The Revival of Vietnamese Lacquer in the 20th Century

Conference ofAnne Fort, Heritage curator, in charge of the Southeast Asian and Central Asian collections at the Cernuschi Museum.

On the occasion of the exhibition in the painting room of the Cernuschi Museum devoted to the revival of Vietnamese lacquer, Anne Fort returns to this art, considered today as one of the most brilliant modes of national expression in Vietnam.

Traditional lacquer is called son ta in Vietnamese, which means "our lacquer", or locally worked lacquer. Then, from the 1930s, a new category called lacquer painting appears when artists begin to lacquer panels in a pictorial mode influenced by the West. Painting means "painting", paint refers to the lacquer material and grinding means "to sand".

Lacquer is an extremely demanding material to work with. To harvest it, incisions must be made in the trunk of a lacquer tree that is three to eight years old. The sap is then collected from river mussel shells, protected from sunlight and humidity. This whitish material, which turns brown very quickly upon contact with air, is left to settle for several months in these airtight jars; the top layer, liquid and transparent, is used for decoration. The viscous layers at the bottom, mixed with sawdust or clay, are used to prepare the panels. Two layers of this mastic are required to prepare the panel, which is then coated on all sides with a very fine textile (hemp or cotton), itself again covered with at least six to seven layers of lacquer. Between each layer, approximately two weeks of drying in a warm, humid environment are required, as well as intermediate sanding. The top layers, intended to create the decoration, will be churned for seven to fifteen days. Using a container and an iron spatula, a particularly popular deep black lacquer is obtained through oxidation. This is followed by the stage of filtering the lacquer using a fine textile twisted between two wooden boards.

Mixing and filtering lacquer. 1920-29, Hanoi ©Musée du quai Branly-Jacques Chirac. PV0012864.

Quan Âm with a thousand arms and a thousand eyes. Temple of Bút Tháp (Ninh Phúc tự 寧福寺). Second half of the 2th century. Lacquered and gilded wood. 17 m high, 2,5 m in diameter. 2,2 heads, 11 + 42 arms. ©A. Fort.

Convenient. North Vietnam. Late 19th, early 20th century. 86 x 57,3 cm. Cernuschi Museum. MC 4450. ©Cernuschi Museum.

There are many decorative techniques. Indeed, the use of lacquer is attested in China since at least the 18st millennium BC and many decorative techniques were developed over time and then transmitted to neighboring countries which developed new ones in turn. Japan, in the XNUMX^th and 19^th centuries, is distinguished in particular by the gradient effects obtained by sprinkling metallic flakes on an undried lacquer. The inlay of mother-of-pearl, stones, metal and the application of gold or silver leaf are also used. Eggshell mosaic, widely practiced in Vietnam, allows areas of pure white to be obtained. Colored lacquers can also be obtained by adding powdered minerals. However, the lacquer reacts chemically during drying and most traditional pigments deteriorate. For this reason, the colors are essentially limited to red (cinnabar), black (obtained by iron oxidation), yellow (orpiment) and the whole range of browns (obtained by natural oxidation of the lacquer).

Before the 1930s, lacquer was used in Vietnam in the decorative arts and architecture. It protected wood from insect attacks and mold while also embellishing it. In temples, it contributed to the very spirituality of the place; the shimmering gold and the contrast between the black and red lacquer reinforced the mysterious and luxurious dimension of the sculptures. This is the case of the famous representation of When Soul (Avalokiteshvara) with a thousand arms and a thousand eyes in the temple of Bút Tháp (Vietnam, province of Bắc Ninh). Luxurious objects of daily life, like this betel box (beginning of the 19th^th century, Musée du Quai Branly-Jacques Chirac), are also lacquered. Under the lid, decorative elements in relief are covered in gold and other motifs are drawn with a brush in gold on the red background. In addition, a commode dating from the end of the 19th century^th century and preserved in the Cernuschi Museum, has a mother-of-pearl decoration, the most common for the production of furniture and objects of this period. The wood was hollowed out to accommodate the mother-of-pearl elements glued to the lacquer. The gouache Interior of a pagoda in Saigon (circa 1937) by Bùi Văn Âu is currently on display at the museum. It depicts the temple dedicated to the goddess of the sea, Thiên Hậu (天后宫), founded by the Chinese community in Cholon. Compared with a photograph of its current state, this gouache on paper demonstrates the good preservation of some parallel sentences, while others have been redone.

