Vietnam Reflexes and Reflections

The very first entries in this harrowing catalogue of the collection of the National Vietnam Veterans Art Museum, founded in 1981 as a traveling exhibition and permanently installed in Chicago 15 years later, are watercolors by an unidentified North Vietnamese soldier--representations by the enemy, in other words. Though this is something of an alphabetical fluke (A for Anonymous), that it was allowed to remain reflects the complexity and variety of veterans' attitudes: toward their experiences in Vietnam; toward their comrades, their supposed enemies, their irreversibly transformed selves; and, inevitably, toward America. Flags abound in their work, as do masks and bones. Tragedy is often tempered by macabre humor, as in Stephen Ham's Dead Vet greeting cards and William Dugan's mummified roadkill. A furious beauty is acknowledged in the jungle landscape, where many of these artists came close to dying. As Sondra Varco, the museum's director, cautions in her foreword, this volume is ""not for the faint of heart"" nor for the condescending. Many of the paintings, sculptures, assemblages, prints and photographs are impressive on aesthetic terms but still must fend off what one vet in his artist's statement calls the ""prejudice against art that is done out of necessity."" Most of these men and women began working in private, sometimes destroying what they made--not surprising given the brutal reception some received on returning home. The remarks accompanying the visual material, some excerpted from letters and diaries, others quite formal and self-conscious, are staggering in their cumulative effect. Useful essays by Sinaiko and art historian Arthur F. Janson, who served in Vietnam, are wisely placed after the catalogue. (Nov.) FYI: The official publication date is November 11, or Veterans Day. For a look at journalism during the war, see reviews below of two October books, both titled Reporting Vietnam.