(VNS 2000)

A special exhibit featuring a newly released book of Ho Chi Minh portraits ends this weekend at the HCM City Fine Arts Association.

The 118-page compilation took David Thomas – a veteran of the American War – nearly eight years to complete, and was officially released in Newton, Massachusetts, in May of last year, the 110th anniversary of the President’s birth.

The project was initiated in 1992. Thomas began with fifty mixed media portraits of President Ho.

These were assemblages of lithography, collage and oil pastel that were made up of images from President Ho’s life and from Vietnamese cultural scenes. On top of these collage images Thomas manipulated oil pastel images of President Ho’s face taken from a standard portrait found throughout Viet Nam.

"The main purpose for making the Ho portraits and the book was to study one of the most important leaders of 20th century in American and world history," Thomas said.

Thomas was stationed in Pleiku, South Viet Nam in 1969 when President Ho died, and at the time he knew very little about the great man.

Most Americans are in a similar position. They know that Ho Chi Minh led the country that gave the US its only military defeat, but not much more.

"Americans don’t know that Uncle Ho was a great fan of Thomas Jefferson, Mahatma Gandhi, Vladimir Lenin and many other great world leaders," Thomas explained.

"Americans have no idea that President Ho lived in New York and Boston or that he was a very fine poet."

"I want Americans to know all of this and more. I strongly believe that Americans will never understand our experience in Viet Nam until we understand the single most important leader in that period, Ho Chi Minh," said Thomas, an artist, printmaker and teacher of art at Emmanuel College in Boston.

After the President Ho portraits had been exhibited in museums and galleries in the US, it became clear to Thomas that something needed to be written. He had sent copies of a small paperback on President Ho purchased in Ha Noi to American biographers, playwrights and film-makers but received no responses. Out of sheer frustration, Thomas decided to take to the task himself.

Thomas wanted the book to be a very personal sketch of President Ho. Because Thomas was not a writer by profession, he decided to construct a fictional diary. If he billed it as such then he could avoid confusion and objections. He began work on the project during a school break in December and January of 1997.

One goal was to keep the book as Vietnamese as possible. So Thomas decided to print it on Vietnamese do paper. The pages of the book would be placed in a traditional lacquer box made in Viet Nam and the lacquer box would then be placed in a silk cover also made in Viet Nam.

The book’s format is straightforward. One page is text printed on translucent do paper, and the next is an image of Ho and a Vietnamese cultural scene printed on a thicker piece of do paper.

Thomas’ ultimate goal was for a publisher to see the book and be inspired enough to publish a trade book version which would be available in US bookstores.

Following the book’s completion, Thomas met Charles Fenn who had worked with President Ho during rescue efforts of American fliers shot down by the Japanese during WW II in southern China. The then 91-year-old Fenn, who wrote a very good biography of President Ho in 1971, agreed to rewrite President Ho’s diary for Thomas’ book.

Once the diary was completed, Thomas divided the pages into two sections. The top section contained the fictional diary and the bottom section contained Fenn’s historical account.

Several additional pieces were added to the book including some of Ho’s own poetry and writings, poems by leading Vietnamese poets, maps, chronologies, an introduction and preface, and two personal stories given to Thomas by Vu Ky and Dinh Dang Dinh, two of President Ho’ closest aides.

During the spring of 1999, crafts makers in Hanoi began making the 110 lacquer boxes and silk covers and over 15,000 pieces of 8.5x11 inch handmade do paper. These were completed and shipped to Boston by late 1999. Three Hewlett Packard 990Cse inkjet printers were used to print nearly 7,000 images on the do paper.

Since the book’s release in May last year, copies of it have been purchased by many leading rare book collectors in the US.

Other copies have also been sent to President Tran Duc Luong, former-President Bill Clinton, general Vo Nguyen Giap, ambassador Ngo Quang Xuan and the Ho Chi Minh museums in Hue and Hanoi.

Thomas hopes to present a copy of the book to the new Secretary General of the Vietnamese Communist Party, Nong Duc Manh, on his next trip to Viet Nam.

He is also working with the Youth Publishing House in Hanoi and a Canadian publisher to publish a trade book version.

If successful, the book will be sold in Ho Chi Minh museums as well as hotels and stores throughout Viet Nam, the US and Canada.