Born in Hanoi in 1963, Le Quang Ha is a personality that is filled with individuality and nervous energy that is sharply etched on his high boned , sharp edged face - arched with observant eyes forever scanning deeply into the internal essence of his subjects and grasping every detail.
Le Quang Ha has had a passion for drawing since infancy and at seven years of age, Ha started art lessons in children’s painting clubs. Growing up, he entered the Hydraulics University however he was unable to find any fulfillment studying there and left to work instead as a blacksmith. But again he could not find his niche and upon impulse and desire to fulfill his passion, he successfully applied for entry into University to study Fine Art first in Ho Chi Minh City and later in Hanoi. This move appeared heaven sent as his destiny to become an artist was to be realized.
Since then for the past 14 years, a glimpse of time that was not wasted idealizing, Le Quang Ha continuously created his art intently, like a marathon artist creating with ceaseless energy that allowed him to rise above all manners of material difficulties that confronts a human being’s desire to paint and as such he worked and sacrificed his life for art.
Periods of Le Quang Ha’s Artistic Journey
The creative periods of Le Quang Ha’s career are best categorized into three stages.
Romantically Lyrical Period
In the first stage of his creative career, Ha while still in art school held his first solo exhibition at the Vinh Loi Gallery in Ho Chi Minh City. At this point of time, he was drawn to depicting still-life and portraiture with simplistic topics that displayed little emotion. Paintings such as Red Still-life, Floral Bouquet, Country Girl, Lion Dance, Sleepwalking at Night, Child Playing , Self - Portrait and Portrait of An Old Friend are examples of his art of this period which was however , just the formation stage whereby he developed his drawing style and color palette that would become Le Quang Ha’s individual style.
Ha used color freely with abandon and powerful contrasting and reckless distinctions with a primarily influence of fauvism. His allowed his colors to move about freely and absorbing - at times overlaying multiple colors into closely knitted compositions that created uneasiness, ignited by a gamut of colors such as orange - the red of fire, evening’s yellow chrome, mesmerizing occult blue like the darkness of night. In the hands of Ha, these colors manifested themselves into an unusual vitality without any fixation but instead glimmered reflectively or moving about urgently. Sometimes his colors would scream, writhe from within and combined with his own individual style, he created especially vehemently expressive subjects that categorized his stalwart painting mannerism. This agitated color gamut, like fate, would constantly resurface to blanket the creative space of Le Quang Ha.
His painting style is modern, rakish and sharp edged, ignoring proportions denied from lithe and stereotyped beauty. His is a type of plastic art that is filled with challenges - a painting language that not only proceeded from instinct but also inspired by the works of early masters such as Picasso and Nguyen Sang. Ha’s paintings has subjects that are deliberately crude, especially in his pronounced depiction of their hands and feet or couples in awkward poses with a wildness that seems catabolic and animalistic. We can see the animalistic tendencies in Ha’s painting series Mua Lan (Lion Dance) where he depicts peoples faces as dragons and tigers confused as they growl and roar dancing through the night.
Ever since, Le Quang Ha saw human being’s nature as instinctive, wild and morbid while very cruel and animalistic inspired by sexual desires. Ha does not deny this prismatic imagery and conversely he likes to delve that instinct and exploit the internal darkness and resentment of humanity and throw it onto his painting surface. Undaunted and uncompromising and sometimes extreme - that has always been the nature of Ha. The topics of love and sex of this period are unequivocally evoked in art-works such as “Girl with Flower’, Autumn Garden and Two Women in Hostel…
Expressionist Period (1995-1999)
At this stage of his artistic journey, Ha started to develop his painting language by developing his own personal style that was affirmed with a new ripeness and brilliance of colors. Ha also expanded his paintings to broader formats that were sustained with clouded layouts such as in Loving Bazaar, Impetuous Person, Feminine Era, Be Back….or as seen in a series of uninterrupted portraits that include 20 depictions such as Meeting the Cross.
