How do I see the soul in Artwork by Xuan Luong

The difference between an artistic genius and a person who merely knows how to draw is the soul in each work of art. The latter shows technical skills but only soulless colored sketches while an artist exhibits both the intellect and the sensible within her pleasing arrangement of lines, colors, and shades. In this case, the artist only uses black and white colors, 2 very basic foundations. But as long as you look at the details of this drawing, your mind is then blown for a moment. For a moment, that hairline seems to move. Her hair seems to move. The right part of her face is covered by hair, and the hairline doesn’t come to a standstill. The left side where her hair is flying urges my imagination to contemplate the meaning of the figure by completing the opposite side. Without a visible part, my manipulated imagination works hard to fulfill the understandable concept in my mind. The "affect" is gentle, but the movement gravitated toward the collective wholeness. Now what is this collective wholeness? I understand it as a female face due to its tenderness and elegant hairline. Although I can’t really see the other half of her face, this portrait, since it constructs a human face as if there has been an omnipresent artist behind this play, in turn, asks me to “sense” what it reveals in the other half- a sensible concept. In an absence of sensational effects, I would never recognize the tenderness. I can feel and think at the same time. At the moment when the wheel of time is at rest, my thinking and feeling in harmony with one another, stop competing against the valid judgments from either side of me.

It’s not convincing yet to claim that this work has a soul in itself. At best I can say that this art looks realistic. An image looks real when it resembles something that already exists in the world in which we are living. There is nothing unique and strong enough to say the work has its own “soul.” This must not be a conclusive opinion regarding this work. As I previously mentioned, the distinction between an art student and an artist is the usage of artistic skills in portraying the content as if it “lives.” A living thing cannot be copied, manipulated or imitated since it is a moving thing. A good artist does not imitate a natural thing but represents the idea of a natural thing. When I look closely at the figure’s eye, seemingly her eyes are staring back at me with her own determination. She, with her beauty, looks youthful, strong, determined, but not energetic. This affect might be produced as her thin lips don’t constitute a visible smile. This portrait allows me to create a judgment: “This young lady is strong and determined.” With only one revealing eye, while the other one, being covered under the hair that supposedly flies with the wind, is not there, I for once understand the representation of the soul of this portrait. This soul is not a metaphysical soul within the figure or the portrait, but it is indeed a representation of an aesthetic ideal that reveals itself to my mind and my eyes. Xuan Luong’s artwork through means that arrange lines, colors, and shades, provides this being a form that any pure mind can appreciate. In such a way, her skill reveals the content of a soul, and the content of a soul is a natural, living thing independently of the time-space world.

Underneath the girl’s face, Helianthus or sunflower that signifies a representation for every same-category real plant is visibly huge. The pistil is like an eye that perceives the space above it, the space that includes the girl. In this way, we are restricted to ever look downward again, but we always need to look upward from the position of the pistil.

If music is able to express emotions, I’m attracted to this “sunflower” artwork as follows:
“Oh, every time I’m leaving on ya
I can hear you telling me to turn around…
… You’re the sunflower” (Malone & Lee, Sunflower)

The effect of a work of art is too strong for us to ignore its underlying features and question the theme. Xuan Luong’s art succeeds at that task. The soul of the artwork reminds me of a lesson by which I understand artistic experience which is transcendental puts me in a humbler position in nature. Humans are not the center of the universe, and the ability to appreciate one another’s work of art reveals limitations and humanity in everyone. Neither rationality or feeling alone can sufficiently contemplate the aesthetic experience without laying a selfish judgment.

March 31, 2020
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Xuan Luong is a Bay Area-based artist, marketing coordinator, and content creator. She is currently a promoter at Viet Valley, a Vietnamese-American news agency. I have known her since 2011.