Bui Xuan Phai- Life after death

Bui Xuan Phai- Life after death.

Bui Thanh Phuong, the son of artist Bui Xuan Phai, once inoted that his father always made a horizontal stroke with his paint brush before he began a painting. It's difficult to say why Hanoi's legendary artist performed this ritual, but one thing can be said--that each and every one of his masterpieces appears to have evolved from an all-encompassing principle of simplicity.

Indeed, it's a principal that Bui Xuan Phai adhered to during his life, and he referred to it more than once in documented comments about the local art scene.

"To talk on and on about art is nonsense," Bui Xuan Phai once wrote. "Plunge yourself into painting. For if you don't paint often or don't paint at all, you are not professional. Speak less to have more time for painting; your occupation is not speaking but painting. It's a mute art, an art for people to view--not to listen to."

Bui Xuan Phai was more than just an artist; he lived for art. He painted right up until the day he died, guided by a basic principle of aesthetics.

"To paint wrongly? To paint rightly? Both are bad. The thing is how to paint beautifully," he wrote.

Needless to say, the whole of Hanoi went into mourning when Bui Xuan Phai finally passed away in 1988. His spirit, however, lives on, thanks largely to the efforts of Tran Hau Tuan, a local art collector, and Phai's eldest son, Bui Thanh Phuong.

In 2008, they will publish a book entitled Bui Xuan Phai: Life After Death to commemorate the twentieth anniversary of the artist's death.

Now, in order to commemorate the twentieth anniversary of the artist's death, Tuan and Phuong have gathered enough material to publish a book, which they have called Bui Xuan Phai: Life after death. Only 500 copies of the book have been made, and the publishers expect them to be in hot demand when they eventually hit book stores next year.

HOME