making than that to which artists had hitherto been
accustomed. If any label is to be attached to it at all, it could be called
'Indochinese' or 'Westernized Vietnamese', in spite of the fact that,
contrary to colonial architecture, these paintings were produced by
locals and not by French nationals living in the colony.
When Tardieu died in 1937, he was greatly missed by his
students. His successor, Evariste Jonchère (1892-?), a sculptor who
had studied with Jean Boucher in Paris, had less faith in the talent of
his students and little hope for the future of Vietnamese art. He
reportedly told colonial officials that Vietnamese art was at best
'decorative' and that it would be better to train the EBAI students as
artisans rather than as professional painters and sculptors.21 He was
also quoted as saying "I have seen the artists in Ha Noi and they are

21 An analysis of Jonchère's role as director of the EBAI is offered in an

unpublished document written by Nguyen Sy Ngoc entitled "So- Thào Lieh
Su- Phong Trào Nghê Thuât Tao Hình Viêt Nam (Thò-i Ky Pháp Thuôc) 1858-
1945" [A draft of the history of the visual arts movement in Viet Nam under
the French, 1858-1945] (Ha Noi, 1963),24-28. 1 am grateful to his daughter for
showing me the manuscript.

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 Politics of Painting in Colonial Viet Nam

artisans, not artists/'22 Some of the students at the school agreed with
Jonchère; others took issue with him. There ensued a debate that
intensified to the point where students formed groups in support of
one or the other of the two sides. Those who followed Tardieu in
believing that painting was a logical continuation of centuries-old
indigenous art traditions formed a group called FARTA, or the Foyer
de l'Art Annamite. Those who followed Jonchère and believed that art
should be for decorative purposes only went under the name of CAI,
or Coopération des Artistes Indochinois. These rivalries did not last
long, however, and by 1945, when the Japanese coup in Ha Noi
caused the EBAI to close, the two opposing factions had lost all
significance.
The dispute over the role of art in Vietnamese society,
however, remained much longer. In opening the EBAI, Victor
Tardieu wanted to demonstrate that fine art could be created
through the rise of the same skills as those employed in making
artisanry. This idea boosted 'native' confidence and stayed with art
officials for a long time after the French departed from the colony.
Contrary to Benedict Anderson's statement above that teaching
native arts to the natives in effect told them that they were incapable
of greatness, Tardieu's interest in local art assured his students that
they had what it took to be great artists without having to imitate the
great European masters. In other words, Tardieu believed that
Vietnamese artists could create 'modern' works of art just as easily
as they created their traditional craftwares, and that in fact both
'modern' and 'traditional' art could be seen to issue from the same
impulse.

Silk Painting and the 'Modernizing' of Traditions'

In the minds of Vietnamese art historians, one of the great
achievements of the EBAI was the innovation of two new media of
painting - lacquer and silk - that combine European techniques with
local materials. This, however, is not an entirely accurate belief.
Lacquer had existed in Viet Nam for centuries, only never as a fine
art medium, and it is safe to assume that silk had also been used for
a long time. There is, in fact, documented evidence of pre-colonial
painting on silk in the form of ceremonial scrolls hanging in the Ha

