Tran Trung Tin depicts in a contemporary style never before seen in Vietnam, what he calls the "optimistic tragedy" of the twentieth century. His pictures are the visual diary of one man's struggle for survival and self-expression amid war and poverty, forces that have scarred his country's recent history. A boy soldier in the Resistance against French colonialism, an idealistic film actor in the early days of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, and a resident of Hanoi during the Vietnam War, Tin became disillusioned with the socialist realist art practiced at that time. Self-taught and using whatever materials he could find, he developed a powerful and original style in his own painting. His images of girl soldiers, orphaned children and broken buildings are balanced by tender depictions of lovers, mothers and spiritual renegades, and his remarkable use of colour suggests the resilience as well as the vulnerability of the human spirit.

Tran Trung Tin: Paintings and Poems from Vietnam

Arts & Photography

Buchanan, Sherry

History & Criticism

Asia Ink

War has never looked quite so lovely. Armed with sketchbooks, small pieces of paper, pencil, Biro, magic markers, pastels, brushes, Chinese ink, and watercolors, Vietcong artists captured the beautiful images of war reproduced here. With roots in 19th-century French neoclassicism, Vietcong art offers a vision so at odds with familiar images of the Vietnam War that it astonishes. According to Alan Riding from The New York Times, "Propaganda Art was only the most visible face of Vietnamese art of this period; artists were also painting lyrically . . . With a poetic realism introduced by their French colonial teachers." These artists played on the contradiction between unchanging, beautiful natural surroundings and the reality of suffering and bloodshed, in order to provide a lyrical artistic statement of what was a gruesome reality. Moving with fighters and living in tunnels, caves, and holes, they produced documentary and didactic watercolors in vivid hues, and black and white. With a disinclination toward depicting the macabre--due to a mix of censorship and sensitivity to their fellow soldiers--the Vietcong artists instead painted portraits that express the camaraderie the soldiers shared. Shown here are intimate scenes of men in uniform reading, playing cards, and listening to music that, were it not for the AK-47 lying nearby, could have well been executed in times of peace. During the Vietnam War, the Vietcong employed 100 official war artists, of which 20 are included here. Born in the 1920s and 30s, the Vietcong artists were graduates of the Hanoi Institute of Fine Art, and the works here were created between 1964 and 1975 in the south of Vietnam. Watercolors, drawings, and sketches by these artists are in the collections of the Ho Chi Min City Museum and the British Museum in London. Edited by Toan Thi Nguyen and Sherry Buchanan. Foreword by Neil Jamieson. Hardcover, 9.5 x 11 in./200 pgs / 200 color.

Mekong Diaries: Vietcong Drawings from the War 1965-1975

Nguyen, Toan Thi

Jamieson, Neil

Description: "Tam's sketches have a remarkable poetic and lyrical quality. The wistful tenderness of his portraits of young combatants are a unique testimony to the cruelty of war on one's own soil. There is also something surreal and inspiring in the fact that in the hell hole that was the battle of Dien Bien Phu, the artist found the peace of mind to sketch and draw, a peace of mind close to meditation. His sketches and diary redefine our understanding of the Vietnam War." -Jessica Harrison-Hall, curator of Vietnamese Art, Department of Asia, the British Museum Artist and military reporter, Pham Thanh Tam was 22 years old when he wrote his diaries and created his sketches at the battle of Dien Bien Phu during the Franco-Vietnam War (1946-1954). Tam's visual account benefits from his unique position as an army reporter with access to key information sources, from his frontline perspective, and from his vivid reporting and incisive analysis. As a personal tale, these images express a young man's coming of age during times of war, and underscore his ability to retain a sense of humour and compassion under fire. Carrying only his paint brushes, Chinese ink, chalk, and pencils, Tam trusted his companions with his life as he drew sketches of and for the soldiers. In the tradition of war artists and reporters of the First World War, he moved around the battlefield, through the muddy, bloodied trenches, slept next to cannons, joined digging teams, and marched with the troops. Reproduced here, Tam's pensive, tender, and lyrical sketches are rare documents that have survived the battlefield--fragile images on notepaper that show one artist's ability to sketch beauty in the midst of a battle referred to by journalist Bernard B. Fall as "hell in a very small place."

Drawing Under Fire: War Diary of a Young Vietnamese Artist

Pham Thanh Tam

We are the unwilling, led by the unqualified, doing the unnecessary for the ungrateful ―from an engraving on a Vietnam-era Zippo lighter In 1965, journalist Morley Safer followed the United States Marines on a search and destroy mission into Cam Ne. When the Marines he accompanied reached the village, they ordered the civilians there to evacuate their homes―grass huts whose thatched roofs they set ablaze with Zippo lighters. Safer’s report on the event soon aired on CBS and was among the first to paint a harrowing portrait of the War in Vietnam. LBJ responded to the segment furiously, accusing Safer of having “shat on the American flag.” For the first time since World War II, American boys in uniform had been portrayed as murderers instead of liberators. Our perception of the war―and the Zippo lighter―would never be the same. But as this stunning book attests, the Zippo was far more than an instrument of death and destruction. For the American soldiers who wielded them, they were a vital form of social protest as well. Vietnam Zippos showcases the engravings made by U.S. soldiers on their lighters during the height of the conflict, from 1965 to 1973. In a real-life version of the psychedelic war portrayed in Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now, Sherry Buchanan tells the fascinating story of how the humble Zippo became a talisman and companion for American GIs during their tours of duty. Through a dazzling array of images, we see how Zippo lighters were used during the war, and we discover how they served as a canvas for both personal and political expression during the Age of Aquarius, engraved with etchings of peace signs and marijuana leaves and slogans steeped in all the rock lyrics, sound bites, combat slang, and antiwar mottos of the time. Death from Above. Napalm Sticks to Kids. I Love You Mom, From a Lonely Paratrooper. The engravings gathered in this copiously illustrated volume are at once searing, caustic, and moving, running the full emotional spectrum with both sardonic reflections―I Love the Fucking Army and the Army Loves Fucking Me―and poignant maxims―When the Power of Love Overcomes the Love of Power, the World Will Know Peace. Part pop art and part military artifact, they collectively capture the large moods of the sixties and the darkest days of Vietnam―all through the world of the tiny Zippo.