Ha’s capability to construct large lay-outs with complex configurations were also shaped at this stage. His paintings cover a full color spectrum, abundant to it’s maximum while retaining that vehemently flaming color gamut of blood-blazing red, phosphorous greens or the magical blues as in his earlier works. However, he showed very little restraint with his total picture surface and the total space expressing the stress brought about by pressure. Human faces were distorted, deformed and catabolically animalized to it’s maximum to look like unreal with gaping teeth and always displaying obsessive sparkles in their wild eyes. Hands embracing the heat that is filled with despair and dirty blood smeared mouths. These are the agitated faces behind the steel facade as if man though smart is imprisoned by their own instincts. Whether that is his original message that he wants to be impart - one may ask? Nevertheless his art continued to erupt with instinctive power, spurred on by the wrath of lunacy, petulant rampancy, inhuman barbarism and bloodshed that becomes the inevitable.
However the monsters in Ha’s pictures are not always cruel in their bloodshed. In the darkness of night whenever subjects appears, we may identify their sadness, fright or the bleakness of loneliness ( Self Portrait, Alone in New House, Cry Out).Then “beastly people” through instinct search for one another, herd together ,clinging to one another with human emotion overflowing and blooming as in Be Back, Loving Bazaar, Love, Walking in the Street … These artworks probably remain the most prolific of Le Quang Ha’s Expressionist period - an imposing period that earned substantial success.
At the end of his Expressionist period, paintings of Ha displayed certain alterations. ”Men Monsters” were no longer as tremendously grotesque as before, but instead they metamorphosed into somewhat miserable and wretched animals, effeminate and shameless with a thick skinned attitude. This might be provisionally referred to as a stage of “insect people”. Typically the “insect people” have bald heads, raven black and shrunk into fearful and disabled appearances. And when expanded these tensions emerge and manifest themselves into staid sorrow and despair. The “insect people” of Le Quang Ha remain silently alone, their bodies oozing excrement or sticky substances while engaged in sexual bouts as in series Wild Beast and Bird…
Approaching the end of this expressionist stage, he shed all inhibitions associated with the physical body to find fault with the human’s inner essence , Ha discovered the ugly forms of ‘death’s head’- repulsive, bony and severe metaphysical bodies reeking of fascist dictatorship. These ‘bogus characters” as they fall into a convergence of fumes of jaded personalities that are displayed in faraway worlds but also meet each other in loving embrace. Though these artworks have not been publicly displayed, they are valuable intermediary experiences, they importantly suggest the order that led up to Ha’s Terrorist paintings with robots, one-eyed murderers ….and towards his next Pop Age.
Pop-Art and Surrealistic Period
This represents the major turning point in the creative career of Le Quang Ha, where his ideals change not only through his formal language and artistic conception but also his awareness of political conscience became increasingly important. This period born in 1999 and continuing until now, was launched with a major exhibition by Le Quang Ha in December 20001 at the Hanoi Fine Arts Museum. Amongst the large format paintings exhibited were - Kursk Submarine’s Sailors, Jazz Music, Modern Life, Street Culture, United States Culture, Ballad No1, Fanatically, VIP, Terrorist…and two fabricated sculptures Teller and Dictator.
Though the spectra of humanity was still paramount in the Le Quang Ha’s pictorial and remained the mainspring of inspiration for him to paint and draw, this period witnessed the appearance of more subjects in more concrete “roles” relative to the social environment and community: workers, private citizens, sailors, musicians, actors , divers, government employees, financiers, tellers….became the main characters of this period and who were now less “animalized” but instead portrayed in “death’s head” as machined faces and robots on socially civilized grounds overlaid with the effects of machinery and violence. Here robots are worked with stupid, thick skinned senselessness in Kursk Submarine’s Sailors, Modern Life, Pacifique, Teller and Terrorist…..
Here human being’s passionate instincts are no longer vague, uncertain, deteriorative and obstructive but are transformed to become more concrete representations with dark ambitions bearing the trademark of modern society such as masterful stupidity, violent stupidity, political stupidity, greed stupidity…have since taken on a frantic bouting tainted with excitement, collective deliriousness, atrocious debauchery and blood thirst power. These were conceived in artworks such as Ballad No 1, VIP, Terrorist, Dictator, Chorus….Therein are the shadows of social climbers swarming about, delusive and pretentious people, deceptive personalities and dramatic personas reeking of the “fat cat” syndrome as well as international gendarmes of war games that are subverting the world today.