22 Quoted in Chu Quang Tru- et al., Nguyen Do Cung (Ha Noi: Nhà Xuát Bàn
Vän Hóa [Culture Publishing House], 1987), 18.

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Nora Taylor

Noi Museum of Fine Arts (Fig.9).23 Still, Vietnamese scholars prefer

to perpetuate the distinction made by the EFEO scholars between
'fine art' painting and 'religious' painting. Because pre-colonial
painting on silk was considered religious art, Vietnamese art
historians do not see it as a precursor to the silk painting practiced at
the EBAI. The Vietnamese word for the art of painting, hoi hoa, is
used only in reference to painting of the EBAI period and afterward.
(The ceremonial silk scrolls are merely called tranh, a term that
signifies painting in the collective sense.) Nor is hôi hoa mentioned in
the art histories compiled by the French art historians in the first
decades of the 20th century. Scholars of the EFEO made a distinction
between "objets de culte" and "objets d'art" (objects of worship and
artifacts), but the distinction was often arbitrary. Moreover, religious
iconography was altogether absent from many of the art histories
produced by Vietnamese art historians between 1954 and 1990 due
to be belief that religion had no place in a socialist society. Thus, the
myth that silk painting was 'discovered' by teachers and students at
the EBAI is perpetuated because it serves Marxist historiography as
well as European distinctions between 'decorative' or 'religious' art
and 'personalized' or 'fine' art.
Unlike lacquer, silk painting was never considered a 'craft' at
the EBAI but was categorized as an 'indigenous' form of 'artisanry'.
Whereas lacquer and other crafts were generally fashioned by men,
women spun the fine silk threads that were woven into cloth. The
technique of applying watercolor to a square of silk stretched over a
wooden frame is of unknown origin, but it can be supposed that
Tardieu and his colleagues were inspired to develop it after
witnessing artisans making ceremonial temple scrolls in which a
piece of silk is applied to a paper backing upon which a design has
been outlined. Curiously, some of the oldest ceremonial scrolls in
northern Viet Nam come from the Dao or Yao people, who migrated
from China.24 It is possible, therefore, that the Vietnamese practice of
painting on silk originated in southern China.

23 A recent book on ancient Vietnamese paintings includes several plates of

painted ceremonial silk scrolls depicting a wide variety of subjects from
Taoist gods and Buddhist deities to Manaarin Confucian scholars returning
home after graduation. See Chu Quang Tru-, Tranh Co Viet Nam [Ancient
paintings of Vietnam] (Ha Noi: Nhà Xuát ban Van Hói Thông Tin [Culture
and Information Publishing House], 1995), 39-109.

24 Chu Quang Tró, Tranh Co Viêt Nam ,72-79.

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 Politics of Painting in Colonial Viet Nam

Figure 9
Military Mandarin.
End of 18th century, Doc Loi, Quynh Luu, Nghê An.
Scanned photo courtesy of the National Museum of Fine Arts, Hanoi.

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Nora Taylor

Since oils, acrylics, paper, and canvas were scarce in Viet Nam
at the turn of the century and had to be imported from France,
Tardieu may have seen the opportunity of using thin white silk from
the silk-producing villages of Hà Dông, ten kilometers south of H à
Noi, as a way of utilizing local resources. Silk responded to
watercolor like thin sheets of rice paper: the absorbent quality of the
fabric made one drop of watercolor spread into a vaporous cloud of
color with an effect reminiscent of Chinese landscape paintings,
where a touch of ink created misty mountain peaks, glittering
ponds, and moss-covered rocks. Since Vietnamese painters never
learned to design landscapes in the same way as Chinese painters,
however, the students of the EBAI used silk in the same way their
forefathers had used it in making ceremonial scrolls. They outlined
their figures very carefully and filled in the shapes with single
washes of color that stayed well within the lines. They did not
attempt to create perspective but opted instead for two dimensional
quality.
Nguyen Phan Chánh (1892-1984), a student in the EBAI's first
graduating class in 1930, was particularly fond of painting on silk,
perhaps because he had studied Chinese calligraphy with his father
at a young age.25 He was one of the few students of the EBAI who
was not a native of the Red River Delta. Having come from the
village of Trung Ti et in the region of Hà Tïnh, presently Nghê Tïnh
province, some 400 kilometers south of Hà N0i. The region of Nghê
Tïnh occupies a narrow strip of coastal land sandwiched between the
South China Sea and the highlands of Laos and has always been
very poor. Nguyên Phan Chánh had been taught Chinese calligraphy
in order to pass the qualifying exams for the title of Mandarin, but
the exams were abolished before he was old enough to sit for them.26

25 For details on Nguyen Phan Chánh' s life and work see Trän Van Can et al,
Hoa Sï Nguyên Phan Chánh [The Painter Nguyen Phan Chánh] (Hà Noi: Nhà
Xuát Ban Van Hóa [Culture Publishing House],1973) and Georges Boudarel,
"An Artist's One Great Love," in New Orient (Prague: 1965), 47.
If a pupil (presumably educated at home with his father or a village
teacher) passed the regional exams, he was allowed to go to to theQuôc Tu'
Giám or (national university) in Hà Nçi to study for his tien sí or (doctorate
exam), the sucessful completion of which would qualify him for the title of
Mandarin. He would tnen return to his home village as an official
representative of the government to teach younger pupils and enjoy the
privileges of a local ruler. When the French set up their own university

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 Politics of Painting in Colonial Viet Nam

Figure 10
Nguyen Phan Chánh, "Chtfi 0 an quan" (Playing O an quan) 1931.
Photo courtesy National Museum of Fine Arts, Hanoi.

