Pham Luc, North Vietnam's Soldier-Painter, and Living Legend

I received an email yesterday from a certain Mr Phuc (of Vietnam Pathfinder Travel) in Hà Nội which read: "I found your website and contact at Crowded World and would like to sell some paintings of Pham Luc Artists in my collection (at attached files). Pham Luc artist live in Hanoi, Vietnam. He is around 70years old now and some of my paintings bought from him that was painted during Vietnam war time (60-70)."

Nude with flowers, by Pham Luc (courtesy Vietnam Pathfinder Travel)

In a land which reveres patriots, Phạm Lực occupies a particularly hallowed position among the pantheon of heroes: he served in the North Vietnamese army as a painter-propagandist, using art not just as a witness, but as a weapon. That said, his paintings don't appear particularly militaristic: nudes, still lifes and pastoral idylls are among his most common motifs. While the Americans and other counter-revolutionary forces that he confronted brandished state-of-the-art cameras to record their side of the war, Phạm had to make do with good old-fashioned paint, canvas and brush. When canvas dried up, he reverted to painting on burlap rice sacks, as one foreigner who visited his home in Hà Nội remarked. "The paintings from the war are rat-eaten and shrapnel-ridden but embody an irrepressible spirit," the visitor wrote. "They are darker in composition and content than his later works, which are equally fine. The painting which I call Forbidden was painted in 1974 at the close of the war. This painting of a beautiful woman during wartime conditions was against socialist dictum of the time. Phạm Lực hid the work for over a decade before he could display it." (Note: this is not the nude painting depicted above, which I received from Mr Phuc, but there is doubtless some resemblance between the works. It all goes to show that despite being a nationalist and patriot, Phạm was no stooge. In his mind, perhaps, the revolution could never be curtailed by dogma, or realpolitik. As Trotsky famously proclaimed, the revolution should be eternal! But that is my take on the story, so it ought to be disclosed as such.)

Flowers with lamp, by Pham Luc (courtesy Vietnam Pathfinder Travel)

The picture above is a still life, one of the literally thousands of paintings Phạm Lực has produced over the years. If you are in Hà Nội and have the chance, you can visit the artist at his home, and perhaps even have your portrait painted by him. He has become something of a celebrity in the northern art scene, something of a living legend. Ambassadors from other countries own his works.

Pastoral landscape by Pham Luc (courtesy Vietnam Pathfinder Travel)

The landscape above has something of a pastoral dimension. As with the two other paintings featured on this page, it is available from Vietnam Pathfinder Travel in Hà Nội. If you represent an artist or gallery in Vietnam and would like to promote your works on this site, please let me know. Leave a comment below, contact me on Facebook or Soundcloud or YouTube or Quora or Twitter or whatever, or just send me an email. I am always keen to make new friends!

Greenland's Vikings, Victims of Climate Change

I have been reading a lot lately about the vanished Vikings of Greenland, how they just disappeared from the history books in the Middle Ages, never to be heard of again. I have been thinking a lot about them recently, those Europeans who for a couple of centuries eked out a civilization on the edge of the Arctic, trading in walrus ivory, worshipping in churches... they seemed to be flourishing and then one day they went MIA like the crew of the Marie Celeste, or those jet fighters swallowed by the Bermuda Triangle. It is worth pointing out at this point that I am in fact Australian, and thus hail from another European colony which was transplanted with all things Christian and European onto a barren, alien land, and left there to fend for itself. The Australian experiment worked, however -- the Greenland experiment didn't (at least not for the Vikings LOL!) Interestingly enough, Climate Change was the major culprit in the Greenland Vikings' demise -- not the Anthropogenic Global Warming we are (apparently) confronting now, but rather the Global Cooling of the Middle Ages (whose cause is still a matter of conjecture). Southern Greenland, once as verdant as its name suggests, presently chilled, then got snowploughed beneath a slowmotion avalanche of ice. The Vikings were snapfreezed out of existence; their neighbors the Inuit, who had migrated into the region at about the same time, somehow managed to adapt, and survived. Perhaps a similar fate awaits Australia in the future -- the white civilization which has ruled the roost for 200+ years will be forced to retreat from waves of heat and drought and searing fire, and the longsuffering Aborigines will crawl out from the margins to repossess their beloved homeland. History has a strange way of working like that. You never can really tell who is going to win the race, and revolutions are all too frequent. Gods hold grudges, and patiently plot their revenge. The laws of physics cannot be ignored, and neither can the science of Symbolic Exchange. Thus we have been warned! Thus we will be warmed.