Vietnam Zippos: American Soldiers' Engravings and Stories (1965-1973)

Humor & Entertainment

Pop Culture

Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2000, novelist Gao Xingjian is also an artist whose paintings are exhibited worldwide. Born in China in 1940, the multitalented Gao also excelled equally as a critic and playwright, but when his avant-garde plays were banned, he left China in 1987 and settled in France, where he lives today. A champion of a return to painting as a pure, intuitive form of expression, he remains as free from the diktats of the contemporary art market as he was from Communist censorship. Illustrated throughout with two hundred reproductions, this stunning book showcases for the first time over two decades of Gao Xingjian’s visual oeuvre. Gao’s groundbreaking technique allows him to work with ink, a traditional Chinese medium, on large canvases. Inspired by a dreamlike inner world, Daoism, the Chinese literati painting tradition, and Western modernism, Gao Xingjian’s masterful ink-wash paintings envelop and transport the viewer to another plane. Daniel Bergez’s accompanying text draws from Gao’s Soul Mountain and other works to offer insights into these enigmatic landscapes and figures. Also included is an interview with the artist that reveals the motivation behind Gao’s unique pictorial creations.

Gao Xingjian: Painter of the Soul

Bergez, Daniel

Part travelogue, part history, and part reflective meditation on conflict and reconciliation, Sherry Buchanan's new book offers both a personal and historical exploration of the Ho Chi Minh Trail, highlighting the critical role&nbsp;women militia and soldiers played in defending&nbsp;the Ho Chi Minh Trail during the Vietnam War. Accompanied by two travelling companions, Buchanan winds her way from Hanoi in the north to Ho Chi Minh City, formerly Saigon, in the south. Driving through the spectacular scenery of Vietnam and Laos, she encounters locations from the Truong Son mountains, the Phong Nha Caves, ancient citadels and Confucian temples to the Khmer Temple of Wat Phu at the western-most point of the Trail in Laos. Buchanan records her interactions--both scheduled and spontaneous--with those who experienced the Vietnam War firsthand, and these conversations with combatants and civilians provide new perspectives on the War. She listens to the women who defended the Trail roads against the greatest bombing campaign in modern times, walks through minefields with the demolition teams hunting for unexploded ordnance, and meets American veterans who have returned to Vietnam with an urge to "do something." Buchanan weaves informative, and often humorous, tales from her journey with excerpts from the accounts of others, situating the locations she visits in their historical and political context. On the Ho Chi Minh Trail brings together geography, history, and personal accounts to readdress the culture of indifference to the War, bringing to light the scale of the tragedy, its lasting legacies, and our memory of it.

On The Ho Chi Minh Trail: The Blood Road, The Women Who Defended It, The Legacy

History

Asia

A mix of travelogue, history, and mediation on a journey through the Ho Chi Minh Trail that reveals the critical role women played in defending it. Offering both a personal and historical exploration of the Ho Chi Minh Trail, this book highlights the critical role the Trail and the young women soldiers who helped build and defend it played in the Vietnam War. Accompanied by two traveling companions, Sherry Buchanan winds her way from Hanoi in the north to Ho Chi Minh City, formerly Saigon, in the south. Driving through the spectacular scenery of Vietnam and Laos, she encounters locations from the Truong Son mountains, the Phong Nha Caves, ancient citadels, and Confucian temples to the Khmer Temple of Wat Phu at the western-most point of the Trail in Laos. &nbsp; Buchanan records her interactions--both scheduled and spontaneous--with those who experienced the Vietnam War firsthand. She listens to the women who defended the Trail roads against the greatest bombing campaign in modern times, walks through minefields with the demolition teams hunting for unexploded ordnance, and meets American veterans who have returned to Vietnam with an urge to "do something." Buchanan weaves informative, and often humorous, tales from her journey with excerpts from the accounts of others, situating the locations she visits in their historical and political context. On the Ho Chi Minh Trail brings together geography, history, and personal accounts to reveal the scale of the tragedy, its harmful legacies, and our memory of it. Buchanan challenges American exceptionalism and calls for redress for those harmed by US military actions during the Vietnam War and America's subsequent wars.

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Books by Asia Ink

See the best price to sell, buy or rent books by the Asia Ink publisher. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Tran Trung Tin: Paintings and Poems from Vietnam

Mekong Diaries: Vietcong Drawings from the War 1965-1975

Drawing Under Fire: War Diary of a Young Vietnamese Artist

Vietnam Zippos: American Soldiers' Engravings and Stories (1965-1973)

Gao Xingjian: Painter of the Soul

On The Ho Chi Minh Trail: The Blood Road, The Women Who Defended It, The Legacy

On The Ho Chi Minh Trail: The Blood Road, The Women Who Defended It, The Legacy