The oil painting “Night Street” that is present in front of our eyes was painted by Trinh Thai in 1994, that is, at a time when our country was about to step out of a full 20-year period of being “embargoed” and getting ready to integrate into the era of the Internet.
There are many grounds to think that this could be a scene on Hang Mam street, the section adjacent to Hang Muoi and then down towards the dike. This is also a very typical “motif” of Hanoi’s Old Quarter that Bui Xuan Phai often painted.
At that time, Hang Mam street was still considered as one of the more or less intact architectural complexes in Hanoi capital. The faint golden-yellow electric light emanating from these doorways is one of the hallmarks of that period. Shadows of people loomed, not crowded, but warm enough. The brownish-gray colors evoke the old, mossy earth-wood nature of the old houses, drawn by the artist on the curvaceous, protruding, indented, skewed, undulating shapes, gracefully blend in a rhythm and spreads gradually along the dark streaks of the branches dotted with sparkling yellow leaves.
And then, on that warm half-light, half-dark background, suddenly appeared a pure white, it looks like a huanghuali tree in bloom, fluttering magically under the cool March moon. It makes viewers think of a surrealist painting by René Magritte, “God’s salon”, where the artist “can imagine a sunny scene under the night sky”. It’s magical!
