Painting History by Shen Jiawei Lee Mabel

Author:Shen, Jiawei,Lee, Mabel [Lee, Shen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Cambria Press
Published: 2018-03-19T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 10

Spain 1937

Towards the end of 2007, the “Mexican Suitcase” arrived at the New York office of the International Center of Photography. It contained three boxes packed with 127 rolls of photographic negatives and other documents. These shots of the Spanish Civil War were the work of three photographers—Robert Capa, Gerda Taro, and Chim (a.k.a David Seymour)—who had long since perished on various battlefields. The “Mexican Suitcase” disappeared in 1940 when Paris fell to the Nazis but, entrusted to a military attaché of the Mexican Embassy in Paris, had crossed the Atlantic Ocean and then passed through various hands. Robert Capa’s brother Cornell founded the International Center of Photography, and when the suitcase arrived sixty-seven years later it can be said to have come home. The events surrounding these recently unearthed black-and-white photographs have been publicized in retrospective exhibitions and publications, and they serve as stark reminders of the wanton bloodshed of the Spanish Civil War that took place over seventy years ago.

The Spanish Civil War has occupied a position on the periphery of my mind for decades because my reading has focused on the international communist movement, World War II in Europe, and the development of modernism in art. In recent years, my attention was drawn to the Spanish Civil War by George Orwell’s writings, André Malraux’s autobiography and biographies, and the works of two Chinese women: Lin Da’s Spanish Travelogue and Hong Ying’s prize-winning novel K: The Art of Love that resulted in a lawsuit brought against her. Moreover, in Australia, SBS Television has shown several excellent films on the period, such as Javier Cercas’s Soldiers of Salamis. While in Barcelona in 2008, I tried to imagine a civil war such as that experienced by George Orwell: a conflict between the security forces and the militia forces of the Workers’ Party of Marxist Unification (POUM). I looked up at the Alcazar Fortress high up on the hill that has become the Mecca of my mind because of El Greco. The government forces never captured this rebel stronghold. Of course, the most exciting moment for me in Spain was when I saw Guernica in the Museo Reina Sofia in Madrid. For me this poignant work was the pinnacle of Pablo Picasso’s art.

In 2006 while working on the historical mural Merdeka that commemorated Malaysia’s independence, I had the opportunity in Bangkok to meet with the legendary Chin Peng, the secretary general of the Malayan Communist Party. I learned that the salute of Malayan communists was the Spanish salute: a raised right fist to the eyebrow. Chin Peng said that a comrade soldier from China had taught them the salute, and they had adopted it: the salute was a distant echo from the Spanish Civil War. The Red Army in China did not use this salute.

The Spanish Civil War, 1936–1939, coincided with Stalin’s purge of Leninists, so it was known as the civil war within a civil war. Francisco Franco’s army had the support of Nazi Germany’s air force and Fascist

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