Surrealism in Dinh Phong’s Painting| Researcher Tran Dan (USA)

The phenomenon of Artist Dinh Phong has recently drawn a lot of attention among fine arts circle and art lovers. The Duyen Dang Viet Nam (Charming Vietnam) magazine has daringly published numerous opinions by well-known painters, artists, critics including Nguyễn Quân, Ca Lê Thang, Nguyen Thuy Kha, Pham Long, Truong Nguyen Nga, Nguyen Huu Hong Minh…The following is the newest article by the researcher Tran Dan (Trần Đán), which we’ve just received from the U.S.A.

I refrain from boxing any artist in this or that school, but in this case the artist himself suggests such an association. He calls his exhibition “The Flying Man and his Surreal Dreams”. Even though both paintings and sculptures are included, I shall only discuss the paintings. So, can we conclude that Dinh Phong’s paintings are products of a surrealist practice? What are their meanings, what do they tell us? Let us dig in.

Artist Dinh Phong is attentively studying a sketch of a new statue, New Year’s Eve. (Photo by DDVN taken at the artist’s workshop on the afternoon of March 6, 2021)

But first a word of clarification: dreams themselves are not surreal. To a person dreaming – as the artist himself admits – dreams are very real. To dream is to enter into a state opposite to being awake. In the awakened state we are aware of what we are doing and are guided by our rational mind and will. In contrast, in the dream state we are completely passive, at the mercy of subconscious forces which often defy logic. In special cases, however, the two states may merge, as when a person sleepwalks. Such a person may walk on a roof without falling, but when they awaken, they do not realize they have ever left their bed. Surrealism, on the other hand, as we shall see below, is an artistic methodology to unlock and liberate the beautiful and meaningful inside our dreams.

Tượng Gốm của Hoạ sĩ Đinh Phong. Kích thước 50 x 50 cm x 45. ST 2021
Statue noname 50 x 50 cm x 45. Year 2021. Artist Dinh Phong

Since time immemorial, from East to West, cultures as diverse as the Egyptian, Indian, Greek and Chinese ones have explored the power of dreams to predict the future. The interesting fact is that, to the Greek philosophers, the study of dreams has never been brought to the level of seriousness as that accorded to philosophy, aesthetics, metaphysics, etc. There has never been a “dream-sophy”. My guess is it is so because dreams are a subject that escapes the scrutiny of logic, thus it’s better left to the brooding of Poetry. In Eastern philosophy, the only serious mention of dreams is by Zhuangzi, who questions the validity of reality when he poses the paradox, “Last night did Zhuangzi dream he was a butterfly, or was it a butterfly dreaming that it was Zhuangzi?”

It’s not until the end of the 19th century, with the publication of “The Interpretation of Dreams” by Sigmund Freud, that we see formulate a theory about the workings of our mind, in which dreams play an important role. According to Freud our mind is made up of two parts, the Conscious and the Subconscious. In the Conscious mind resides the Ego, that which makes up our personality, whereas the Subconscious mind is where resides our Id, the part of our mind that stores external influences. When the Ego and the Id cooperate, a person’s behavior is seen as “normal”. When they wages war against each other, a person experiences psychosis, and may be viewed by society as deranged. To resolve the inner conflict, Freud explored methodologies such as confession, free association, hypnosis and dream interpretation.

The first time dreams are elevated to the highest ever level in art is in the “Surrealist Manifesto” (1924) by Andre’ Breton. In that manifesto he and his colleagues gave credit to Freud’s discoveries. Instead of viewing the clash between the conscious and subconscious as roots of psychosis that mandates therapy, however, they recognize in it the flame of creativity in art that unleashes a new type of beauty that may be called the Surrealist Beauty.

Một tác phẩm chất liệu sơn dầu & Acrylic trên canvas có kích thước khá lớn của họa sĩ Đinh Phong vừa sáng tác tháng 8 năm 2021
A fairly large on canvas & oil painting work of artist Dinh Phong just composed in August 2021

Breton defined Surrealism as such: “Surrealism is based on the belief in the superior reality of certain forms of previously neglected associations, in the omnipotence of dream, in the disinterested play of thought.” Subsequent to it is the Surrealist methodology: “Psychic automatism in its pure state, by which one proposes to express – verbally, by means of the written word, or in any other manner – the actual functioning of thoughts. Dictated by the thought, in the absence of any control exercised by reason, exempt from any aesthetic or moral concern.” From a number of philosophical tenets, the Surrealists have contributed to art a methodology, first in the area of language (prose, poetry), then in the visual arts (painting, sculpture, movies, theatre, etc.) Whether we agree with their philosophical arguments, we must appreciate the fact that their methodology has produced works of art of unequal value.

