FFWD Weekly
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| Visual Arts by Anne Severson WILLIAM MACDONNELL William MacDonnell’s paintings feature bomb craters left in the lush tropical landscape of Vietnam. MacDonnell, a painting instructor at the Alberta College of Art and Design, strongly asserts that these works are about painting. "The subject is Vietnam and history is my excuse to put paint on canvas. "Flying into Hanoi, the very first sight I had of Vietnam as I came out of the clouds was the airport with all these beautiful round ponds, but then I realized that they were bomb craters since the airport was such a prime target." His large, layered acrylic paintings set in today’s rural Vietnam resulted from MacDonnell’s journey in July 1997 to explore place and memory 25 years after Vietnam won the war against the French, and finally, the Americans. His desire to "flesh out the history books" led him to paint places which he knew were historically interesting. From the stark bunker at the top of the hill in "Dien Bien Phu," the Vietnamese pushed out the French in 1954 after more than 100 years of control. The emptiness reminds us that the French did not surrender, but fought to the last man in what they believed was an "honourable" fashion. The American involvement in Vietnam by the ’60s changed the culture of America and also Canada. As MacDonnell remembers, "My own history intersected with it. I was very active politically and as a Canadian, I didn’t go, but I was really conscious that American people my age did." His current painting research tries to uncover how the war is remembered today, and what is the nature of this cultural memory. "Sentinels By The Runway At Khe Sanh" remembers the defeat of Americans at the most crucial battle as they were pounded by artillery from the hills above: the beginning of the end. Another canvas interprets the connector-bridge between North and South Vietnam, repeatedly blown up and then rebuilt to be blown up again. As the Vietnamese drove south into Quang Tri, the "Skeleton Church" references past ruins such as the Parthenon where once strong symbols are now glorified as the spiritual debris of war. This "faux-romanticism," as MacDonnell refers to it, is about exploration of place and memory. There are no people present, since he believes that the painting then becomes a narrative, or story. Deliberately awkward borders are painted in "everyday Asian pink" to emphasize that this is "not just another pretty picture, but a significant place." "Cemetery In The Mekong Delta," a major front of the war, flares with terrifying red skies behind an overgrown Buddhist temple and a round pond next to an isolated cement pillar. Nature has tried to camouflage what mankind has defiled. MacDonnell is well known for his "watcher angels" in the sky to witness. While they have changed form over time, they maintain some sort of register. Historically based on the Renaissance, they provide us with meaning. |
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