SPECIAL ISSUE
THE CREATORS OF SOUTH VIETNAM:
AT HOME AND ABROAD

NGÔ THẾ VINH, Author / ERIC HENRY, Translator

REMEMBERING A DEAR FRIEND, NGHIÊU ĐỀ (1939–1998)
Bird-tracks Left in the Sand

ABSTRACT

The subject of this study, Nghiêu Đề, was a visual artist and book illustrator who won prizes, did work for many of his contemporaries, and often worked in tandem with Dr. Ngô Thế Vinh to create covers for books and journals. He was a man who prized freedom and spontaneity above all other things. He left no systematic record of his activities and showed through his actions an apparent determination to evade anything that could be interpreted as a routine or an identity. At one point, he ventured into the realm of literature, publishing a collection including vignettes that he had written, but insisted later that he had made a mistake in doing so. Like so many artistic colleagues, he became a refugee in Southern California after the fall of the Southern Vietnamese republic, so we may presume that he suffered some degree of mistreatment in Communist labor reform camps in the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, and then risked his and his family’s lives crossing the ocean. None of these details, however, appear in the present article. — Eric Henry.

KEYWORDS
Nghiêu Đề, South Vietnam, visual artist, Association of Young Vietnamese Artists, refugee, Southern California

Figure 1. A Portrait of Nghiêu Đề. (Nghiêu Đề, Việt Art Society, 1998).

This essay consists solely of personal thoughts and cherished recollections concerning my dear friend Nghiêu Đề, with whom I had a friendship lasting more than half a century. Since I myself do not belong to the world of graphic art, it is not easy for me to do justice to the work of a talented painter and designer who, though his work was not great in quantity, nevertheless left a lasting mark on the history of art in Vietnam through the creative work he did in the period 1960–1970 in the Association of Young Vietnamese Artists, of which he was a strikingly original member.
- Ngô Thế Vinh

Nghiêu Đề, Biographical Data

Nghiêu Đề’s real name was Nguyễn Tiếp, but “Trai” was the name by which he was called at home. He was born in 1939 in Quảng Ngãi. He was the eldest son in a family with six sons and daughters. He studied at the Gia Định College of Fine Arts, but left of his own volition before graduation. He was a member of the Association of Young Vietnamese Artists. He was the recipient of the Silver Medal for Fine Arts in Spring, 1961, and was a participant in exhibitions held in many countries. Aside from painting, he also wrote stories and composed poetry, but he later came to regard these two activities as “missteps,” and felt that he should not strive to enter the world of writers. A published work of his was The Hundred-Year Hairdo (Ngọn Tóc Trăm Năm), released in Saigon in 1965. He moved to the United States with his family in 1985, and died on November 9, 1998 before attaining his sixtieth birthday.

In August, 2014, when the artist Trịnh Cung was still in the United States, I suggested to him that he should write an article about his old associate Nghiêu Đề. Trịnh Cung (who also had been a member of the Association of Young Vietnamese Artists) agreed to write an article by November, in time for Nghiêu Đề’s sixteenth death anniversary. But when November came, I saw only two short lines introducing the artist on the website, “Skin of Color” (Da Màu), together with two paintings selected from Nghiêu Đề’s Việt Art and Society. Trịnh Cung let me know that he had been unable to find enough material, and had had to “give-the-matter-up.com.”

Figure 2. Nghiêu Đề with his wife and three children, Little Búp (Bé Búp), little Bi (Bé Bi), and little Gòn (Bé Saigon), when they had just arrived in San Diego in 1985.
(From a Nghiêu Đề family photo album).

Figure 3. Nghiêu Đề at the age of sixteen in front of the Tax Commerce Building in Saigon; a scene that no longer exists. (Nghiêu Đề family, personal archives).

Figure 4. Nghiêu Đề himself. (Nghiêu Đề family, personal archives).

I wasn’t surprised that Trịnh Cung came up with a blank when searching for information on Nghiêu Đề, a person who throughout his life never showed any desire to possess anything. His career, it would seem, consisted of bird-tracks left in the sand—traces that would soon be erased by the waves of time. He did not have the character of a man who takes care to collect creations and make durable defenses for them. A perfect example of a person who did possess such qualities was his friend, the artist Đinh Cường, who kept an entire storehouse of personal memorabilia that few others could rival.

With this article, I am merely, to borrow the words of the artist Khánh Trường, acting as a lover of “bygone things” attempting to scoop up and assemble some sand and stones, so as to rediscover times that have disappeared along with my dear friend Nghiêu Đề.