One of the fundamental Surrealist methods is “automatic art making”. This method promotes the release of things held in the subconscious in their purest form, unencumbered by logic, morale, religion, etc. In the art of writing, he describes the method as follows: “Put yourself in as passive, or receptive, a state of mind as you can. Forget about your genius, your talents, and the talents of everyone else. Keep reminding yourself that literature is one of the saddest roads that lead to everything. Write quickly, without any preconceived subject, fast enough so that you will not remember what you’re writing and be tempted to reread what you have written…” If we substitute the term “write” with “paint” we end up with the method for automatic painting or subconscious painting. This method was first experimented by the French painter Jean Dubuffet, then brought to great heights by the Abstract Expressionists Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning. They dropped all logical planning, all analysis, and instead only followed their intuition. They espoused the maladroit, the unfinished, rejecting the polished, the perfect. They loved action, distanced themselves from the cerebral. For those reasons the critic Harold Rosenberg called their approach “Action Painting”.

The second method is in juxtaposing two realities deemed unrelated. An example of such an approach is Magritte depicting a train popping out of a chimney in a tastefully-decorated room. Breton recalled words from his friend Pierre Reverdy: “The image is a pure creation of the mind. It cannot be born from a comparison but from a juxtaposition of two more or less distant realities. The more the relationship between the two juxtaposed realities is distant and true, the stronger the image will be, the greater its emotional power and poetic reality”. This method has been quite successfully applied by De Chirico, Magritte, Delvaux and Dali.

Họa sĩ Đinh Phong trong xưởng làm việc của anh.  
Họa sĩ Đinh Phong trong xưởng làm việc của anh.

Are Dinh Phong’s paintings the results of a Surrealist practice? What emotions do they evoke? What meaning do they convey?

It’s obvious that Dinh Phong has chosen the first method, that of “subconscious art making”. Before he paints, as he puts it, he usually sits down for one hour or more to meditate. Then he unleashes his creativity. He tries not to “compose” the painting but allows it to compose itself. Broken patches of colours, evocative shapes throw themselves onto his canvas. He obeys no premeditation, no logical roadmap. He just lets images gush out. And gush out they did as in a mere 6 months he was able to produce some 50 works for his Hanoi exhibition. Truly he took seriously his commitment to subconscious art making.

As a product of his method, images innundate his paintings. What can we say about them? What meaning do they convey? Where does beauty reside in them?

He said they are images from his dreams. I believe he was sincere. But I question the way they had formed. In my dreams, most images are figures, even though they do not appear as clearly as in my awakened state. People I know, and strangers. Sometimes odd figures resulting from the conflagration of several real figures. But never have I dreamt of abstract forms as he has. Could they be the products of the process of abstraction in his mind? In my essay “To Feel or to Comprehend a Work of Art” I pointed out that medicine today has succeeded in pinpointing the part of the brain responsible for the abstraction function. I surmise that Dinh Phong’s images are therefore not dreams in their pure forms but in their abstract forms. Regardless of their natures, the images presented are undeniably captivating.

The Four Spirits, oil & Acrylic on canvas with a fairly large size, created by artist Dinh Phong in August 2021
The Four Spirits, oil & Acrylic on canvas with a fairly large size, created by artist Dinh Phong in August 2021

So what things in the real world do those images evoke? If I believed Freud, perhaps I could discern some sexual objects or their symbols. Or if I believed Jung then I could unearth symbols of the collective will to thrive. Quite interesting are associations that the critic Nguyen Quan has described in his review; there is no need for me to repeat them here. As for me, however hard I strained my eyes, I failed to see anything of the real world in them. Could it be that my imagination was so poor? Or was I missing the point when attempting to associate those images with objects of the real world?

Artist Dinh Phong visits the workshop of sculptor Dao Chau Hai in Phu Tho.
Artist Dinh Phong visits the workshop of sculptor Dao Chau Hai in Phu Tho.

