Street's Phai

In the first years after peace returned to the city, Hanoi was not densely populated, factories and workshops were few and far in between and the traffic was light.' The thirty six streets of Hanoi were maintained in their original state, all their names beginning with the word "Hang", denoting the specific trade that the street's inhabitants carried out, names such as "Hang Bac", "Hang Thiec", "Hang Chieu"... However, the composition of Hanoi's population was no longer the same. Some villages migrated in their entirety to certain streets in Hanoi and rural relationships and village ties started to enter the way of life of the capital's residents. In 1958 Hanoi applied the policy of enforcing private-state partnership and several households could now be found living in one apartment or house. The small ancient streets became even smaller. Bui Xuan Phai carefully researched the structure of the streets and discovered the characteristic features of the old houses o1 Hanoi such as the gables, the windows, the canvases to protect the houses from dust and sunlight... His streets were generalized from a cubist perspective. During this period he often painted the streets using a horizontal composition, one after another, the uneven roof-tops elevated, the sky narrowed, indicating that the artist was painting the street from the angle'of a walker who was looking up as he strolled along the pavement. In certain pieces of work, the turns of the streets were depicted, giving extra depth to the composition. On the pavement, an old scholar of Chinese walked by quietly under the shade of an umbrella, some children played with the marbles, a girl wavered at the door... and yet the street still appeared as quiet as if there was no one there at all. Sometimes his strokes were made forcefully and speedily with a blade; at other times, he used a broken rush handle to drag the colours across the canvas from other sections that he was painting, thereby creating a banister or a slatted window. Even when his strokes were thin and soft, we can still see the shine on the brown parts that came from the red underlying layer. Then there are areas which he left bare to reveal the canvas and those blank areas also participated in the composition to become a colour within the painting. During this period the artist often used yellow, silvery grey, reddish brown with black borders. The composition of the paintings is simple, with dark and austere colours, denoting a peaceful and ancient Hanoi...