CONTEMPORARY ART IN LAOS HAPPY VILLAGE LIFE IN LAOS For the past five years contemporary art in Asia has matured to a point where it can rival any form of art deriving from the West. The Asian artistic communities have established an intellectual discourse in their own right, and considering the success of art fairs in Hong Kong, Singapore and Japan, the local art market is flourishing. The notion of a modern cultural centre ('the West') and a periphery ('the rest') is definitely outdated. With Asian socialist countries opening up to the international community, even Chinese and Vietnamese modern art have found their way to Europe and North America. However, not much is known about the arts in P.D.R. Laos. By Helga Lasschuyt At first glance, the art situation in Laos is rather disappointing. One would expect to come across a similar situation as in Vietnam, where after years of isolation the sudden opportunity of contact with the international art world created a boom in artistic productivity. Apparently the desire to create on an individual level had already been present among the Vietnamese artistic community, simmering under the surface for some time. In Laos, however, one does not hear stories of paintings hidden under the mattresses or secret exhibitions in private homes. One obvious explanation is that for the Lao intelligentsia it was relatively easy to flee the atmosphere of artistic restriction: many artists crossed the Mekong river to Thailand and made their way to Europe and North America. Vong Phaophanit, for example, is a successful Lao artist who has been living in England for the past eight years. WHAT THE LAO PEOPLE LIKE The Ministry of Information and Culture estimates some sixty, mostly part-time, artists live in Vientiane. The exact number is not known, since artists are not united in an artists' association as in most other countries. The general artistic level of the Lao artists is not very high; painting techniques are poor and individuality is hard to find. Art in Laos is still governed by politics. Artists should express the beauty and prosperity of the country and people. As can be expected under a socialist regime, free individual expression is not stimulated and certain styles and subjects are not popular with the party officials. The rule is that an artist can only paint 'what Lao people like', that is, figurative landscape and genre paintings. Of course, in a poor country like Laos there is no stimulation from an art market either. The only art buyers in Laos are the government institutions, tourists, and expatriates about to leave the country. None of these clients feel the need to buy anything surpassing an uncomplicated picturesque watercolour of Lao landscape. The lack of technique can be traced to the shortcomings of the art education. In Vientiane there is an Ecole Nationale des Beaux-Arts, originating from the French colonial period. It is an old, wooden building, set on the northern part of the city centre. Young students, chosen by the government go to school here, receiving their general secondary education in the morning and their art training in the afternoon. Besides traditional arts and crafts like weaving and woodcarving, the art training consists of painting, printing, and sculpture, focusing mainly on copying Western masters like Monet, Rembrandt, and Michelangelo from reproductions. The teachers are former students of the Ecole and, although some of them have had training abroad (Cuba, Vietnam, Bulgaria), nothing is done to improve the technique of the students or to stimulate originality. NO EXPOSURE Aspiring artists find it very hard to educate themselves. There is virtually no exposure to anything that happens in the international art world. Most students can name some Western masters, but have no knowledge for instance of artists from neighboring countries. The National Library in Vientiane boasts 7 books on modern art, mostly biographies on early modern Western masters as Van Gogh, Seurat, Chagall, Gauguin. All these books are written in English or French and the language barrier creates an obstacle for a deeper understanding of the faded reproductions. The most famous painter in Laos is Khamsouk Keomingmuong, who also happens to be a high official with the Department of Arts of the Ministry of Information and Culture. Khamsouk Keomingmuong produces several paintings a day and when one is sold, he makes an exact copy the next day. His work is characteristic of the state of the arts in Laos: women in traditional costume weaving or cooking in a rural setting, very sloppily executed in faint colours and shaky lines. AFTER WORK There is, however, some light to be found in the darkness of Lao contemporary art: a small group of artists is trying to establish an independent artists' association in order to create a division between art and politics. Not surprisingly, these are the artists who show a spirit of individuality that can sometimes be detected in their art. Leading man of the group is Luangrath Kongphat, working as an illustrator and graphic designer at the Ministry of Education. He studied at the Ecole Nationale des Beaux-Arts in the late seventies and after graduation was sent to study printmaking at the Ecole Superieure des Beaux-Arts in Sofia, Bulgaria. Although he sometimes ventures into oil painting, his real passion is printmaking. In his etchings, he tries to form interesting compositions, placing the figures off centre. 'After work', an etching of a woman, breast-feeding her child might not be very exciting according to international artistic standards, but it shows an effort to go beyond the shallow portrayal of happy village life that dominates Lao contemporary painting. Letūs hope that Luangrath Kongphat and his colleagues will manage to establish their artist association. It seems crucial to the development of contemporary art to lift painting and sculpture above the level of arts and crafts. A platform like an artist association, where ideas and information can be exchanged, could be a first step in the right direction.