Nghiêu Đề and His Friends

When I began my first year as a medical student, instead of virtuously concentrating on the curriculum as my classmates did, I fell at once into a love for writing, journalism, and participation in the many amusements of the circle of artists who surrounded Nghiêu Đề, and thus grew close to Nghiêu Đề himself. We differed a good deal from each other, so I don’t know how we became so close.

Nghiêu Đề led a wandering life, and had many close friends from early childhood, when he lived in a small neighborhood named Bùi Viện near an International Crossroads in Saigon. It was an area full of adventures much frequented by us. Many of the youths in that group had undiscovered talent—they were like “jade concealed in stone” (ngọc ẩn thạch). In the world of artists, these people included Nguyễn Trung, Cù Nguyễn, Lâm Triết, and Nguyên Khai. Among poets and writers they included Trần Dạ Từ, Nguyễn Đức Sơn aka Sao Trên Rừng, Trần Tuấn Kiệt, Trần Đức Uyển aka Tú Kếu, Nguyễn Nghiệp Nhượng, and Nguyễn Thụy Long. Each person had his own style, coupled with a burning desire for achievement—their common characteristic. Their creative abilities were strong, so they quickly created many works, and became well-known. Nghiêu Đề also had many friends, now deceased, whom I knew from the days when they worked for the journal Cyclopedia (Bách Khoa), such as Lê Ngộ Châu, Nguiễn Ngu Í, Võ Phiến, and Vũ Hạnh.

The Chirping of the Nguyệt Bird

In response to a question asked him by Nguiễn Ngu Í in an interview (recorded in Cyclopedia 137, September 15, 1962), Nghiêu Đề replied as if he were a person walking about in some unearthly realm:

In the place I come from, there is a strange type of bird, all white, and with a delicate wraith-like body. It usually flies about alone in the nighttime. People say it flies high, sometimes alighting on the surface of the moon, from which it never returns. Its name is ‘Nguyệt’ [Sino-Vietnamese for “moon”] and the sound of its chirping is deeply attractive. I have no idea why I love it so much. I know only that each time it flies past making its distinctive call, I feel moved. It seems to me now that the art I yearn for is something utterly natural like the calling of the Nguyệt Bird.

When I inquired about this with the poet Luân Hoán and other friends from Nghiêu Đề’s homeland, I found that none of them had ever seen or heard the chirping of the Nguyệt bird. But that scarcely matters; the Nguyệt bird, with its white plumage, wraith-like body, that flies alone to the moon at night, surely exists, just as young Cuội surely sits at the foot of a banyan tree on the moon. The Nguyệt bird still flies high and alights on the moon, never returning. Could it be that it is itself the realm of transcendence as well as the lifelong dream of Nghiêu Đề?

The Trường Sơn Printing House

Prior to the 1960s, the principal name in the printing technology of the South was Typo. The pages of books and journals in that era were compiled, letter by letter, from groups of lead fonts. The Typo workers were generally Chinese from the Chợ Lớn sector of Saigon. They weren’t fluent in Vietnamese, but the speed with which they set type was remarkable. Offset technology back then was not generally available. A privately run establishment was Cliché Dầu, a place that Nghiêu Đề and I often went to make mock-ups of journal covers or page designs. Phạm Ngũ Lão was still regarded as Saigon’s “journal street,” but the Trường Sơn Printing House of the writer Nguyễn Thị Vinh was situated on Nguyễn An Ninh Street. It included a large-scale Typo machine for journals as well as a number of smaller, pedal-operated machines. The student journal Medicine and Love (Tình Thương) of the School of Medicine, The Living Earth (Đất Sống) of the School of Pharmacy, and Literature (Văn Học) of Dương Kiền were all printed there. Nghiêu Đề and I often met each other there, especially when we wished to present covers, designed by him, for the spring issues of journals.

Nghiêu Đề and the Art of Creating Covers

The writer Võ Phiến held Nghiêu Đề in special regard. Here is an anecdote involving his book Farewell (Giã Từ): Võ Phiến relied on Nghiêu Đề to design covers for his books. In those days, attractive fonts suitable for use on covers were very scarce. Sometimes one had to search for them on the covers of American magazines sold in kiosks on Lê Lợi Street, and cut out what you wanted, letter by letter, and paste them into your design. Due to his determination to create a totally unblemished cover, Nghiêu Đề decided against “adding whiskers” to these letters; that is, he didn’t add diacritical marks. Another purpose of his was by this means to provide the reader with an opportunity to consider all the various possibilities: Gia Tư (“personal family”); Giả Tu (“false self-cultivation”); Giả Tù (“pretended imprisonment”); Giã Tự (“threshing characters”)… The book was published by Thời Mới (“New Era). Soon after the book appeared, Nghiêu Đề received a gift copy from Võ Phiến with some solemn words of dedication: “This is the volume with the designs that satisfy me the most.”