His father therefore sent him to Ha Noi and enrolled him at the EBAI
to continue his studies in painting. The EBAI offered no classes in
Chinese academic painting, but Chánh rapidly developed his own
individual style by combining the techniques of portraiture and
Western notions of composition with the fluidity and transparency
of ink painting (Fig.10).
Rather than attributing Nguyen Phan Chánh's penchant for silk
painting to his taste for things 'Chinese', Vietnamese art historians
tend to consider his work as a kind of folk painting. In
commemorative literature about Nguyen Phan Chánh written after his
death, his classmates tell of how during his time at the EBAI he had
been teased for his choice of subject matter.27 While his fellow
students were looking for more sophisticated subjects in the urban

system, they abolished the exams. The last examination in Ha Noi for the
title of Mandarin took place in 1915. Quóc Tir Giám was closed down as a
school in 1909 but remained as a temple to Confucius. See Van Mieu, Quoc Tw
Giám, special edition of Vietnamese Studies 1:5-11 (1994), and Nora Taylor
and Diane Fox, Van Mieu, Quõc Tw Giám: A Walking Tour (Hanoi: Foreign
Language Publishing House; American Express, 1992).
27 See Nguyen Van Ty, "Artists speak about Nguyen Phan Chánh," My Thuât 6:6
(December 1992).

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Nora Taylor

landscape, namely women clad in their newly fashioned ko Dai,

Nguyen Phan Chánh contented himself with the modest life of
peasants.28 He was also teased about his painting style. He kept his
lines thin and two dimensional, limited his palette to washes of
brown, amber, and black, and refused to glamorize his subjects or
adorn them with 'exotic' looks, as his fellow classmate Mai Trung
Th* (1906-1980, student at the EBAI 1925 to 1930) tended to do
(Fig. 11). His respect for the rural background from which he came
later earned him praise for having captured the 'essence' of the
Vietnamese countryside and, therefore, of the national spirit.29
Nguyen Phan Chánh's paintings were not appreciated at first,
but they gradually gained acclaim as the expectations and critical
assessments of art forms and styles changed. In the commemorative
literature about him, Nguyên Phan Chánh is portrayed as the simple
peasant, naive about the art of painting. Later, however, when the
ideals shifted during the Independence and Revolutionary
movements and the development of the Socialist State, he is praised
for the modesty and 'folk' or 'popular' appeal of his works. It is
important to mention these political changes because of how they
affected the writing of art history and, in particular, the selection of
artists as representative of the colonial period. Since 1945, Nguyen
Phan Chánh has been touted in Viet Nam as one of the most
exemplary painters of the EBAI, which is something of a paradox
since he is also considered to be one of the most anticolonial artists
in the sense of rejecting Western- style academic painting. What is
omitted in this qualification, however, is that his delicately drawn
ink lines and muted colors offer a vision of rural life that
corresponds to many French colonial images of exotic and pristine
Indochina. Thus, rather than viewing Nguyen Phan Chánh as an
example of "native resilience against foreign domination," as he is
often portrayed in Vietnamese art historical literature, one can see
him as embodying the ambiguity and contradictions that have
characterized the critical discourse about the EBAI under both the
French colonial and later post-independence Marxist regimes.

28 The ko Dai, or long tunic dress worn over pants, was created in 1923 by
Nguyen Cat Tiro-ng, later a student of the EBAI from 1928 to 1933.
29 Trän Van Can et al., Hoi Sï Nguyen Phan Chánh [The painter Nguyen Phan
Chánh] (Ha Noi: Nhà Xuat Ban Van Hóa [Culture Publishing House], 1973).

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 Politics of Painting in Colonial Viet Nam

Figure 11
Mai Trung Thij, "La Lecture" (Reading) ca. 1940.
Photo courtesy Editions du Cercle d'Art, Paris.

