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The candor of wishes

Dan Van Ty's bridge of arts is built on two solid bridge abutments: Norway and Vietnam; good culture and life in Northern Europe and unhappy childhood with regret of the South, Norwegian and European painting in the first half of the 20th century and the person of South Vietnam through one-third of a miserable century.

His landscapes are peaceful and anxious, silent but we seem to hear a bird twitter, or the twittering still echoes. The colors are very bright, the strokes are very free but they contain silence, torment and pain. That is the thing that Norwegian Master E. Munch has outlined. We cannot say that Ty is not fond of Munch and neither can we that he is not a Norwegian whose country he spoke proudly and affectionately of a the inauguration of his exhibition in the Fine Arts Museum of Ho Chi Minh after 35 years' wander.

We can find here a big mass of paintings whose author would be taken for a Vietnamese artist who has painted and lived in Vietnam if we did not read his biography. Those are the activities of the little girls that are carrying street loads on their shoulders or rowing boats on the waves with heavy, vague vegetation, mountains and clounds, very realistic in our eyes but like souvenir, expectation and regret that are only in our hearts. A rosybloused girl is pushing her small boat in the deserted river with a pole. She is slender and alone as she herself is called by him "The past" or "Looking for the lost time". Such a look from the inside to the outside is rarely seen in foreign or overseas Vietnamese artist. Maybe Ty's past is still here, so is paintings are soaked with a Vietnamese substance of amorousness, lightness, unfounded melancholy and a little coquettishness like petty poems in decorous Vietnamese easy to memorize.

Let's come back to the other end of the bridge with still-lives such as apples, bears, European styled vase of flowers and his paintings of North European characters. Most of them are very beautiful, amiable children and very innocent young girls. His style is impressive and his manifestation very deep. The manner of securing light and mixing colors by means of the pure ones which are very attractive, pleassant to the eye but not pleasing it and not perfunctory. The Northern space is not chilly and desolate as we sometimes imagine but exceedingly variegated and warm. The warmth comes from affection, the variegation from love of life. The lines in his paintings sometimes fix the framework and plot, sometimes suggest space, atmosphere and light, making all of the plastic elements harmonious and rich in rhythms.

Paintings are human, but when you watch Dang Van Ty's paintings, it is difficult for you to believe that he was very unhappy, and was a victim of war who goes by wheel chair and has gone away from his fatherland since he was 14 years old. However, "Ty assumes himself to a happy person. He possesses a talent for discovering the good in bad, the glad in the sad, and the magical in the unhappy" (Le Tan Sitek). He teaches, writes books, illustrates magazines, plays sports and becomes a famous artist in Oslo, Norway. There is so much energy in this man to overcome unhappiness. Is his love of life a motive or result of his success? Both of them probably are.

Watching Dang Van Ty's paintings in their warm and simple beauty, we find out a candid heart and cheerful, simple wishes for himself and for everybody. Painting here seems to be the candor itself of the wishes, at both sides of Dang Van Ty's bridge of art, in the middle of which time will flow ceaselessly.

NGUYEN QUAN

Ho Chi Minh City, April 2003

Artist Dang Van Ty and me

I am writing a few lines of my own impression in memory of the day his book presented oneself before the public as well as the day he and his wife Thuy took their daughter Mayly back to our fatherland to make preparations for our exhibition "Meeting in April" at the Fine Arts Museum in Ho Chi Minh City.

Artist Dang Van Ty is a child of Vietnam who has been away from our fatherland for several years but has never stopped grieving for his native country and his quiet, beautiful childhood. His ill fate accidentally pushed him to a great struggle, forcing him to win his predestination. Art was final cause and an effective weapon that helped him fight against his unhappiness. and solitude in the foreign land.

I was born and grown up in the North but the difficulties and obstaches on my salad days also made me freeze onto art to foster my hopes. And the marvel was that owing to the bridge of art, in spite of living apart from each other and being separated between the Orient and the Occident, I still knew, admired and liked him. And it was thanks to him that I could broaden the outlook of the world outside, simulaneously having a deeper understanding of confidences in human hearts: I am really grateful to him for it.¨

"Paintings are Human" in his works. All the styles of modern art are skillfully manifested by his virtuoso hand. His colors, which are somethimes shimmering and brillant, sometimes taciturn or resounding together with his sincere and profound sentiments, contain his restlessness and reflection on a person's lot. The affection in his paintings has won the viewers's hearts.

Being a handicapped child, victim of the war, he now becomes the pride of the overseas Vietnamese in Norway. His modesty and working spirit of renunciation enabled him to make a name for himeself in many fields in a highty cultural country.

Among the misearble children that had left our country that day, he returned in glory and happiness. On behalf of the Vietnamese, I beg to congratulate him cincerely. I wish I would have a chance of receiving you on a beautifully sunny day, and would, together with you, do something better and greater for this life.

NGUYEN CUONG

Saigon April 2003