Figure 5. A pair of cross-generational friends, from right: Nghiêu Đề and Võ Phiến, December 1987. (Viễn Phố, personal archives).

Figure 6. The cover of Võ Phiến’s Farewell (Giã Từ) with no diacritics over the letters in the title, leaving the reader to guess its meaning. (Phan Nguyên, Emprunt Empreinte, archives).

Whoever had a book about to be published wanted Nghiêu Đề to design the cover. He never said no to anybody—but whether the cover would appear by a given date was an entirely different matter. Concerning this, the poet Luân Hoán wrote: “He was totally devoted to his friends. But it was not an easy matter to get him to complete a cover promptly. He had a relaxed attitude toward his commissions, preferring to work only when inspired. He didn’t want to be confined or nagged.” The spring-issue covers he designed for Lê Ngộ Châu’s Cyclopedia, and for the medical students’ Medicine and Love, all involved much waiting, and in one or two cases were never completed.

In particular, four books of mine, Storm Clouds (Mây Bão), 1963; Night Shadows (Bóng Đêm), 1964; Seasonal Wind (Gió Mùa), 1975; and The Green Belt (Vòng Đai Xanh), 1970, had covers handcrafted by Nghiêu Đề.

There was a brief period, quite rare in his career, when Nghiêu Đề did a great deal of work. Aside from painting, he was responsible for all the covers and illustrations for the more elegant books put out by Cảo Thơm, including Echoes of an Era (Vang Bóng Một Thời) by Nguyễn Tuân, and after 1975, when the author from the North resettled in Saigon, he was very pleased and honored to be able hold in his hands the very artistic edition of his own work that had been published in the South.

The Minh Mạng University Dormitory and the Artist Nghiêu Đề

Before the 1975 era, Nghiêu Đề’s paintings were oils, the dimensions of which were fairly large. When they were newly completed, and the paint was still wet, if they weren’t put face down into old, dusty frames, they were often carried away by friends. Sometimes a need arose to make a painting, but there was no money to purchase canvas. In such cаses, Nghiêu Đề would sometimes take an old painting and create a new one on the old surface. Room 3 / 7 in my university dormitory was a place with a painting by Nghiêu Đề on the wall (“Moon”; see reproduction below). A short while later Nghiêu Đề sold this painting; I don’t know who the present owner of this memory-laden painting may be. It is one of three reproductions that my friend, the engineer Nguyễn Công Thuần, took photos of from my novel A Seasonal Wind, preserved in the library of Cornell University.

Figure 7. “Moon” (Trăng) oil painting, first reproduction in the novel A Seasonal Wind (Gió Mùa), 1965. (Source: Cornell University Library; call no.: Wason PL 4389, N473, G4).

Foreign travelers or Vietnamese tourists who have lived long in distant places often cherish Nghiêu Đề’s paintings and wish to purchase some when they visit Vietnam. Since it was never feasible to produce enough paintings to fulfill orders on demand, Nghiêu Đề’s “gallery” consisted of works scattered among his friends. Nghiêu Đề painted little, and did not have enough paintings to sell, and the prices for his paintings were usually very high. Every time he sold a painting, he would turn into a new person for a few days—he no longer relied only on his old Mobylette motorbike, which rarely had a full tank of gas. He would seek out his friends and entertain them royally until he had spent his last sou.

Nghiêu Đề spoke of this himself in an interview with the journalist Nguiễn Ngu Í recorded in Cyclopedia, September 15, 1962:

I don’t like my paintings when more than an hour has passed after their completion. I usually place them backward in some dusty corner. . . I’m grateful to my friends, who often come and take them somewhere else—I feel easier that way. Every time I sell a painting, it seems to me that the money has rained down on me from heaven. So I cast it all to the winds without the slightest regret. Oftentimes it seems to me that the money is excessive, that I don’t deserve it! It’s as if I got it by cheating someone. I am grateful for the generosity of all those who love my painting—their generosity knows no bounds!

