Nguyen The Dung and Herd of One Cow
The subject in art is a range of reality. Every artist usually has a main subject, that is, the reality of life that he is most familiar with. But artistic symbols are not like that, even though that symbol still comes from life. The symbol is probably the author’s obsession, why didn’t he “choose” this, this object, this animal, or the others as his artistic symbols. This is related to past life experiences, possibly long ago, related to mental events and a variety of other areas such as memory and psychology. Artistic obsession through symbolism is not so insoluble, but close to it.
For artist Nguyen The Dung, it is a cow. Dung’s artistic symbol is the cow. Dung is haunted by cows. The cow is the artistic symbol of Nguyen The Dung, which means that the cow is not a destination, not an object to describe, but a means for Dung to reveal and express his inner world.
Therefore, although Dung uses a realistic, light, dark, and precise drawing style, no cow is complete, no cow has all its parts. Even though everyone realized they were cows. All of Dung’s cows are headless, instead, growing from them are human hands. Since then, it has gone from real to surreal, from reasonable to absurd. The cow’s heads – hands, spread out, facing up, holding their tails, holding their hind legs, holding hands. Struggling, torn, resentful or patient. It’s okay to call it cows, but it’s not wrong to call it a cow or is it a herd of cows? Because everything is the same, stuck together, overlapping, lined up horizontally or vertically, gradually larger, gradually smaller, gradually darker, gradually lighter. Similarities and absurdities will give rise to meaning through a series of why questions. Why do I crawl on someone’s arm? Why are the cows exactly the same from posture, shape to color? Why do cows keep sticking together? Why am I a cow-headed person? Why are you so silent and motionless?
Read more: Artist Vu Anh and the Story of His Work “Quan Tuoc Cao Thanh Dai Do”
This way of forming ideas like this has been a method of creation, not only with painting, not only now, East and West have existed since ancient times. Although each era is different, each artist is different. They must find a way to resolve the situation of incarnation in their own way to reveal the meaning, a special meaning that cannot exist without incarnation, and is meaningless.
Painting is not literature to describe, nor does it illustrate any literary idea. But today’s painting is different from before, it does not only focus on the aesthetic needs of vision, today’s painting needs to present a “story”, a “question”. Nguyen The Dung raised questions. If you can answer it, it is not necessarily correct. That’s just one understanding, a small part of the answer. The cows lying prostrate on the red-carpeted steps represent a contrast between urban and rural areas, rich and poor, solemn and bustling. The guys have identical office fashion, plaid shirts, suits, and shiny black shoes, all with cow-shaped bodies and wide-open eyes. People are cows, cows are people. The origin of farmers is the ridiculousness of city people who like to learn the bad things of the countryside and vice versa, farmers who only like the bad things of the city. The layout, the same cows lined up on an undefined flat background, evokes the understanding of herd psychology which is very hot in today’s society. From clothes to thoughts, even happiness and sadness are the same. Pulling each other according to the trend, sad following the trend, and happy also following the trend.
Looking at the paintings of previous artists, one immediately sees beauty and ugliness. Through the paintings, viewers will have a feeling of joy, optimism, dreaminess, and even sadness. Looking at the paintings of young people today, you can see them for a longer time and not immediately see them; Today’s paintings are not too strict about beauty and ugliness, happiness and sadness. With “questions” in paintings like Nguyen The Dung’s, viewers are left wondering, awakened to something, questioned, confused, and looking for their own answers.
Nguyen The Dung’s starting point is realism but not pure painting, but mixed with graphic language in the smooth, flat background with little transition between light and dark, and the repetitive shaping, omitting details, and simple layout. Next is the shift to surrealism and more or less pop-art. Dung possesses an unfamiliar color palette, colors and hues that seem to come from somewhere with pale purple, pale pink, faded yellow, and gray, evoking sadness, concern, and regret. Such is Nguyen The Dung’s spiritual life, such is Dung’s painting.
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