Nguyen Phan Chanh (1892 – 1984). ‘Playing Ô ăn quan’. 1930. Silk. 62×85 cm
The outstanding peak in Nguyen Phan Chanh’s painting heritage must be mentioned in the work ‘Playing Ô ăn quan’ [Mandarin Square Capturing game, a traditional Vietnamese children’s board game]. The silk painting was created in 1930, it is recognized and honored for reaching the classical ladder, that is, reaching the exemplary value in an artist’s aesthetic model, harmonizing the two flows of East and West.
‘Playing Ô ăn quan’ was formed during the time when Nguyen Phan Chanh’s family settled in Hanoi. The days of wandering to draw in the southern suburbs of Hanoi, Kim Lien village left many memories to Nguyen Phan Chanh. Kim Lien is a peaceful village, with Kim Lien temple worshiping Cao Sơn Đại Vương (God of the mountain), a patron god of imperial city of Thang Long, one of the patron quartet protect Thang Long. Nguyen Phan Chanh came here many times to paint Kim Lien temple. On the way, as a chance, he met Kim Lien village girls playing mandarin square capturing on a warm autumn afternoon on the side of the road near the temple gate.
Those were four rural girls aged 12, 13 playing a thrilling game of “mandarin capturing”. The girls were busy playing, the artist was busy recording such a lovely scene.
There are four girls in the group, the composition is skew, a separate girl is the center, can be seen with the shape, clothes, the way of sitting, her hand is scattering pebbles in empty square in the board drawn on the ground. Dark brown is the main color of this piece. Although the girls are hidden in the dark brown color but still full of emotions, the crow’s beak tying scarf on the two of them probably evokes the existence of a warm autumn afternoon. A white patch from a girl’s pants sitting with her chin resting on her knees, her eyes glancing at her friend, who are spreading pebbles as if giving a hint.
With Nguyen Phan Chanh, white is used very skillfully in clothes, breaking the heavy look. The technique of dark brown, white dithering has become flesh with many different sensual substances, from faces to white silk background or pale clothes to white silk in ‘Playing Ô ăn quan’. The elegance of white blends with the striking and delicate brown patches. The work ‘Playing Ô ăn quan’ shows a simple and clear view and presentation, without the characters in the farthest layers in the depth of space according to the European laws of perspective.
‘Playing Ô ăn quan’, the classic quiet brown color with a Chinese poem about the spirit of the picture increasing the ancient features and regard.
“Si hám vị am chi phấn xảo
Thôn trang lưu trú ngọc lâu xuân
Tranh hoa trục điệp Tây viên sự
Bất hướng Dương đài tác vũ vân”
The content of the poem, translated by artist Nguyen Van Ty in 1970:
“Ngày thơ chưa biết dồi son phấn
Thiên nhiên thôn quê giữ được hơn cô gái lâu đài
Giành hoa đuổi bướm vui đùa trong vườn Tây
Không biết chi việc mây mưa trên Dương đài”.
[Childhood without makeup
Rural farm embraced a palace
Playing with flowers, butterflies in a Western garden
Ignore all about the dreamland]
‘Playing Ô ăn quan’ is the only work Nguyen Phan Chanh elaborated Poem – Painting on the surface. The four stanzas are on the right, the signatures are also in Chinese characters: Hồng Nam – Nguyen Phanh Chanh written in a vertical line on the left of the picture, not dated. This type of signature is present in most of the rural-themed paintings with quiet dark brown colors at the first stage of the artist’s work in the 30s of the twentieth century.
Portrait of artist Nguyen Phan Chanh (1892 – 1984)
With the pseudonym Hồng Nam, Nguyen Phan Chanh explained that it is a combination of the name of his hometown in the south of Hong Linh mountain, Ha Tinh province, central Vietnam, which is imbued with traditional national artistic values.
With the art of silk painting, Nguyen Phan Chanh had an excellent silk washing technique. After painting a layer, wash and paint again to make the silk very soft. This technique makes the color penetrate deeply into each silk fiber, remove the paint residue, makes the silk surface clear, even away from the viewer, it’s known as a silk painting.
The way of applying a coat of rice flour water before painting and the way of sketching with very light indian ink are also separate techniques of the artist who was unsuccessful in his first contact with European oil painting art but opened up a special method of Vietnamese painting with elegant silk background.
Back to the work ‘Playing Ô ăn quan’, a proof for the outstanding success of Phan Chanh, when he found a typical method based on European construction techniques but still kept the composition, dithering, Oriental style close to Vietnamese aesthetic. The images of girls in folk games show boldly the artist’s temperament, a gentle, idyllic, loving temperament that is attached to familiar objects and images from his hometown.
Mandarin square capturing, a competitive game in both intellect and emotions, taking sides but not being noisy, exuding a peaceful atmosphere of yielding. The girls’ facial expressions are a little tense when somebody move, counting their steps, their plump faces are clearly a girl with an adult sitting posture.
“Viewers can imagine that soon, maybe this game will be finished, these girls will step out of the picture, send it back to the communal yard the mandarin square game, send the childhood back forever to get a husband”, said Mrs. Nguyet Tu, the eldest daughter of painter Nguyen Phan Chanh, confiding on behalf of her father the feelings about this work.
Mentioning Nguyen Phan Chanh is referring to ‘Playing Ô ăn quan’, including foreigners. This phenomenon has been going on for nearly a century and will be forever because Nguyen Phan Chanh is both a talent and a unique style. Although European methods and techniques give the artist a broad perspective, the color patch of ‘Playing Ô ăn quan’ has replaced cubes and strokes in other artists. The deep color patches have changed the way to paint near and far, dark and light, or adding the laws of perspective.
In ‘Playing Ô ăn quan’, space and time stand still, framing four innocent girls with a board on the ground that says a lot. In the painting, there is a bold and light use from the ink painting method of ancient Japanese and Chinese painters. The way to use brush to write poems on paintings is also the influence of the writing art that ancient Han Nom learners had to practice a lot. The art of Poem – Painting of Nguyen Phan Chanh is his own, unlike any other Vietnamese art or painter on the creative path.
‘Playing Ô ăn quan’ does not fall into the classical Chinese painting style, which has had a great influence on Vietnamese art in the early years of the twentieth century with the style of scholarly drawing, trimming on sumi-e paintings or descriptive style with the brush wildly open, causing a deep sense of spaciousness. Chinese painting also caresses the aesthetic from the invisible gaps on the picture, which means Nothingness in painting.
The Nothingness element is a place that hides a quantity invisible to the naked eye, the empty spaces that are not ghostly dreamy, but elegant and fresh in the quiet scene of life. A search on ‘Playing Ô ăn quan’ only shows a warm and idyllic rural space that the Central painter had brought to Vietnam’s modern painting.
‘Playing Ô ăn quan’ is not coincidentally mentioned over the years, starting from the first exhibition in Paris 1931 with the paintings of Young women washing vegetables by the pond, Feed the birds and Go into a trance. After the Paris 1931 exhibition, ‘Playing Ô ăn quan’ returned to Vietnam and was the property of collector Duc Minh, who settled in Hanoi villa number 53 Quang Trung street, kept the most beautiful works of charming elegant Hanoi.
Photo: Photographer Le Vuong
Article: Researcher Nguyen Hai Yen
Copyrights belong to Viet Art View