Greenland is on the path to independence from its colonial master Denmark, and now has its own flag and a new name, Kalaallit Nunaat

Anything can happen in life, and history is full of sudden reversals. Global Warming could well be just a beat-up, the latest strain of the Armaggedonist virus whose DNA was identified in the Year 2000 bug, SARS and the Bird Flu Epidemic, and which has consistently frightened more people than it has actually harmed (infecting them not through physical germs but rather exposure to sensationalist reports on TV and the like.) I believe these hysterias are in fact media viruses, and mark a mutation of the virus from the physical world in which it has proliferated for billions of years, into the Baudrillardian mediaswamp we humans now inhabit. We're going to have a lot more media viruses in the future, that's my theory at least! Some people just love to think the world is about to end, and indeed such a deathwish is built into the mythology of the capitalist system itself. How it works is like this: somewhere in the "real" world (eg, China, Vietnam, Africa, anywhere Third World) a new virus arises in animals and kills a handful of people, triggering a pandemic alert. The media, ever hungry for a good scare story, jumps on to the case, and proclaims that the end of the world is nigh. What WHO fears is that the virus will jump the species barrier, but actually a more profound evolutionary leap is taking place: the virus is becoming digital. Panic takes on a life of its own, and becomes viral... this is how the pandemic spreads, this is what gives it energy. There's a run on flu vaccines... everyone on the streets of East Asian megacities are suddenly wearing surgical masks. Little do the masses know that it's too late, they are already infected! Their masks aren't protecting anyone, they are in fact amplifying the fear, broadcasting the infection! The best response would actually be to chill out, and ignore the doom. Or at least maintain a skeptical distance. That's what I would do, but then someone would accuse me of being irresponsible...

Look, what I am trying to say is this: Climate Change could be real, and could well be hype... but the extinction of the Greenland Vikings is a historical fact, and I find myself strangely haunted by their disappearance. Recently I thought to myself: imagine if the colonies had survived and the fjords of Greenland were now sprinkled with colorful, asymmetrical cafes and bulging nightclubs and bars; imagine if every young Greenlander today dreamed of being a poet or an anarchist or an artist or a rock musician? In other words, what if Greenland had developed into a New Iceland or a somewhat edgier, more tribal take on the Faroe Islands? Wouldn't that have been awesome, wouldn't that have been totally cool? Not politically correct to contemplate, but an interesting thought experiment nonetheless. I must confess though that Inuit Greenland has turned out pretty swinging in its own way, and the music scene is just as vibrant there as it is in Iceland, from what I hear. Nonetheless, I can't help myself from thinking: imagine if the Vikings had survived, imagine what Greenland would be like today? And I wonder: maybe the green days of Greenland are on their way back, after a long bitter winter? Spring is dawning in the Far North of the planet, and the Day of the Inuit is arrived. How I'd love to be part of it somehow. If I had any money, that is where I would be investing it! 

Food, Fashion and Fetish in Newtown, the Swinging Soul of Sydney

Every major city in the world has a neighborhood where all of the local personality and lifeforce gets channeled, concentrated laser beam style, then finally ignited into a sun which is singular and eccentric, but also radiantly representative of the metropolitan ethos as a whole. Some cities, of course, have more than one such neighborhood -- in Tokyo there are for example at least two places where the Japanness of Japan gets pushed to its logical extreme, and beyond: one is the anime antnest of Akihabara, the other the Cosplay chickland of Harajuku, by Yoyogi Park. Some cities (eg, Reykjavik, Copenhagen, Amsterdam) are so far ahead of the times it is hard to find a precinct inside them which isn't progressive or kooky cool. Sydney, the capital of the south Pacific, is endowed with only one world-class Bohemia (in my opinion), but it is a brilliant Bohemia nonetheless. The place is called Newtown, and it was recently dubbed "Sydney's most creatively well endowed suburb" by the counterculture Sydney City Hub newspaper. For as long as I can remember, it has long been one of the food, fashion and fetish focal points of the city. The amazing thing is, Newtown is not reflected on any tourist/traveler radars, as far as I can see. Then again, the places which fly under the radar are usually the best places to explore, so perhaps it is fitting that Newtown remains a dark star, known only to the locals. If your aim is to get a feel for the gritty reality of modern Australian life, don't go to Darling Harbour or the Opera House, those places don't live. Newtown is the place to visit, it has a soul, and epitomizes the Australian personality! It won't disappoint you, I promise. I'll stake my reputation on that. Unlike other famous parts of Sydney (for example Bondi Beach), the ocean exerts little influence here. Instead, as in Melbourne, people turn to the streets for their entertainment. Restaurants, shops and pubs are the principal methods of diversion. You can shop for vintage clothes, or see a hard rock band, or have hot wax poured on your nipples at an S&M haunt. All the bands in Australia have names starting with the article "the", it has become something of a cliché. I've never really understood why.

