A wonderful collection, beautifully curated across two elegant French colonial buildings. Themes and captions that lead you by the hand through an extraordinary history and series of events, traditions and influences that uproot you and blow you away like a dandelion.
From “primitive” decorative designs of astonishing beauty, through Millenia of indigenous and oriental traditions and techniques; then the gay floral explosion of the French and the subsequent revolutionary liberation death-struggle immortalised by a range of artistic styles and motifs, including the art stylings of their most recent allies, the grim shuffling babushkas and ice cold heroes of the Soviets.
Art is everywhere in Vietnam, where it seems to we tourists that the very vendors on the street live their lives artfully and beautifully, happily and serenely, laughing easily, smiling often.
There is too much art in the Fine Art Museum in Hanoi to try to present in one blog, so, dear readers, please kindly continue your saintly indulgence as we will have to try your patience with several blogs each looking at a tiny part of this delightful gallery.
So, without the furtherance of any pesky ado, Gods, Sages, Imps and Caryatids.
The Dislocated Hippies 