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Matters of the heart

Pham Luc's evocative Vietnamese paintings

by Leon Nigrosh

PHAM LUC: THE LUCID HEART at the Brush Art Gallery, 256 Market Street, Lowell, through September 21.

Duality has long been at the core of Asian thought: Yin/Yang, Light/Dark, Good/Evil. This concept can also be applied to a major portion of Pham Luc's life. Born in 1943 in Hue, the central city in what was then French Indo-China, Pham Luc was caught up in the dichotomy of being raised by Asian parents in a land dominated by Western imperialists. As a young man, he joined the Vietnamese Peoples Army, traveling across Laos and Vietnam with his weapon and paint box side by side, in effect becoming a soldier/ artist. Since the close of the war, Pham Luc has worked in his Hanoi studio using his art in an attempt to reconcile the differences between traditionalism and modernization -- a conflict that his country still faces.

Pham Luc's paintings are far from blatant propagandist diatribes. In fact, his work is often so subtle that it is easy to overlook the underlying message. Nowhere among the 38 paintings currently on display at the Brush Gallery do we see any direct depiction of the ravages of the prolonged years of war in Vietnam. The closest reference to that era is his painting of a young woman holding a small white dove in her hands, with an AK-47 slung over her shoulder. Another painting in which Pham Luc symbolically portrays the Vietnamese quest for peace is his colorful image of a boy pushing an old man in a wheelchair toward a small dove that hovers close by. The majority of his works simply show the dignity of his people as they went about their daily lives, playing with their children or going home from the market, while still under the thumb of unsympathetic governments.

Beyond his engaging images, what is most captivating about Pham Luc's work is his loose, fluid style. Well-schooled in the aesthetics of the West, he combines elements of Post-Impressionism and Expressionism with traditional Chinese brush painting. This is especially noticeable in his Woman with Instrument. Painted with swift brushstrokes of black watercolor on gauze, the young woman is portrayed dreamily plucking a stringed instrument. The girl's pose and the tilt of her lute bear an uncanny resemblance to Picasso's wizened Old Guitarist painted during his Blue Period more than 90 years ago.

Although most of Pham Luc's work is based on his personal observations and memories of people trying to survive a protracted state of war, he also draws upon the rich tradition of Vietnamese folk tales as inspiration. One work in particular shows a scantily clad woman apparently attempting to entice a monk -- a questionable situation to begin with. But to anyone familiar with the 16th-century Vietnamese "Cheo Dramas" this image is straight from the story of a young woman who is trying to save her friend, another woman who is disguised as a monk, so that she can be near her lover who is a real monk. The elaborately staged play is still being performed in Thai-Binh Province, and Pham Luc was able to convince the principle actors to come to his studio to pose for this exquisite painting.

Scattered throughout the exhibition are a half-dozen paintings of women combing their hair. It turns out that these images are based on the 19th-century Vietnamese epic poem The Tale of Kieu. The heroine of this still popular tome is often found throughout the narrative to be combing her long black hair. Pham Luc has returned to this subject over the years, but his Woman in Red is the most charming and effective version of this vignette in the current show. The young woman's angelic sensuality, enhanced by her extended neck, harks back to Modigliani's treatment of many of his portrait subjects in the early 1900s.

The Vietnam art market is fast becoming the new hot spot for collectors. Young Vietnamese painters are clamoring for attention by mimicking the latest cutting-edge work from the West. Pham Luc continues to go against the tide by producing simple paintings that capture ordinary moments of everyday life that reach out and grab at your heart.

The Brush Art Gallery is open Tuesday through Saturday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sunday from noon to 5 p.m. Call 459-7819.