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Nora Taylor

Nguyen Phan Chánh is, as Vietnamese art historians say, a

product of colonialism, but not for the reasons they claim. Nguyen
Phan Chánh possessed the essential qualities of the traditional
Vietnamese 'scholar': he learned Chinese and he studied in Ha Noi.
Yet, he broke with the past in employing the method of painting he
learned from the French. He went to the countryside to sketch
peasants and relied on his own eye rather than on convention to
create his works. In this way, he represents the first stages in the
transformation of Vietnamese painting from scholarly scroll art to
nude portraiture in the studios of the EBAI.
The Franco- Vietnamese scholar Nguyen Van Ky, who rejects
the Marxist views of contemporary Ha Noi historians, sees
modernization as having taken place in colonial Viet Nam by means
of three agents - public education, public medical services, and
scientific development - which contributed to the modernization of
five essential sectors of society: language, art, individual awareness
of the body, the family (more specifically women's roles in the
family), and concepts of love.30 Following this model, we can view
the EBAI as an agent of modernization in Vietnamese art and Nguyen
Phan Chánh as one of its products. Both the school and the artist
developed new art forms by revisioning traditional elements within
Vietnamese culture in the light of a foreign aesthetic criteria. Nguyen
Phan Chánh produced nothing that resembles French painting per se,
but he was certainly influenced by the exposure to French culture
and education through the EBAI. The EBAI painter Nguyen Sy Ngoc
wrote in the unpublished manuscript mentioned earlier that the
French period involved the cultural 'opening' of Vietnamese society,
especially in the field of art. He also believed that the colonial period
was one of cultural renaissance or rebirth. Other surviving artists of
the EBAI have expressed the same idea - although current official Ha
Noi historians do not share this view.31

30 Nguyen Van Ky, La Société Vietnamienne face à la modernité [Vietnamese

society in the face of modernity] (Paris: L'Harmattan, 1995).
31 Nguyen Sy Ngoc wrote: "Trong Tho-i gian tu- 1925 den 1945 ma xã hôi ta
chü yêu là ò- các dô thj lán mot hình thúx sinh hoat mói vê nghê thuât ra dò-i"
(The period from 1925 to 1945 opened our society, mostly in the large urban
areas, to a rebirth of artistic forms"). Sa Tháo Lieh su, 43 (see n.23).

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 Politics of Painting in Colonial Viet Nam

Anticolonialism and Nationalism and Their Expression in Art

Putting aside the notion that contemporary Vietnamese art
history has had to obscure or distort the positive aspects of
colonialism for the sake of ideology, we can perhaps look at the
EBAI as an institution not only of teaching and learning but of
transformation as well, a place where ideas were exchanged and
developed among students and teachers alike. Colonial-period
schools provided environments where ideas could not only be
controlled but where they could also potentially grow out of control.
Both colonials and anticolonials understood this and knew that the
educational apparatus was crucial to their respective political
campaigns. In other words, while the French expanded and
elaborated the school system to spread their authority, the
anticolonial movement used the schools to propagate ideas of
'nationalism'. When Victor Tardieu opened a department of
'indigenous' art at the EBAI, therefore, he perhaps unintentionally
gave art a nationalistic association, for the anticolonial movement
subsequently appropriated the 'indigenous' label and changed it to
'national'.
Ironically, both the colonial and the anticolonial use of the
words indigenous and national in art had very little if any historical
basis. The type of indigenous art Tardieu was teaching, as we saw
with silk, had in fact been 'invented' at the EBAI. Consequently the
anticolonial movement's 'national' art, the definition of which
depended on the colonial concept of 'indigenous,' was also
'invented' in the sense that it comprised a reaction against its
colonial appellation. Moreover, many anticolonialists were educated
in the French school system and acquired their sense of the
Vietnamese past through research undertaken by the French.
Therefore, the definition of national art was in large part based on
the French understanding of Vietnamese identity.
In recent Vietnamese historiography, the assertion that
modern-day Vietnamese nationalism grew out of the anticolonial
movement makes the Vietnamese view of colonialism inseparable
from 'anti-colonialism'. Thus, the artists who were educated at the
EBAI are seen as 'nationalists' and 'preservers of Vietnamese
identity' regardless of whether or not they participated in the
anticolonial movement or defined themselves as 'nationalists'.
Vietnamese literature about the EBAI seldom analyzes the process
by which the Vietnamese adapted French art to their own purposes,
nor does it discuss the 'newness' or 'foreignness' of French art or the

