A Self-Portrait on the Great Wall: Huang Shaoqiang’s Reflections and Lament, 1935

Professor Wu Xueshan of the Central Academy of Fine Arts presents the lecture A Self-Portrait on the Great Wall: Huang Shaoqiang’s Reflections and Lament, 1935.

Since 1931, Huang Shaoqiang had consistently engaged with the War of Resistance as a central subject in his artistic practice. During a journey to Juyong Pass in early 1935, he created a remarkable painting of the Great Wall that incorporated his own self-portrait. Taking this work as its point of departure, the lecture examines how Huang juxtaposed his own image with the Great Wall to express the emotional experience of an individual confronting the nation’s crisis in the 1930s. It further explores the relationship between wartime art, national consciousness, and artistic self-representation.