The “Matière” of Nghiêu Đề’s Paintings  

The expression “image creation” (tạo hình), perhaps fails to correspond perfectly with Nghiêu Đề’s conception of graphic art, though image creation is an important phase in each of Nghiêu Đề’s oil paintings. According to him, the talent of an artist consists of the beauty of the “stuff” (chất liệu) on the empty space or background of a painting. I have sat for hours, silently following the charcoal and paint strokes made by Nghiêu Đề, so as to see how the initial rough layers of paint were transformed into a gentle, light-filled blue background, though in the whole process gleaming shafts of light were never lacking. The “stuff” was meltingly soft and the composition sure but light, in a way very characteristic of the artist.

Nghiêu Đề, when discussing each painting, often referred to the word “matière.” I have never found a Vietnamese term used among artists suitable to represent the French word. Nguyên Khai referred to it as the “gamme màu,” and Huỳnh Hữu Ủy called it simply the “stuff” (chất), as in the “stuff” of the paintings of Nguyễn Trung, Cù Nguyễn, or Lâm Triết. . . To return to the subject of the strokes of the brush pen involved in image creation, these, according to Nghiêu Đề, were not things that could be copied from life: “an artist is one who seeks the correct line between two mistaken ones offered by reality.”

Figure 8. “Young Woman” (Thiếu Nữ) reproductions 3 and 4 in the novel A Seasonal Wind (Gió Mùa), Sóng Mã, 1965. (Source: Cornell University Library; Call no., Wason PL 4389, N473, G4).

Recently, when discussing the element of beauty in a painting, Trịnh Cung distinguished five elements: thought, composition, line, color or light, and attractiveness of the “stuff” or matière. One can say that the fifth element, attraction of the “stuff,” is the one that creates a feeling of transcendence, and is also a feature of Nghiêu Đề’s style. 

After 1975, there was a period when Nghiêu Đề shifted to lacquer painting along with Nguyễn Lâm and Hồ Hữu Thủ, but later on he himself acknowledged that this form of art was too dependent on technique, and said that after he had applied several layers of paint to achieve the lacquer effect, the “stuff” of a painting would suddenly elude his artistic control. When Nghiêu Đề moved to the United States in 1984, he brought along a number of very fine lacquer paintings, but even though they were a financial success, he decided to bid farewell to lacquer painting and returned to the extremely artistic style of the paintings he produced in the period 1960–1970, such as: “Night” (“Đêm”), “Confiding One’s Feelings” (“Tỏ Tình”), “The Realm of Transcendance” (“Vùng Thanh Thoát”), and most representatively “Portrait” (“Chân Dung”), which won the Artists’ Association’s Silver Prize for 1961.

Nghiêu Đề and The Hundred-Year Hairdo

The story of Nghiêu Đề is like a series of prose poems. Just as with his paintings, Nghiêu Đề never expressed satisfaction with any of his creations. But in spite of everything, he had a collection of stories: The Hundred-Year Hairdo (Ngọn Tóc Trăm Năm) published in 1965 was a beautifully attractive book, even though it was put together in a hand-made manner by the tiny printing house, Nguyễn Trọng. It was printed, two pages at a time, on a rotating panel of a pedal-operated machine, with a set of worn fonts. Both the owner and the workers at the printing shop held Nghiêu Đề in very high esteem, so they charged him only a moderate price for the paper and printing, but it took a long time to print the book with its 122 pages and reproductions, and the work could only be done in intervals between other jobs. Usually the author and his brother would come down to the shop each weekend, holding some printed pages of the book still smelling of ink and fresh paper. Only a small number of books were printed, so perhaps few people knew of it or retained copies. I should record another detail here: When I met Nghiêu Đề on American soil in 1985, I learned for the first time that the owner of the Nguyễn Trọng printing shop in those days was a high-ranking Việt Cộng cadre living incognito in the region. The chief business of his printing shop was perhaps the printing of propaganda sheets and secret Communist Front documents. 

I was very moved to see a special printed copy of The Hundred-Year Hairdo, perhaps the only one printed on croquis paper, in the book cabinet of Bé Búp, Nghiêu Đề’s daughter in San Diego. The book had a hard leather binding, and the name Nguyễn Toản was visible in gold letters on the spine. This was the name of Nghiêu Đề’s father, whom he loved with all his heart.  His father died rather early, when Nghiêu Đề was still living in a multi-story apartment building on Duy Tân Street. The family later moved to a different location: 19B on Lý Trần Quán Street in Saigon. This was also the place that Nghiêu Đề and I chose for the Sông Mã publishing house. The Hundred-Year Hairdo, with its four short stories and four artistic reproductions was like an opportunity for friends to get together. 

