Shen Jiawei

Private Australian Collection

Zai-Jian Revolution – Shen Jiawei, Gallery 4A, Australia, 2002, unpaginated
Youth Narrate: Educated Youth works of 40 years, Jilin Fine Arts Publishing House, China, 2009, p.63
Shen Jiawei -From Mao to Now 1961-2010, Hazelhurst Regional Gallery & Arts Centre, Australia, 2010, p.69

This work is generally in good condition. There are networks of craquelures throughout the paint surface. The four edges are worn quite heavily. There are some paint losses near the top and left edges. Under Ultraviolet light, there are signs of restoration. Please note that this work was not examined out of its frame.
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The First Taste of Snow

Born in Shanghai in 1948, Shen Jiawei created Standing Guard for our Great Motherland in 1974, a piece that had immense national impact at the time it was painted. The piece became an iconic work from the Cultural Revolution, and propelled Shen Jiawei to national renown as a Mainland Chinese artist who dealt specifically with the theme of the Educated Youth. Tasting Snow on the Wanda Mountains (Lot 39) was created in 1972, and is the only remaining work of Shen’s from the Cultural Revolution period besides Standing Guard for our Motherland. In comparison to Standing Guard for our Motherland, a piece filled with overt political aesthetics, Tasting Snow on the Wanda Mountains—with its lack of  revolutionary painterly ideals such as ‘red, bright and shining’ (hong, guang, liang) or ‘lofty, large, complete’ (gao, da, quan)—is in fact a purer and more faithful distillation of the artist’s personal style.

Shen Jiawei spent his formative years within the context of the Cultural Revolution. He taught himself how to paint in an environment of scarce resources and extreme poverty, and made a name for himself for paintings on subjects concerning young intellectuals (“zhi qing”).  In 1989, Shen moved to Australia, where he frequently exhibited his works and received many awards, including 11 nominations for the Archibald portrait prize, as well as the Sulman Prize in 2006. In 1995, with his large-format oil painting Mary MacKillop of Australia, he received the Mary MacKillop Art Award jointly established by the Australian government and the church. He received the medal from Pope John Paul II in a ceremony broadcast by international media. He was invited to exhibit at both the New York and Bilbao branches of the Guggenheim Museum in 1998, and again in New York, in the exhibition Art and China Revolution at the Asia Society Museum in 2008. His works are among the collections of the National Museum of China, National Art Museum of China, National Portrait Gallery in Australia, as well as the Australian Parliament House.

Standing Guard for our Great Motherland was completed in 1974. Against the artist’s own wish, the work was modified based on the political logic on art at the time, and it was included in the National Art Exhibition of China. The work was widely influential across the country, and became an iconic art piece of the Cultural Revolution. The present work, Tasting Snow on the Wanda Mountains was created in February 1972, and was Shen Jiawei’s first successful creative output, as well as his earliest claim to fame when he was serving at the Heilongjiang Production and Construction Troop. Moreover, it was painted two years before his nationally acclaimed Standing Guard for our Great Motherland. In 1971, at the age of just under 24 and having arrived at the Great Northern Wilderness for less than two years, Shen Jiawei followed his unit into the Wanda Mountains to harvest timbre for the Troop. His duty was to “beat the branches” – working with an experienced and older worker to cut or saw off the branches of the tree trunks that had been cut down. Drenched in sweat and extremely thirsty, he ate large mouthfuls of snow to quench his thirst. Almost half a metre deep, the mountain snow was exceptionally pure and clean. It was this experience that led to the present piece. “I walked in the snow and felt as if I had returned to the Wanda Mountains where I harvested timbre earlier that year. Then I suddenly realised that eating snow could be a possible angle for the painting, a simple and direct visual image and setting. People's Volunteer Army who ate ‘a handful of stir-fried noodles and a handful of snow’ was an important story in our revolution history education since childhood. So this concept was very direct, with no comment whatsoever necessary,” the artist recalled his process of creating the piece.

The piece stood out as a distinguished example among the creative outputs by the Troop that year. Upon request by the leadership, Shen painted two identical pieces (the present piece is the only surviving one), to be exhibited in the Class II Art Exhibitions of Shenyang Military District and Heilongjiang Province respectively, since they were not ‘red, bright and shining’ (hong, guang, liang) or ‘lofty, large, complete’ (gao, da, quan) enough to be exhibited in the Class I Art Exhibitions in Beijing. One of these works were also printed in newspapers and magazines at the time, and included in a calendar published by the Heilongjiang People's Publishing House in addition to a Heilongjiang art collection (Heilongjiang People's Publishing House, 1972), Heilongjiang Production and Construction Troop art collection (Heilongjiang People's Publishing House, 1972), Zai-jian Revolution (Gallery 4A, 2002), Shen Jiawei From Mao to Now 1961-2010 (Hazelhurst Regional Gallery & Arts Centre, 2010), Youth Narrative - Educated Young Painters’ works in40 years (Jilin Fine Arts Publishing House, 2008, 2009). Nevertheless, the official guideline for art at the time was to strictly follow the principles of “Revolutionary Realism” - to “originate from real life, and transcend real life”.  Obviously, it satisfied the first guideline but not the second one, which was to “transcend real life”. This is especially obvious when compared to other pieces exhibited at the national art fair. Nevertheless, when looking back after a few decades, it is exactly because the work remains faithful to the artist’s own experiences, it successfully captures the authentic beauty of nature, and possesses the qualities of “Truth, Virtue, Beauty” far beyond the constraints of revolutionary aesthetics. When placed within the context of the national art exhibitions over the 10 years of Cultural Revolution, the present piece is obviously an abnormality. Shen Jiawei remembers having created over a dozen oil paintings when he served at the Troop and during the Cultural Revolution, Tasting Snow on the Wanda Mountains and Standing Guard for our Great Motherland are the only two that have survived.

Most of Shen Jiawei’s oil paintings from the Cultural Revolution period had been lost during the turbulent time. The fact that Motherland  Tasting Snow on the Wanda Mountains  has remained is nothing short of a miracle.  It had been kept in the warehouse of the Jiamusi Bureau of Agriculture and Land Reclamation (where the Troop Shen Jiawei served was located) for 28 years, until in 2000, when renowned print artist Hao Boyi, Shen’s former supervisor, discovered the painting on the eve of his retirement, and found a way to return it to the artist eventually. Owing to limitations of resources, Tasting Snow on the Wanda Mountains  was painted on a thinly woven piece of fabric from recycled scrap materials, and as a result suffered from severe cracking issues (over the years). In 2000, Shen Jiawei made a frame attached to a plywood support, and adhered the original piece permanently onto the support with PV adhesives, to prevent further damages to the painting once and for all. In the decade that followed, the piece had been exhibited on many occasions in Australia, where the artist lives and works. The more notable of such exhibitions include the artist’s 2002 solo exhibition Shen Jiawei: Zai-Jian Revolution at the Gallery 4a in Sydney and 2010 retrospective Shen Jiawei, From Mao to Now 1961-2010 at the Hazelhuest Regional Art Gallery. It was also exhibited in Mainland China in 2008, when the piece was transported to Shanghai to be included in a large-scale retrospective under the theme of art by young intellectuals (“zhi qing”) - Youth Chronicles by the Shanghai Art Museum.