Sep
25
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Rung returns with eternal beauty of Eva
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Tran Thi Thu Ha, owner of Tu Do Gallery, inspects Rung’s paintings - Photo: My Tran
‘Eva-Eternal Spring’ by artist Rung on Sunday opened at Tu Do Gallery, depicting the beauty of nude women harmonized with the joy of nature.
Eva (Eve) in Rung’s paintings lives in the Garden of Eden with the innocent life of flowers, birds, fish and stars. Eve is pregnant, gives birth but is still beautiful and full of vitality to raise Adam’s kids in the beauty of nature. Ten works of arts are made from synthetic materials, feasting viewers on an art party by joyfulness, freshness and brilliance which shine through in the paintings. Nude images of mother earth are scorching hot, supple body line soaring with star trucks, brimful of vitality with colorful flowers, fruits, green fields, and streams or dreaming with rainbow and clouds.
“Eve was the first woman to grace the earth and she is eternally young. She is the eternal spring and she is also young and graceful like spring,” said artist Rung.
Born in 1942, Rung - real name of Nguyen Tuan Khanh - since 1960 has given many solo and joined many group exhibitions in Vietnam, France and in the U.S.
The show runs till October 6 at the gallery, 53 Ho Tung Mau Street in District 1
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Sep
25
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War wounds
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Pham Thinh Cong is not a remarkable looking man; his black hair sweeps back over a thoughtful face, his shirt is neatly ironed. He could be any middle aged man from pretty much anywhere in Vietnam. It’s only when you look closer, when you see the deep scar that runs from above his left ear towards his eye that you begin to suspect that there is something different about Pham Thinh Cong.
The reality is that early on the morning of March 16, 1968, the 107 men of the American First Battalion’s Charlie Company entered Cong’s commune and forced him - then aged eleven - his mother, father, three sisters, (aged sixteen, eight and two)and his younger brother, (aged five) into a bunker before throwing a hand grenade in after them. Only Cong survived.
It wasn’t until later that day, around 4pm, that the unconscious and badly injured Cong was pulled from the bunker. It was then he came to, only to find himself lying within the charred and scattered remains of what that morning had been his family.
While the murder of Cong’s family will always be the stuff of nightmares, it wasn’t unique. On that day, somewhere between 347 and 504 unarmed civilians were tortured, mutilated, and ultimately killed by the soldiers of Charlie Company. Women were raped and babies shot without thought. Some villagers were scalped. All, without one shot being fired at the U.S. soldiers. It was one of the darkest days in a war that possessed many. The subsequent fallout from the atrocities committed at Son My Village, (sometimes referred to as My Lai) was to turn popular public U.S. opinion still further against the war and, perhaps ultimately, helped speed American withdrawal from Vietnam.
Today, Son My retains much of the charm it must have held on that day in 1968. Cows and water buffalo graze upon its rice paddies, farmers in traditional conical hats stoop low over impossibly verdant fields. Children run and play amongst its maze of tracks and pathways. It’s a quiet place and one that, it would seem, atrocity could have no place within. Closer to the village’s only real street, overlooked by palm and bamboo trees, lies a quiet irrigation ditch. In 1968, it was into these still waters that the American soldiers forced 170 villagers before brutally machine gunning them. Their officer, a Lieutenant Calley, on seeing a baby crawling out of this carnage, is documented as picking up the child by its leg and throwing it back amongst the bodies before shooting it. Today, in the quiet field behind the museum built to commemorate the massacre, a young woman and her son graze their cow and its calf. It was here in 1968 that the American soldiers gunned down thirty two villagers, leaving their bodies on the sandy track on which now stands their mass grave. The list goes on.
In what is still regarded with disbelief by many, of all of those involved in the massacre and its subsequent cover-up, only Lieutenant Calley was convicted of war crimes. For this he served a scant three years - the vast majority under house arrest - before being pardoned by then President, Richard Nixon. After years of silence, Calley finally apologized for his role in the massacre during a private dinner in 2009. For Pham Thinh Cong, an apology issued in private on the other side of the world isn’t enough. “Why hasn’t Calley come here? Why hasn’t he apologized to us?”
While the soldiers of Charlie Company eventually returned to the safety of their base, Pham Thinh Cong and the few others who survived that day were left with lives permanently fractured by its events. “I will hear them tonight,” Pham Thinh Cong explained, “I will hear the shouting, the firing and the screaming. Every time I speak about it, I hear them” That day in the bunker left Cong scarred for life, the deepest of which can never be seen.
*Pham Thinh Cong is the director of Quang Ngai Vestige Sites Management Board
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Sep
25
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Schumann, Alpers return to capital
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A concert under the baton of German conductor Christian Schumann, one of the finest young conductors in the world, accompanied by pianist Hinrich Alpers will be held in Hanoi Opera House at 8 p.m. on September 27.
The night will start with the work Egmont from ‘Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’ by Beethoven and also includes concerto grosso for violin, piano, percussion and strings by Nguyen Manh Duy Linh. Audiences will be also entertained with concerto No.40 in G minor by Mozart.
The show will also feature the talents of violinist Bui Cong Duy and pianist Pham Nguyen Anh Vu.
Alpers’ performances are often recorded for radio and television broadcasts. He currently teaches piano at the University of Music and Drama of Hanover.
Schumann has already led internationally-renowned orchestras as the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and the London Philharmonic Orchestra.
Tickets are priced at VND250,000 and VND500,000 at the Opera House, 1 Trang Tien Street.
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Province cracks down on tourist ripoffs
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25/09/2012 10:16:43
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Nha Dai of E De ethnic people
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25/09/2012 10:06:52
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Discovering the beauty of the northern provinces by motorbike
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25/09/2012 10:00:58
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”The Little Prince” to go on Saigon stage, in English
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25/09/2012 09:49:34
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Schumann, Alpers return to capital
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25/09/2012 09:44:52
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Luu Huynh’s much-hyped lay chong nguoi ta has arrived
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25/09/2012 09:33:20
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Nam Dinh to celebrate royal heritage
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25/09/2012 09:32:21
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Elle Autumn-Winter Fashion Show 2012
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25/09/2012 09:31:04
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Hanoi’s autumn colors shine in Saigon
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25/09/2012 09:27:59
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