Bui Van Âu. School of Gia Định, class of 1937. Interior of a pagoda in Saigon. Gouache on paper. Circa 1937; 86 x 57,3 cm. Cernuschi Museum. MC 2017-59.

Panther. Jean Dunand and Paul Jouve. Lacquered wood, eggshell. Circa 1924. 58 x 4 cm. © Metropolitan Museum, New York, no. 114,6.

The West's fascination with Asian lacquer dates back to the 16^em century, with the appearance of precious objects on the European market. From the second half of the 19th^th century, with the increase in trade, lacquers, which mainly came from Japan, were of varied quality and thus became accessible to a wide clientele. At the same time, the universal exhibitions in which the Japanese pavilion attracted all eyes, contributed to the development of this interest. Then, Asian artists established themselves in the West, like the Japanese lacquer artist Seizo Sugawara (1884-1937) who settled in Paris at the beginning of the 20th century.^thcentury. He passed on his expertise to several designers, including Jean Dunand (1877-1942). An object representative of the Art Deco movement, his cigarette case, made around 1925 and preserved at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, uses the traditional Japanese technique of lacquer inlaid with eggshell, but treated in a covering manner with an almost abstract effect. A Frenchman of Swiss origin, Jean Dunand began to take an interest in lacquer for its anti-corrosive properties in the context of his production of metal objects. Made in 1925-1926 for a private music room, a screen entitled Fortissimo (Metropolitan Museum of New York) is decorated with angels symbolizing musical notes. Their loincloths are treated with eggshell, while the scrolls are made of mother-of-pearl powder.

Jean Dunand also created the painting in lacquered wood Panthère designed by Paul Jouve (1880-1973); and also kept at the Metropolitan Museum of New York. It can be compared to the panel Panthers on the lookout on the banks of the Dong Nai River (1935-1944) currently on display at the museum, produced later but which shows a clear lineage. This is a production of the École des métiers du bois de Thu Dau Mot. Designed to train carpenters, it consists of four major decorative departments (carpentry, lacquer art, wood carving, and ivory and mother-of-pearl inlays). Founded in 1901 by the French administration, this school was designed as a conservatory of traditional techniques adapted to the needs of the new Western clientele.

The establishment of the Indochina School of Fine Arts (EBAI) in Hanoi in 1925 marked a turning point in Western influence on Vietnamese art. Its director, Victor Tardieu, aimed to create a new Indochinese stylistic school that would draw on traditional repertoires while introducing Western art concepts and techniques. Asian lacquer was thus revisited and experienced the return of the influence of the Art Deco movement, which was booming in Paris.

Unidentified artist; Panthers on the lookout on the banks of the Dong Nai. Lacquer painting and gilding on slatted panel. Between 1935 and 1944. 149,5 x 75 cm. ©Cernuschi Museum. MC 2017-67.

Goldfish (detail). 1930s? Panel with lacquer decoration. 130 x 72 cm. Private collection. ©Sotheby's.

At the EBAI, lacquer became in a few years a purely pictorial means of expression and the large compositions gradually moved away from decorative art to join the domain of fine arts. The screen Goldfish (private collection) by Phạm Hậu (1903-1994) depicts a pond bordered by trees and rocks, treated in a particularly luxurious and refined manner. Carp are seen through the water, but the branch belonging to the terrestrial world is brought to the foreground, in a sophisticated play of multiple points of view. Phạm Hậu, admitted in 1929 to the EBAI, joined the lacquer workshop there. He had an official career in northern Vietnam in the second half of the 20th century.^th century. The screen Tonkin landscape (1932-1934, Lam family collection) by Lê Phô currently on display at the Cernuschi Museum presents a thorough simplification of forms characteristic of the influence of Art Deco that the artist observed in Paris when he stayed there in 1931. The lid of a box with landscape decoration made by Lé Phô (1907-2001) in 1930 (Lam family collection) reveals a small temple hidden among the lush vegetation. The virtuoso technique is remarkable for its proximity to Japanese lacquers. The theme of the forest landscape is very common in Vietnamese lacquers of the 1930s and 1940s. Two other recurring motifs, that of fish and that of deer, are illustrated in a panel by Phạm Hậu, Deer and stags (private collection). They illustrate the influence of both Japan and Parisian Art Deco.