The writer Nguyễn-Xuân Hoàng, knowing that Nghiêu Đề was the author of The Hundred-Year Hairdo, asked Nghiêu Đề on a couple of occasions to submit a story to the journal Literature (Văn), but Nghiêu Đề just laughed. Nguyễn-Xuân Hoàng said, “Sometimes Nghiêu Đề would submit a poem to Literature, but I was never given a single short story. I asked him about this many times, and he would say, ‘Colors are already sufficient. Poetry is a step too far, and a short story would be another such misstep…’” (“Some Reminiscences of Nghiêu Đề’ [“Một Chút Kỷ Niệm với Nghiêu Đề”], Nguyễn-Xuân Hoàng, San José, November 16, 1998).

When Nghiêu Đề fell prey to a serious illness, his wife Giang and his children joined with the Việt Art Society in preparing a book about Nghiêu Đề. I wasn’t surprised to learn that, aside from their friend’s paintings, this group didn’t want to introduce the content of The Hundred-Year Hairdo into the volume as a summation of his career. Though Nghiêu Đề himself repudiated the volume, its pages nevertheless have a distinct value as being part of the culture of the South before 1975.

A Glimpse of Nghiêu Đề in The Green Belt

Triết, the main character in my novel The Green Belt, was an artistic creation, who, after becoming a war correspondent was based partly on Nghiêu Đề and partly on elements that I found within myself, as shown in the following excerpt:

Routinely, each morning, when the paper had been readied for printing, I left the editorial office and walked downstairs to chat with the girl who was the secretary or went to the end of the lane and ordered a cup of thick, bitter coffee and sat down to shoot the breeze with anyone who happened to be there—often a group of printing shop workers or typesetters. Peace and quietude filled the rest of the day. As I moved up the dimly lit spiral staircase to my office, the air seemed condensed by the cold, frozen and abandoned. Black typewriters lay dormant on tables. The chairs added dark vertical shapes to the scene.

Sometimes the familiar was tinted with the strangeness that had marked the first few days following my arrival. Had I still been painting, perhaps I could have portrayed those first impressions. Having cast aside my canvases, I could not avoid having longing thoughts about them.

After a fire had destroyed most of my work, I ceased to attach any value to painting and had no idea how long this attitude might last. But even so, I took part in a recent exhibition to which I contributed four large paintings, works that still remained in the possession of my group of friends. That my name should be added the list of participants was nothing to protest or comment about. The surprising thing was that, right on the first day of the exhibition, I was the first person to sell many paintings—I sold three of the four I exhibited. The painting “Black Cat on a Pink Carpet” was requested for purchase by a lady named Như Nguyện (“Full Satisfaction”), and two other paintings were purchased by an American whom I later learned was a journalist named Davis. My paintings were of the sort that did not readily please viewers, so they were priced high, so as to make up for their low sales. Due to the sale, I was able to repay some sizable debts, and supply myself with a typewriter and an excellent camera. Like a farmer enjoying an unseasonable harvest, I was able to say farewell to painting while receiving a belated favor from it. (The Green Belt [Vòng Đai Xanh], Chapter 1, Attitude [Thái Độ], 1971).

A Different Nghiêu Đề 

Since he refused to be tied to the ordinary laws and routines of life, it would be easy to regard Nghiêu Đề as a person adrift, a floating person with no regard for life. He got along readily with everyone, but at the same time maintained a certain haughtiness that he applied, not to others, but to himself. As a friend he was generous and supportive, and never a bit inclined to evil, but at the same time, he was cynical—he said that dogs and humans were the same species. To adopt an expression of Oscar Wilde’s, he was a person who “knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.”

Surrounded as he was by a cruel and terrible war, he was close friends with many writers and poets in the front lines. He did not criticize them, but chose himself to stand aside from the conflict. He lived among colors, in a tranquil and peaceful realm. He himself was the very image of the “Nguyệt bird,” and lived in the world as a dreamer of fantasies, emitting ravishingly attractive calls, and visiting the moon at night. He made me think of the character Sơn Ca (“Mountain Song”) in Vũ Khắc Khoan’s play Genghis Khan.

