Above and Beyond” is a sculpture like no other.
The massive 10-by-40-foot structure of steel girders and piping hangs over the floor of the National Vietnam Veterans Art Museum, 1801 S. Indiana Ave. in Chicago. It catches light in its movement like the scales of a fish and whispers like a wind chime. The noise it makes comes from the 52,288 dog tags, each one hung in memory of an American who was killed in action in Vietnam.
“This exhibit is dedicated to that silent day when the war ceases and heals the ancient scars,” one plaque reads. “Until then, our living forces will look out for the man on the left and the man on the right.”
The museum contains more than 700 works of art by more than 115 artists from Southeast Asia, America and Australia, all of whom were combatants in the Vietnam War.
The museum opened its doors in 1996 after the city of Chicago donated an abandoned warehouse — and the money to begin repairing it — to the National Veterans Art Group, which began collecting works of art by veterans in 1979.
The artwork inside is impressive. Much of it was made by men younger than age 21, drafted before they could vote. (The end of the Vietnam War saw a change in both of those laws.) In country and in the years since coming home, these soldiers created captivating images of brutality — and sometimes beauty — through sculpture, colored pencil, pastels and watercolor. Each piece is a sliver of a real-life experience.
“We’re not a history museum, we’re an art museum,” said Jerry Kykisz, who is director of photography for the museum and who served in Vietnam from 1968 to 1969. “We try to display soldiers’ reactions to war, not the historical side of it.”
With its most recent exhibition, “Another Vietnam: Pictures of the War from the Other Side,” the organizers of the NVVAM hope to show visitors what it was like to be on the other side of the war.
“Another Vietnam” is a traveling exhibit based on a book compiled by British combat photographer and author Tim Page. The 113 photos on display come from Northern Vietnamese soldiers who used photography as propaganda for the Communist cause.
“This is the first time a museum has shown both sides of the conflict,” said Kykisz, who himself worked on his tour of duty to help defend a tribe of native Vietnamese.
The photos from the other side show a different perspective on a war that divided America. For the Northern Vietnamese, the struggle was a revolution. One photo, taken in 1971 by Kim Hung, shows eight young men in a Northern Vietnamese village rejoicing for having been enlisted in the army. The men, who appear to be only teenagers, have wide smiles on their faces. At this point, the caption reads, the government was enlisting men on the basis of revolutionary credentials. The exhibit shows that Vietnamese, especially the youth, cherished their political ideals and united in struggling for more than a decade.
“Looking at the exhibit, I feel very lucky — I just missed the Vietnam War by one year. I actually had a draft number and everything,” said John Covington, a visitor to the museum on Veteran’s Day. “I am a veteran myself, of Desert Storm, which was a cakewalk compared to what these guys went through. I really feel for the people who went.”
With titles like “Mental Anguish,” “40,000 Rounds of Happiness” and “Good Bye Mom and Dad,” the NVVAM is a stirring reminder of a war that today’s college students are too young to remember. Some of the images are ghastly, streaming with reds and purples. Others are beautiful landscapes of the Vietnamese countryside, with rice paddies and mountainous landscapes.
“These figures are the vehicle of my interpretation of the moments in Vietnam that deal with the remoteness, transcendence and finality of life,” Richard Yohnka, one of the museum’s most prolific artists, writes on the organization’s Web site (www.nvvam.org). “They are silent screams, ritual destruction, intoxication, insanity, sorrow, and death. They are images of power, but also represent savage men. They are caught between the image of a soldier dehumanized by war and that of a man trapped in a state of raw conflict.”
The works are as varied as the artists’ experiences. One artist used the back of his standard-issue uniform cap for a pencil sketch of the delicate face of a woman. Another painted a burlap sack and some board for his rendition of inner turmoil, while a third used a welded-metal chair and a machine gun to portray what he calls “revolutionary furniture.”
Although many of the NVVAM’s displays focus on the loss of American life, its founders assert that it is apolitical and has only one mission: to collect art and artifacts to encourage a better understanding of the personal consequences of warfare on everyone involved.
Through their artwork, veterans have given visitors a rare first-hand impression of war. For the most part, the view isn’t pretty. But it’s one we can never forget. nyou