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Nora Taylor

local perceptions of it. Furthermore, the precise manner in which

local artists were exposed to French art is rarely mentioned. For
instance, the 1943 art exhibit in Ha Noi organized by the last French
Governor General, Admiral Jean Decoux, is never mentioned in
Vietnamese accounts of colonial-period art. This may be, as one
historian has suggested, because Jean Decoux worked for the Vichy
government, which the Viet Minh opposed. But it may also be
because the exhibit intended to draw parallels between Indochina
artists and their French antecedents. The 'Salon 1943' painting
exhibit included artists such as Claude Lorrain (1600-1682), Watteau
(1684-1721), Eugène Delacroix (1799-1863) Edgar Degas (1834-1917),
and Paul Cézanne (1839-1906). Hanging beside these works were
paintings by recent EBAI graduates Nguyen Gia Tri, To Ngoc Vân, Lê
Van De, Tràn Van Can, and Bùi Xuân Phái. To have one's work
displayed together with some of the most illustrious names in
French art would no doubt have flattered the EBAI painters, but
Vietnamese art historians denied any such affinity by foregoing any
mention of the exhibit in anti- and postcolonial literature. In wanting
to sever all links with France for the sake of an anticolonialist stance,
Vietnamese art historians have had to rewrite the origins of modern
Vietnamese painting so as to see the EBAI artists as the successors of
'folk' and popular painting rather than as the innovators of an
'occidentalist' art style.32
A contemporary commentator on the 1943 Salon exhibit noted,
as if addressing the rising anticolonial tendency to reject France's
influence on Vietnamese culture, that the Vietnamese artists need
not have been ashamed of their Trench connection33. The reviewer
was perhaps trying to say that Vietnamese artists, much like the
15th-century poets of Vietnam who wrote verses in Chinese to show
their mastery of Chinese poetry, could be proud of their 'mastery' of
oil and watercolor painting. But the anticolonial movement claimed
that what these artists were doing was something completely rooted
in their native traditions, like an indigenous craft. In an ironic twist,
the anticolonial movement's definition of painting was similar to
that of the most conservative colonial administrators. The simple

32 Anonymous review of the "Salon 1943" Indochine, Dec. 9, 1943, 4.

03 Claude M. wrote: "Les Annamites n'ont pas à rougir de l'origine Française
de leur mouvement artistique" (The Annamites -Vietnamese- need not be
ashamed of the French origins of their art mouvement). "La Peinture
Française et son influence en Indochine" [French painting and its influence
in Indochina], Indochine, Dec. 9, 1943, 3.

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 Politics of Painting in Colonial Viet Nam

peasants depicted by Nguyen Phan Chánh were singled out as the

most desirable subjects, as most representative of the 'spirit' of the
Vietnamese people, even though, paradoxically, Nguyen Phan
Chánh's style of silk painting originated as an Asian adaptation of
Western compositional techniques.
Because the majority of the works produced by the EBAI
students clearly have an 'Occidental' look, I would argue that the
anticolonial movement redirected its definition of 'national' art in
order to deny the EBAI's Western roots and better comply with the
ideological slant of the anticolonial movement as a whole. The
anticolonial movement saw all efforts to re-establish the autonomy
of the Vietnamese people as 'nationalistic' endeavors. Thus, the
romanization of spoken Vietnamese, Quõc Ngir, took on greater
significance after the anticolonial movement saw it as a way of
separating the Vietnamese from the French regardless of the fact that
it was not an indigenous writing system.34
The anticolonial movement, in fact, invented indigenous
origins for many aspects of Vietnamese culture that in fact had
partially foreign origins. This, according to Eric Hobsbawn and
Terence Ranger, is common to nationalist movements throughout
the world. Hobsbawn and Ranger observe that many societies create
"new traditions using old devices or [by] extending the old
vocabulary beyond its established limits." They continue:" Plenty of
political institutions, ideological movements and groups, not least in
nationalism, were so unprecedented that even historic continuity
had to be invented."35 In the realm of painting this means either
linking modern works to pre-colonial village folk art and artisanry
or claiming them to be entirely new creations invented in reaction
against, rather than in conformity with, the colonial teachers.
Vietnamese art historians saw things both ways. To Ngpc Van, who
took over the art school under the Resistance, decided that art as the
French saw it died in 1945 when Viet Nam declared its
independence, and that is was reborn in 1946 when he moved th

34 For further discussion on the link between Quõc Ngít and the nati
movement see, for example, John DeFrancis, Colonialism and Languag
in Vietnam (The Hague: Mouton, 1977).
35 Eric Hobsbawn and Terence Ranger eds., The Invention of Tradition
York: Cambridge University Press, 1983),7.