Once, as I was looking through the pages of A Hundred-Year Hairdo, a photo dropped from the book by pure coincidence. Though it was old and darkened by time, I still could recognize the two young wanderers in the photo—they were Nghiêu Đề and Lâm Triết, squatting together on a dusty road, back in the days when they rented an attic together to paint and mingle with their friends, a place where the owner also kept pigs and chickens. The air there was hard to breathe, both night and day, but they remained there a good many years nourishing their great dreams. Then Nghiêu Đề won the Silver Prize for his painting, “Portrait,” in the Spring Exhibition of 1961, and then Lâm Triết won the Gold Prize with his painting, “Horse,” in the Spring Exhibition of 1962. Nghiêu Đề is now dead, and Lâm Triết has ceased to “contend with the wild wind”—he has bidden farewell to Saigon and is living quietly in the green surroundings of his home area in Bình Định.

Figure 9. Two wanderers on dusty roads with roll-up mats and shoulder bag:
from left: Nghiêu Đề and Lâm Triết. (Nghiêu Đề family, personal archives).

Three Paintings by Nghiêu Đề Made in the U.S. Near the End of His Life 

His 1986 painting, “Lotus Blossom Composition” (“Bố cục Sen”), shows a young woman floating up weightlessly from a group of lotus blossoms. It was completed only after Nghiêu Đề had moved to the United States with his family. The money he got for it enabled him to purchase a piano for his children. The journey this painting made has something of the marvelous about it. From San Diego it followed the purchaser back to Vietnam, and after a period passed into the hands of a different owner. Then it passed into the ownership of a third person, and has by now returned to the United States. The image presented below as “Figure 10” is that of a photo taken by the author of this article in a house near Huntington Beach.

Figure 10. An oil composition, “Lotus Blossom Composition,” by Nghiêu Đề, 1986.
(From the collection of Nguyễn Văn Hưng).

Figure 11. An oil painting,“Banana Grove” (“Vườn Chuối”), by Nghiêu Đề, 1988.
(From an Album of the Nghiêu Đề family).

His 1988 painting, “Banana Grove,” shows a young girl shielding herself in a banana grove colored a tender green. Unlike the ripely developed young women beloved by Nghiêu Đề before 1975, here we have only young girls with the naïve aspect of the artist’s own daughters. In contrast to his pre-1975 paintings, the oils that Nghiêu Đề made in the United States, while retaining the blue shades of his earlier painting, have traces of gold and red, bearing witness apparently to moments of happiness. This painting was purchased by someone who came down to San Diego from Los Angeles for that purpose—I don’t remember who now owns the painting.

Figure 12. A portrait of Nghiêu Đề’s youngest child, titled “Bé Saigon,” (Bé Saigon), 1998. Still unfinished, this is perhaps his last oil painting; he was at work on it a few months before his death. (Nghiêu Đề family collection).

When Nghiêu Đề knew that he had fallen ill, he very quickly lost the bloom of health, but amid fits of pain that made him pale, he still strove to make a portrait of his youngest daughter, “Little Saigon,” who was then nineteen years old. This was perhaps his last oil painting, still unfinished, made a few months before he died. This rare and meaningful painting still hangs in the San Diego home of Nguyễn Nghiêu Ngung (Cu Bi), a son of Nghiêu Đề.

Figure 13. Sketch by Choé (the artist Nguyễn Hải Chí), made in 1993 upon meeting Nghiêu Đề again after 18 years. (Nghiêu Đề family, personal archives).

Figure 14. The author Võ Phiến speaking at the publication ceremony of The Works of Nghiêu Đề, May 1999. (Photo by Phan Diên; Viễn Phố, personal archives).

Figure 15. The front and back covers of the The Selected Works of Nghiêu Đề.
(Ngô Thế Vinh, personal archives).

After Nghiêu Đề died on November 9, 1998 in San Diego, California, the Việt Art Society with great promptitude brought out a set of books entitled The Selected Works of Nghiêu Đề. It appeared the same year and included the interview conducted by Nguiễn Ngu Í concerning his views on art (Cyclopedia 137, September 15, 1962), as well as essays writen about him by several of his friends, such as Thái Tuấn, Huỳnh Hữu Ủy, Trần Dạ Từ, Đỗ Quý Toàn, Du Tử Lê, and one in English by Lê Thọ Giáo; and, of greatest value, a number of little-known paintings of his that his family was able to collect. Many of Ngiêu Đề’s friends attended the publication event.

This belated article is written to commemorate my dear friend, and also to his wife Giang and his children Cu Bi, Bé Búp, and Bé Gòn on the occasion of his sixteenth death anniversary.