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拍品专文
Vu Cao Dam was a scholar deeply versed in both Eastern and Western cultures, a passionate and elegant champion of their arts, which he embraced with enthusiasm, drawing upon them in turn – and often concurrently – for his inspiration.
Within the French sphere, he regarded Picasso, Matisse, Braque and Chagall as masters, no less than the great Italian masters whom he admired.
The artistic power and pacifist advocacy of the first, the gesture in the service of spiritual simplicity of the second, and the third’s active exploration of material: Vu Cao Dam knew how to nourish his art from these magical sources.
Yet the strongest contemporary influence, as Le Bouquet demonstrates, was that of Chagall. As early as 1948, the pictorial universe of the Belarusian Jewish artist captivated the Vietnamese Catholic. An attraction that, though little known, was shared by Le Pho.
One might first attribute this to a shared sense of exile, although for neither artist was exile something imposed upon them; rather, it was chosen, even openly embraced.
But it was also made easier because the two artists were neighbors and interacted freely in Vence, where Vu Cao Dam and his family lived in the villa ‘Les Heures Claires’ (Bright hours) right next to the Matisse Chapel between 1952 and 1958. They later settled in Saint-Paul-de-Vence, at number 40 Rue Grande, where once again, some time later, Chagall was not far away.
In our 1974 Le Bouquet – which was therefore painted in ‘Saint-Paul’ – Vu Cao Dam depicts a young man and woman within a space almost entirely absorbed by blue.
The composition is organised along a diagonal: a standing figure in the foreground responds to a second figure, seated slightly higher and to the right.
Their spatial separation creates less a narrative scene than a silent dialogue between two presences.
The young woman in the foreground, dressed in an ao dai in very pale tones, holds a luxuriant bouquet of white flowers. This serves as the main source of light in the work.
Opposite her, the seated man wears white trousers and a red-orange tunic, introducing a warm note that balances the cool immensity of the blues.
The bodies, barely modelled, seem to dissolve into the landscape, whilst the faces remain delicately drawn and almost motionless.
The background depicts no precise location: blue, turquoise and touches of green d together to form a vibrant pictorial composition, somewhere between garden, mist and abstraction.
This dissolution of space is characteristic of Vu Cao Dam’s later painting, in which blue becomes a veritable atmosphere enveloping the figures.
The free brushwork and Western painterly style thus coexist with the linear elegance and poetic restraint inherited from his Vietnamese culture.
The whole produces a contemplative and almost dreamlike vision, in which human beings and flowers seem less represented within a real place than suspended within a space of memory. We shall refrain here from overemphasizing the allusion to Kim Van Kieu, which nevertheless remained throughout his life in the memory of Vu Cao Dam.
Let us return to Chagall’s influence, so often mentioned, and identify what is and isn’t true about it.
One may, for example, draw a comparison between Le Bouquet and an earlier work by Chagall, Les Amoureux de Saint-Paul-de-Vence, executed between 1958 and 1960, thereby bringing into play the three unities of time, place and action advocated by seventeenth-century French classical theatre.
Through hues sparkling like precious stones, Chagall transforms the undulating foliage of a tree on the right into a bouquet of flowers. In this ascent towards the heavens, a play of hues blending pinks, reds, yellows and vivid greens envelops a solitary shepherd accompanied by one of his sheep. Employing his characteristic narrative style and exceptional chromatic luminosity, Chagall Chagall brings to life the joyful abundance of love at the heart of French nature.
Painted at night and bathed in deep blues under the moonlight, the work celebrates the natural, untamed beauty of the village of Vence. One immediately thinks of the artist’s early masterpieces, of Bella Rosenfeld – his first wife, muse, and great love – or, in Au-dessus de la ville, the couple reclining above Paris, in Les ponts de la Seine. Here, Chagall employs the symbol of couples levitating above urban landscapes to express a palette of intertwined emotions.
Evoking a happiness that is self-sufficient, transcendence, and a deep attachment to the region, Les amoureux de Saint-Paul de Vence stands as a tribute to love in its most universal sense: a true sonnet celebrating the fundamental emotions of the human experience.
Therefore, while colour and composition bring the two artists together, it is understandable that they may appear to be a mere illusion.
Certainly, the common features are apparent at first glance.
On the one hand, the color blue, in its various shades, serves as a structuring element that defines space for each artist.
On the other hand, the significance of flowers (which Vu Cao Dam also reflects in his choice of title), even though the two artists treat them differently.
Finally, there is the psychology of the figures: distant, facing one another, posed, and essential actors in a scene of memory.
Yet the differences are equally compelling.
Chagall offers a more intimate and vertical composition, situating his action within a recognisable urban landscape – Vence – whereas Vu Cao Dam’s vision is more dreamlike.
For Chagall, there is the group, the city, the two couples. For Vu Cao Dam, there is a solitary couple lingers within a luminous field of space. Accumulation for one; fullness within emptiness for the other. Saturation against restraint.
Two styles that are sometimes similar, yet two fundamentally different conceptions of the world.
