PRESS RELEASE VAALA publishes Nghệ Thuật Tạo Hình Việt Nam Hiện Đại by art critic Huỳnh Hữu Ủy Vietnamese American Arts & Letters Association (VAALA) is carrying out its largest book project ever: the 600-page, full color Nghệ Thuật Tạo Hình Việt Nam Hiện Đại (“The Contemporary Visual Arts of Vietnam”) written by the well-respected art critic Huỳnh Hữu Ủy. VAALA is currently asking art supporters to pre-order the book to raise enough funding for the printing. The price of the book is $60 per copy excluding postage. For more information on pre-ordering, please visit www.vaala.org and click on Publications. VAALA is also seeking sponsorship for this historical project. Generous contributions of $2,000 or more will be recorded in the “Acknowledgement” section of the book. Sponsors will also receive two copies autographed by author Huỳnh Hữu Ủy. Any profit made from the book sale will be reserved for the translation and printing of an excerpt of the book in English. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact Ysa Le at cell phone (714) 914-2260 or e-mail ysadle@yahoo.com. Nghệ Thuật Tạo Hình Việt Nam Hiện Đại is considered by its own author to be his “major work of a lifetime.” Written in Vietnamese, the book spans from the dawn of the Vietnamese visual art with the establishment of Ecole des Beax-Arts de l’Indochine, depicting the pioneers such as Bùi Xuân Phái, Nguyễn Gia Trí and Tô Ngọc Vân to the blossoming of a new generation of Vietnamese diasporic artists in the early 1990s. Most importantly, Huỳnh Hữu Ủy covers extensively the period of 1954–1975 in South Vietnam. This is the first time that the contribution of the artists from this era is closely examined and evaluated. Due to various reasons, many of the important works from this generation of artists have been overlooked in the recorded history of Vietnamese contemporary visual art. It is time to recognize the collective contribution of these artists to the foundation of the Vietnamese contemporary visual art. Born in 1946 in Huế, Vietnam, Huỳnh Hữu Ủy has been an art critic and researcher since the late 1960s. Huỳnh Hữu Ủy started his critic career with the essay Đường Bay Của Nghệ Thuật (The Flying Path of Art), published in a 1967 issue of Văn Magazine in Saigon. Since then, he has continued to build his expertise by authoring many more articles and collaborating with many art and culture forums throughout Vietnam, North America and Europe. He also served as a military historian in the South Vietnam Army. After the fall of Saigon in 1975, he was imprisoned for five years in a communist re-education camp. Resettling in the United States, he continues to follow his passion by authoring the books Nghệ Thuật Tạo Hình Dân Gian Việt Nam (Vietnamese Folk Art ) and Mấy Nẻo Đường Của Nghệ Thuật Và Chữ Nghĩa (Some Paths of Art and Literature), published in Southern California in 1994 and 1999, respectively. Huỳnh Hữu Ủy is a rare and prominent Vietnamese art scholar because of his knowledge, passion and independent thinking. VAALA is a community-based, 501 (c) (3) non-profit organization founded in 1991 by a group of Vietnamese American journalists, artists and friends. VAALA creates opportunities for artists to interact with their audience, and facilitates dialogue among different ethnic groups through various forms of art. VAALA’s recent publications include The Forgotten Ones by photographer Brian Doan, Tuyển Tập Lê Đình Điểu (a collection of poems and essays written by VAALA’s late co-founder and past president Lê Đình Điểu and his friends) and Tuyển Tập Tranh Thái Tuấn (a collection of essays and paintings by Thái Tuấn). |