Lê Phô. Tonkin Landscape (detail). Three-panel screen of lacquered wood. Hanoi. Between 1932 and 1934. 201 x 240 cm. Lam Family Collection.

Nguyen Van Tu. Young Girl and the Sea Composition in three lacquered panels, eggshell. 95 x 94,5 cm. Executed in 1940. © Vietnam Museum of Fine Arts, Hanoi.

The artist Nguyễn Văn Tỵ (1917-1992), for his part, passed the EBAI competitive examination in 1936, from which he graduated in 1941. Like Phạm Hậu, he enjoyed official recognition in North Vietnam. In his Panorama of Cho Be (National Gallery of Singapore), the movement of the water is transcribed by gold lacquer applied inside the lines incised in the red lacquer of the river. From 1940, the Japanese, who established themselves by force in Vietnam, organized several exhibitions there where they showed Japanese works. In 1943, works by EBAI graduates were exhibited in Japan, such as this lacquer by Nguyễn Văn Tỵ. In another work, The Girl and the Sea (1940, Vietnam Museum of Fine Arts, Hanoi) The artist uses eggshells to bring out young girls from the black background, whose vigorous, stylized forms radically break with the realism of the previous landscapes.

Joined the EBAI in 1929, Nguyễn Gia Trí (1908-1993) is undoubtedly one of the greatest lacquer artists in Vietnam. His production is characterized by a constant search for particular effects that only lacquer can achieve. In the work Landscape (National Gallery of Singapore), the cloud in fact presents a blurred and misty appearance created by sanding the layers of lacquer. Alongside these still fairly realistic works, Nguyễn Gia Trí explores a new, very free path, including the composition in ten panels, The fairies (circa 1936, private collection), is characteristic. The female figures seem to float on the background where the planes are layered and combined until they merge into a great general dynamism. In the second part of his life, Nguyễn Gia Trí settled in South Vietnam where he explored abstraction, as illustrated by one of the panels, Abstraction (1968-1969), commissioned by the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam) to adorn the Saigon Library (now the National Library of Ho Chi Minh City). The artist is indeed fascinated by lacquer, which he considers a living material with the capacity to produce effects that are never fully mastered and which are revealed throughout the manufacturing process.

Nguyen Gia Tri. The Fairies. Circa 1936. Lacquer on panel. 280 x 440 cm. Private Collection.

Nguyen Gia Tri. Abstraction. (detail) 1968-69. Lacquer on panel. 120 x 240 cm. ©Ho Chi Minh City General Science Library.

From the War of Independence opposing the Democratic Republic of Vietnam to France between 1946 and 1954, new themes appeared: soldiers at the front, peasants working in the rice fields. The graceful subjects of the past became rarer in the North, where they would eventually disappear, only persisting in the South from the Second Vietnam War opposing the Communists in the North to the Republic of Vietnam in the South. Tô Ngọc Vân (1906-1954), a classmate of Vu Cao Dam (1908-2000) at the EBAI and who would become its first Vietnamese director, testifies in The last moments (1948, private collection) the influence of the political situation in his production by representing a soldier dying at the front. Finally, Nguyễn Tư Nghiêm (1922-2016), after having also embraced revolutionary themes, would explore, at the end of his career, folkloric themes linked to Vietnam's past. In his panel Giong, Described as a National Treasure since 2017, the artist represents the eponymous hero of Vietnamese myths.

Vietnamese lacquer still attracts many talented contemporary artists who continue their plastic exploration of this material while questioning its traditional and modern character. For example, Phi Phi Oanh (born in 1979), a contemporary American artist of Vietnamese origin, in her work Pro Se (mapping series) created in 2016-2017 for the National Gallery of Singapore, lacquer a metal object that appears to have the shape of an iPad. Exhibited in 2018 facing the panel The fairies, An emblematic work of Vietnamese lacquer mentioned above, this production invites us to reflect on the growing accessibility of images in contemporary times.

An ancient material but with plastic forms that have been entirely renewed for almost a century, Vietnamese lacquer painting was born from the meeting of multiple influences, Asian and Western, to become the national expression par excellence, capable of linking the present to the past while questioning the future.

Montaine Dumont