And a dialogue between two masters that we take pleasure in listening to.
Jean-François Hubert
Senior Expert, Art du Vietnam
Within the French sphere, he regarded Picasso, Matisse, Braque and Chagall as masters, no less than the great Italian masters whom he admired.
The artistic power and pacifist advocacy of the first, the gesture in the service of spiritual simplicity of the second, and the third’s active exploration of material: Vu Cao Dam knew how to nourish his art from these magical sources.
Yet the strongest contemporary influence, as Le Bouquet demonstrates, was that of Chagall. As early as 1948, the pictorial universe of the Belarusian Jewish artist captivated the Vietnamese Catholic. An attraction that, though little known, was shared by Le Pho.
One might first attribute this to a shared sense of exile, although for neither artist was exile something imposed upon them; rather, it was chosen, even openly embraced.
But it was also made easier because the two artists were neighbors and interacted freely in Vence, where Vu Cao Dam and his family lived in the villa ‘Les Heures Claires’ (Bright hours) right next to the Matisse Chapel between 1952 and 1958. They later settled in Saint-Paul-de-Vence, at number 40 Rue Grande, where once again, some time later, Chagall was not far away.
In our 1974 Le Bouquet – which was therefore painted in ‘Saint-Paul’ – Vu Cao Dam depicts a young man and woman within a space almost entirely absorbed by blue.
The composition is organised along a diagonal: a standing figure in the foreground responds to a second figure, seated slightly higher and to the right.
Their spatial separation creates less a narrative scene than a silent dialogue between two presences.
The young woman in the foreground, dressed in an ao dai in very pale tones, holds a luxuriant bouquet of white flowers. This serves as the main source of light in the work.
Opposite her, the seated man wears white trousers and a red-orange tunic, introducing a warm note that balances the cool immensity of the blues.
The bodies, barely modelled, seem to dissolve into the landscape, whilst the faces remain delicately drawn and almost motionless.
The background depicts no precise location: blue, turquoise and touches of green d together to form a vibrant pictorial composition, somewhere between garden, mist and abstraction.
This dissolution of space is characteristic of Vu Cao Dam’s later painting, in which blue becomes a veritable atmosphere enveloping the figures.
The free brushwork and Western painterly style thus coexist with the linear elegance and poetic restraint inherited from his Vietnamese culture.
The whole produces a contemplative and almost dreamlike vision, in which human beings and flowers seem less represented within a real place than suspended within a space of memory. We shall refrain here from overemphasizing the allusion to Kim Van Kieu, which nevertheless remained throughout his life in the memory of Vu Cao Dam.
Let us return to Chagall’s influence, so often mentioned, and identify what is and isn’t true about it.
One may, for example, draw a comparison between Le Bouquet and an earlier work by Chagall, Les Amoureux de Saint-Paul-de-Vence, executed between 1958 and 1960, thereby bringing into play the three unities of time, place and action advocated by seventeenth-century French classical theatre.
Through hues sparkling like precious stones, Chagall transforms the undulating foliage of a tree on the right into a bouquet of flowers. In this ascent towards the heavens, a play of hues blending pinks, reds, yellows and vivid greens envelops a solitary shepherd accompanied by one of his sheep. Employing his characteristic narrative style and exceptional chromatic luminosity, Chagall Chagall brings to life the joyful abundance of love at the heart of French nature.
Painted at night and bathed in deep blues under the moonlight, the work celebrates the natural, untamed beauty of the village of Vence. One immediately thinks of the artist’s early masterpieces, of Bella Rosenfeld – his first wife, muse, and great love – or, in Au-dessus de la ville, the couple reclining above Paris, in Les ponts de la Seine. Here, Chagall employs the symbol of couples levitating above urban landscapes to express a palette of intertwined emotions.
Evoking a happiness that is self-sufficient, transcendence, and a deep attachment to the region, Les amoureux de Saint-Paul de Vence stands as a tribute to love in its most universal sense: a true sonnet celebrating the fundamental emotions of the human experience.
Therefore, while colour and composition bring the two artists together, it is understandable that they may appear to be a mere illusion.
Certainly, the common features are apparent at first glance.
On the one hand, the color blue, in its various shades, serves as a structuring element that defines space for each artist.
On the other hand, the significance of flowers (which Vu Cao Dam also reflects in his choice of title), even though the two artists treat them differently.
Finally, there is the psychology of the figures: distant, facing one another, posed, and essential actors in a scene of memory.
Yet the differences are equally compelling.
Chagall offers a more intimate and vertical composition, situating his action within a recognisable urban landscape – Vence – whereas Vu Cao Dam’s vision is more dreamlike.
For Chagall, there is the group, the city, the two couples. For Vu Cao Dam, there is a solitary couple lingers within a luminous field of space. Accumulation for one; fullness within emptiness for the other. Saturation against restraint.
Two styles that are sometimes similar, yet two fundamentally different conceptions of the world.
And a dialogue between two masters that we take pleasure in listening to.
Jean-François Hubert
Senior Expert, Art du Vietnam