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Nora Taylor

school to the hills of Viet Bac, the seat of the revolutionary

movement. In 1946, he declared proudly "Tradition starts now/'36

Conclusion
The EBAI closed its doors in 1945 after the Lycée Maurice
Long on rue Bovet, across the street from the EBAI, was destroyed in
the Japanese coup.37 The French administrators having left the
colony, direction of the school was left in the hands of its
Vietnamese teachers, and all links with the French management
were thus effectively severed. These events symbolically detached
Vietnamese art from its European footings and passed it freely into
the hands of the independence movement. In the 20 years of its
operation the EBAI graduated some 135 students. Those who
studied at the EBAI were not accused of collaborating with the
French after independence; instead, they were given opportunities to
continue producing their art and to participate in the national
movement for independence. In fact, the new administration
consciously solicited all EBAI artists to participate in the Revolution.
Not all of them were successfully recruited, but those who were
received a new perspective on art education. They saw the
integration of art and politics. In subsequent art historical literature,
painters from the EBAI were seen as 'nationalists', and the close
connections between colonial-era painting and French academic art
were implicitly disavowed.
The fact that the EBAI was not dismantled altogether and
continued in another form through Tô Ngçc Van helped to preserve
the art of painting in Vietnamese culture. But the fact that the artists
who graduated from the colonial school were praised neither for
their ability to paint like their 'French' masters nor for their ability to
innovate new art forms has also erased a significant part of their
work. Only recently have attempts been made to correct these
omissions. The National Museum of Fine Arts, founded in 1963 by
EBAI graduate Nguyen Do Cung (1912-1977, student of the EBAI
1929-1934), until recently only displayed works of art that bore traits
considered to reflect 'national character'. Yet, it had also acquired

36 Quoted in Tran Van Can, "Mot Hoi Sy Chan Chinh" [A True Artist] in Hoa
Sï To Ngoc Van, Tran Van Can et al, eds. (Ha Noi: Nhà Xuat Bàn Vän Hóa
[Culture Publishing House], 1983)10.
For details of the Japanese 1945 coup see also David Marr Vietnam 1945:
The Quest for Power (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995).

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 Politics of Painting in Colonial Viet Nam

works by more controversial artists such as Nguyën Gia Tri and Ta

Ty, who had left Ha Noi after 1954. In 1996, for the first time since its
founding, it opened a special room for paintings from 1925 to 1945.
There, abstract or semiabstract works in lacquer hang beside images
of urban mistresses waiting for their lovers, portraits of aristocratic
women, women praying at an altar, spirit mediums, and other
subjects that would have been considered bourgeois or unpatriotic
before. The fact that the museum is willing to exhibit these works is
a sign that its administrators take the colonial period seriously.
Moreover the display of controversial works illustrates a willingness
on the part of Vietnamese museum curators to revise interpretations
of the colonial period in Vietnamese art history.
In any case, defining colonial-period painting as either
'national/ 'indigenous/ or 'French' has generated more problems
than it has solved. A thorough reassessment of the entire body of
painting produced in Indochina by both French and Vietnamese
artists is therefore needed to foster a more accurate understanding of
the complexities of the colonial period in Vietnamese art history. For
now, it may suffice to point out that the education received by the
EBAI artists under their French instructors induced a painting style
that is neither 'French', 'Francophile', nor anti-French'. To define
Vietnamese painting as 'national' therefore seems inappropriate,
since its essence lies precisely in its transnational quality.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The ideas formulated in this essay stem from the author's do

dissertation, entitled "The Artist and the State: The Politics of
Painting and National Identity in Ha Noi, Viet Nam 1925-1995"
Cornell University, 1997. Research for the dissertation as well as for
this article was conducted in Viet Nam over the course of 18 months,
from 1992 to 1994, with principal funding from the Joint Committee
on Southeast Asia of the Social Sciences Research Council and the
American Council of Learned Societies, and additional funds
provided by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Ford
Foundation, and the Henry Luce Foundation. The author is grateful
for their support. She also wishes to thank the anonymous readers
for Crossroads as well as Shawn McHale and Astri Wright for the
valuable comments they made on earlier versions of the paper.

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