It suddenly strikes me that the artist has spent many arduous years as an owner of a chain of clinics, which demands from him a sharp analytical mind and an unwavering sense of self- discipline. No one has ever come out on top after such a grueling struggle in a country in transition like Vietnam lacking such strengths of character. Could it be possible that the challenges he underwent have left such intense a strain in his subconscious? Could it be that those rich images that arose are forms taken by boxed-up energy upon their release? The strongest emotion I have experienced looking at Dinh Phong’s painting is that of suffocation inside a powerful magnetic field.

How about Dinh Phong’s colours? What response do they evoke? Franz Marc, who together with Edvard Munch launched Expressionism toward the end of 19th century, linked colours to various emotions. With preconceived ideas about male and female characters, he associated blue with the male character and the spiritual, yellow with the female character, and pleasure, red with animal instinct. Wassily Kandisky, founder of the Abstract school of painting, saw colours as notes in a symphonic composition. Similarly, Picasso’s colours reflected the various emotional states he found himself during different period of his life: blue as the colour of sadness during the Blue Period (1901-1904) after the death of his childhood friend Carles Casagemas, rose as the colour of hope after he met his new girlfriend Fernande Olivier. As for Dinh Phong, his palette ranges from the vibrant, harmoniously colourful, energy-bound, to the mute, sadness-ladden. He has no dominant palette. If colours reflect emotional states, then Dinh Phong is a man with several ones: some of his paintings are monochromatic, either gray of green, expressing a sense of calmness
(perhaps that of a businessman), while other paintings are bursting with colours, perhaps denoting an exuberant mood (that of an artist?) The palette may be that of dreams or that of the emotional state when recalling them. The crucial thing is that the artist lets them express themselves freely; he does not seek to repress any. Sadness or joy, they are parts of his moods.

In final analysis, what do Dinh Phong’s broken images mean? As noted by Freud, at first inspection dreams appear meaningless. But a skilled therapist would be able to extract vestiges of childhood experience in them. Negative experience may be repressed. But they may remain entrenched deep in the subconscious. Carl Jung went a step further: ingrained in the subconscious are not only personal experiences but also collective ones. From what I could collect, Dinh Phong’s childhood had not been so painful. What about his collective memory? He shared as much, “I have seen the crumbling of majestic structures”. Despite his successes in business, is he still obsessed with the fragility of material things, the shallowness of thought?

A weak point in the automatic art making methodology is the risk of repetition. Though its source may be in dreams, but art making must be guided by consciousness to avoid falling in the said trap. Among Surrealist painters we can see that Delvaux often repeats the image of a young girl sleepwalking in the night, while Magritte employs a wide variety of objects: a pipe, a pair of lovers, an easel, a train, a man with a hat, etc. If we consider Abstract Expressionism as a descendant of Surrealism, then Pollock also committed a similar sin. Therefore it is best to direct this methodology toward the active act of “digging up” and away from passive “collecting”. Perhaps Dinh Phong is well aware of this weakness and thus his images and colours show a wide range.

Someone may say that looking at Dinh Phong art through a surrealist lens is the wrong way. Instead he should be looked at under an Abstract Expressionist lens. That is to deny the blood relation between the two schools that even the Abstract Expressionist acknowledge. One relies on the exploration of dreams, the other on subconscious action. The difference between is at best superficial. In the abstract expressionist painting of De Kooning, the painterly gesture is more vigorous, savage, resolute. In Dinh Phong’s paintings, the gesture is still hesitant, restrained, perhaps under the control of his discipline-prone left brain ever afraid to let go.

Photographer Minh Khanh (left) is taking pictures of painter Dinh Phong at his workshop, on the morning of March 15, 2021 in Saigon.
Photographer Minh Khanh (left) is taking pictures of painter Dinh Phong at his workshop, on the morning of March 15, 2021 in Saigon.

We know that Dinh Phong came late to art, is self-taught, and has made tremendous progress in his art. He has tirelessly explored ways to allow his subconscious to express itself. Selecting the best way to achieve his goals is a matter of selecting the appropriate methodology in the visual art. He struggled among several paths.

As we look at his paintings, there emerges without doubt Dinh Phong’s parallel universe. The future of Dinh Phong’s art remains a question. What will emerge from his subconscious? Images deeply personal or reflecting the collective subconscious? Questions that only time can answer.

3.2021

Researcher Mr. Tran Dan  (USA)

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