|
|
in which they were painted. I have mentioned earlier that Shen Jiawei professes to be a communist, but he argues consistently that there are communists who are humanist in orientation, and he declares himself to be one of these. In the early twentieth century, many intellectuals worldwide joined the communist movement in a fight against fascism: this led to Europeans going to fight against the Japanese war of aggression in China during the 1930s and 1940s and to a team of Chinese soldiers going to fight against Franco’s forces in Spain. The Cold War has led to the erasure of the cosmopolitan tendencies that once existed worldwide, or even knowledge of these. Shen’s memoir seeks to understand the dynamics of communism in the hands of political tyrants—because it was under such a regime that he had grown to maturity.
History painting is his passion, but it is a highly time-consuming form of art. Since arriving in Australia in early 1989, Shen’s main source of income has been through painting portraits. He is now acknowledged as one of the finest portraitists in the country, with large numbers of his portraits collected in the National Portrait Gallery, as well as in other public institutions. From 1992, he began to surprise the Sydney art world by being shortlisted year after year, fourteen times, for the AGNSW’s Archibald Prize. That prize has eluded him, but in 2006 he won the AGNSW’s Sulman Prize for his Peking Treaty 1901 #2.
Painting History is unique because Shen remains committed to history painting, a genre that once flourished in the Western world but is now considered passé. He has always excelled at portraiture, and his large oil paintings reproduce hundreds of portraits of real and recognizable historical personalities. However, as an artist who specializes in history painting, he has no compunction in extending the limitations of the genre. Regarding history paintings as also being “visual narrations” of history in the hands of the artist, he sometimes playfully paints a small image of himself into his complex paintings. His commitment to the genre is equaled by his deep interest in history itself, not just the history of China but also the history of the world, especially that of the international