Nonetheless: one thing you have got to keep in mind is that while Newtown is by far the most Bohemian district of Sydney, it is different from Bohemian communities elsewhere in the world. This is Australia after all, and the Australian personality still shines through -- perhaps even more blindingly than out in the Burbs. Along with Darwin, this is one of the last surviving outposts of the classic Aussie larrikin. Instead of openly rebelling against the basic Australian personality, as you might expect, Newtown folks caricature it, camp it up, and basically push that personality to its logical extreme, in the process transcending it. Take the issue of fashion, for example. Australians have always been decidedly daggy dressers, and many honestly don't give a damn how they look ("it is fashionable not to be fashionable," my mate Garnet Mae once complained). In rebelling against this, you might expect the subcultures of the inner-city to go the other way, and embrace European style haute couture, to prove they have more taste than the slobs out in the suburbs. That is indeed what happens, in some quarters (like Surry Hills). The Bohemians of Newtown, however, prefer the natural look -- sans shirt, bare feet, the potency of body odor. Whatever gets you closer to Mother Earth, that's what they go for. Now in an already laid-back society, one might think this is a strange way for a supposedly contrarian subculture to express its sartorial instincts. Like the anime addicts of Akihabara, like the Cosplay chicks of Harajuku, the Newtownians knows that the really contrarian way to rebel is not to oppose diametrically, but to mimic to the point of excess. Not just to ridicule, but to take ownership of the dominant culture, and live it the way it was supposed to be lived, before it got corrupted by The Man. Like the urban tribes of Tokyo, the Bohemians of Newtown know this is how you win the culture wars, this is how the real jihad should be waged. Once you stop attacking the dominant culture and start appropriating it, with a gleam in your eye which suggests you were never against it to begin with, the rules of the game are abruptly changed. You cease being silly freaks on the margins, bereft of influence and power, and recast yourselves as true disciples, the Guardians of the Way. Your way is not the alternative but in fact the Only Way: the Tokyo way, the Japanese way, the Australian way, whatever the paradigm that you are seeking to overthrow. In short, you subvert the system from within, by becoming the system, wearing it like an old coat. Or a pair of faded board shorts, if you happen to live in Newtown.

"I have a dream": Martin Luther King tribute in Newtown (Australia, 2007)

Earlier this month I was down in Sydney for a few days, catching up with old friends, and staying with the aforementioned Garnet Mae, slumlord and director of such no-budget movies as Meat Pie (the one in which a guy with a penchant for kitchen appliances goes too far, loses his organ, and requires an urgent transplant!) I used to run with Garnet back in our uni days, and he introduced me to a lot of Sydney's prized jewels, Newtown among them. This was impressive, as we went to university at Bathurst, 200 kilometers to the west. We had plenty of breaks, however, and I used to enjoy cruising around Sydney with Garnet and his crew on spare weekends, sneaking into concerts, jumping the back fence into raves and festivals, getting into general mischief. One weekend we traveled all the way from Bathurst to Newtown to visit The Kastle, which was becoming infamous back then. I don't know why they called it The Kastle. The Dungeon would have been more apt a name. Sinister looking entrance -- just an anonymous door on a graffiti-splattered backstreet. Kind of looked like an abandoned warehouse. Enter inside and suddenly it was warm and there were tonnes of guys with thick mustaches wearing black leather, dark techno on the decks (this being the early 1990s!), and girls in latex and fishnet stockings. I was expecting it to be a nightclub, but it was more a theater... a theater of cruelty to be precise. Name your vice, it was here: bondage, submission, punishment, BDSM. We were there with our Bathurst bro Stu Ridley and his girlfriend Fiona, and possibly our flatmate Katja, who had accompanied us on the long ride in the car, over the mountains. We were there mostly out of curiosity, but I suspected Stu might have had more questionable motivations. He seemed to be in too much of a hurry to get his shirt off out on the dancefloor, waving his hands in the air, sweat flying out from his orange hair. From time to time the music stopped and a little performance was put on by the staff, a tableau in our midst: there was a shirtless man strapped to a rack as a Dominatrix flexed her whip, waving its strands over his nostrils menacingly, or possibly a guy and two girls engaged in a threeway kiss. It might have been a freak show for Fiona, for Katja, and for Garnet and I, but Stu seemed to be taking an earnest interest in proceedings. He was getting into it a little too much, methought. Suddenly I realized: wasn't it his idea that we came here tonight? Somewhere in the early hours, quite a few drinks later, the music paused one last time and the curtains rose on the final act: a spot of candle wax play. This time around, they put out a call for volunteers. I dug myself back into the crowd ever so slightly, concerned someone might nominate me for the role. I needn't have worried; standing next to me, Stu stuck his hand up, and submitted gleefully for the ordeal. They strapped him up to the rig, handcuffed him, and fitted him with a blindfold. The crowd was going nuts, gay couples nodding their approval, Fiona looking a little embarrassed (or was that pride in her eyes?) A domme stepped forward, and with a theatrical flourish commenced dripping hot wax all over Stu's chest. He grimaced in pain, but there was still a smile on his lips. Where did that come from? I wondered. Who was that for? Looking back on it all, it seems obvious this moment marked a turning point in his life. The beginning of his descent, in fact. If only I could have predicted it at the time!