Le Quang Ha has an artist’s stalwart presence and sensitivity. I recall the height of summer in the year 2001 when ha invited me to view a number of paintings that he had just completed. Amongst them the painting Terrorist tremendously impressed me. A group of people pointing guns with the intent to fire straight on presented a direct and smack in the face shot. Regardless of from where you viewed the painting, the eyes and calibers followed you their eyes tracking every move threateningly. With new layouts, he reached greater depths in the centre of his paintings that consistently spread out. This perspective is still being realized in Ha’s paintings today. Characters are painted at close range, exaggerated provoking pressure. During this period, the one eyed death’s head motif started appearing known as the one-eyed murderer. By then I had composed myself and asked myself why Ha sought to express himself with such extremity. Unexpectedly only a few months later, the dark 11 September day clouded the history of the United States and the word “Terrorist’ was initiated to become a global tag relative to the Middle East and the word “Terrorist” surfaced continuously in the press with important rife.
When President Bush played the “cat throws the mouse” game with Bin Laden, thousands of tons of bombs and shells were unreasonably rained upon Islamic Afghanistan and poured upon innocent people. The world grieved and ached. Le Quang Ha created a vocabulary of his own through a large format, three panelled painting titled
United States Culture which according to the painter is only a violent and weapon culture.
The politics of society is also an increasing contention for Le Quang Ha. In his paintings, besides war and violence, contemporary society is also increasingly emergent, their complexity heated by current events and the urgency of globalization. Pop culture, audio visual culture, popular entertainment, media propaganda , advertising , information pollution, cultural pollution all merge with ruthless and raw human instinct, extreme violence and sex - this creates vehemently disturbing contexts, unsafe and disloyal or ill acquired excruciating noises of the machinery of industrial life with deep material needs - purely for recreation and enjoyment. (Opera, Blue Orchestra, Dancer, Banquet of Women.)
The Modern and the Contemporary in Le Quang Ha’s Art
We can say that Le Quang Ha is truly an avante garde painter who represents the modern art of Vietnam. This is due to his reputation as one who reacts against conformed traditions.
The spirit of each era of his art represents different times, the changes in society’s attitude and also the thinking of mankind also changes. In Le Quang Ha’s opinion, that tradition of the past has no meaning in the present but instead fades away. The correct art represents the present. Art must always be innovative, eclectic and create new traditions for the present. Consequently, according to Le Quang Ha, the aesthetic of art is not merely for decoration filled with verbalizations from the outer world but art is a personal expression of the nature of society. Furthermore according to Le Quang Ha, art must be representative of society, direct, truthful, requiring that human beings examine themselves and recognize themselves. Art should be contrary to all dogmas and falseness. Le Quang Ha said” I want my paintings to be like mirrors…paintings are a reflection. When looking at my painting, anyone who has any malice and impurity will experience shame - and when we know shame - that is progress…”
If during the first period, Le Quang Ha’s art primarily reflected a modern spirit, extremely opposed to traditional spirit that we witness in Vietnamese traditional fine-art, much later in the last period we see more of the postmodernist properties in Ha’s art that can be referred to as the contemporary in the globalized context.
Contemporary society’s reflecting loudness as well as the precarious attitudes are present in Le Quang Ha’s paintings. Every situation is realistic with shadows cast from glassy eyes, ridiculing, criticizing or adulterating with sinister elements. The dramatic personas are portrayed as extremely trivial, dense with their sluggish body language swirl about in superficial material values, violence and sex. The realities in Ha’s paintings are filled with realities, extremities, critique, often ridiculing and shocking, inducing sensitivities through ultra illogical elements. Through humor and exaggeration, Ha likes to express tragedy and deprave human existence as black humor.
In art, the postmodernism spirit and pop-art appear simultaneously - that is the prognosis that was realized from the Dada movement in the 1920’s of the last century along with it’s founder Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968). More and more as postmodernism bloomed with little resistance. This is an honest response that human beings have created for today - an existence inclined towards government influences, materialism but never upon the spirit of the human being. Conversely man kinds tragedy and society’s drama continue to escalate.
On the one hand, Le Quang Ha’s art delves into the human instinct, on the other he examines society and as such he has thrown himself into a vulnerable situation. That his art is anti war, anti violence, critical of hypocrisy is personally straight forward, introspective - is the artist’s prerogative to examine society. Because that is still a new voice of Vietnam’s fine art world today.