That was 1993, 14 years ago. I don't know if the Kastle is still around, or what Stu Ridley is doing these days. I'm walking on King Street, the spine of Newtown, whiling away some hours while Garnet is at work, hustling customers on the phone. It's a grey day; the sun is struggling to break through the clouds. At 305 King Street, I stop to admire an iconic piece of street art: the Martin Luther King mural painted by the anarchistic Unmitigated Audacity Productions in the early 1990s. Not quite Banksy, but it is as good as it gets in Sydney. I don't know if the Gothic typeface is appropriate, but it would probably make for a good tattoo. It's about lunch time, and I am feeling peckish. There is certainly no shortage of culinary choices in this vicinity, with Thai eateries, Turkish pide joints, and even an African restaurant all within spitting range. I am actually hankering for Bondi-style Portuguese chicken, which I find at Oporto, on the adjacent Enmore Road, the other side of the railway tracks. I know it's fast food, but I don't care. It's soul food to me, and you can't find anything like it in Japan. I eat a burger and chips, as the wind blows garbage around in a nearby parking lot, and diners watch sport on an in-restaurant TV. I would love to sit and chill, but I have things to do. Hunger satiated, I return to King Street, to take a walk on the wild side.

One of Sydney's entertainment icons, the Sandringham Hotel, at 387 King Street (Australia, 2007)

Newtown is packed with entertainment venues, among them the Bank Hotel, the Coopers Arms Hotel (221 King Street), the Enmore Theatre (52 Enmore Road), the Dendy Cinema, and the Sandringham Hotel (387 King Street). If you want find out what is happening in Newtown, click the Newtown Precinct Page for details. In a newspaper article quoted on the page, Pam Walker writes:

Newtown has long been home to large numbers of visual artists and writers. In the 80s it was the hub of independent music with many a band paying its dues in pubs like the Sandringham. 

Now the area has become the cradle for the performing arts, actively nurturing young playrights, actors and dancers. So exactly what is about Newtown that attracts the creatively endowed? 

The Enmore Theatre's Greg Khoury says that the suburb's artistic leanings go back a long way. In fact, Newtown has thrived since its inception as an artistic outpost to Sydney in the late 19th Century. 

It is too early in the day for a drink, so I walk on, past the pubs. Me being me, I decide to check out the herbal shops. I'm looking for a legal way to get stoned. It's been so long, and I always associate Sydney with smoking a bong. I go inside one business, and locate a pack of dubious goodies called "Tribal Trance", or something similar. The proprietor assures me it will do the trick, but I am not convinced. These synthetic marijuana products are always rubbish, in my experience. Still, I have money in my wallet from my new job in Japan, so I figure it should be worth a try! I buy a bag for AUS$20. And I think to myself: Why is everything in Australia so expensive these days?

U-Turn Recycled Fashion, at 2 Enmore Road, Newtown (Australia, 2007)

Along with herbal shops and their New Age cousins, there are plenty of fashion retailers in Newtown. Suitably enough, many of them specialize in the vintage/recycled/classic end of the market. As I discussed above: appropriate the dominant paradigm, and wear it like an old recycled frock. That's how the game should be played! Some of the boutiques to be found include Kita Vintage Clothing (Shop 2503 King Street), and the local outlet of U-Turn Recycled Fashion (2 Enmore Road).

Exclusive Vintage Clothing, at 383 King Street, Newtown (Australia, 2007)

Just a U-turn around the corner from U-Turn, back on King Street, sits one of the landmarks of the Sydney vintage clothing scene: Exclusive Vintage Clothing (383 King Street). As the Sydney Morning Herald newspaper reported in 2004: 

Sydney's hunger for vintage and secondhand clothes has fuelled a 15 per cent profit surge for the Salvation Army's retail stores in the last 12 months. 

The workers hit the clearing house floor, sorting the hundreds of thousands of tonnes of clothing that arrive each year. 

The best clothes are sent to the Salvation Army's inner city stores - in Darlinghurst, Glebe and Bondi Junction - where prices and turnover are higher.

Meanwhile each morning, between 20 and 30 wholesale buyers wait for up to an hour outside the Salvation Army's Minchinbury and St Peters factories. They buy damaged or stained clothes which are then cleaned up and sold at marked-up prices at the Paddington, Glebe and Bondi markets or in commercial second-hand stores in Surry Hills and Newtown...

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