The painter of the Chinese propaganda image "Standing Guard for Our Great Motherland" has become the Vatican's portrait artist.

The story of Shen Jiawei:

Shen was in his final year in high school when Mao Zedong launched the Cultural Revolution, the 1966-1976 campaign to restore ideological purity to China�s anti-capitalist revolution. His hopes of attending art school dashed with the closure of China�s universities, Shen joined the Red Guards and then the People�s Liberation Army, fully embracing the communist spirit of the times. In the PLA, his self-taught artistic talents were recognized, and he became one of the legions of propaganda artists who glorified workers, farmers, and soldiers in the Socialist Realism style of Soviet propaganda.

In 1974, during a tour of duty in remote Heilongjiang Province, Shen painted his most famous work, �Standing Guard for Our Great Motherland,� featuring three soldiers guarding the Sino-Soviet border from a watchtower. The piece was included in a 1974 exhibition at the National Art Museum in Beijing that was organized by Mao�s wife, who personally praised it.

Shen recalls, though, that when he eventually saw it hanging in the museum, he was stunned: The soldiers� faces had been altered to adhere to the regime�s standards for revolutionary art: Their faces were fatter and redder to make them appear more healthy and heroic.

With the more robust soldiers in place, the picture was reproduced and turned into propaganda posters and Shen shot to fame; in the 1970s and �80s, he was one of the best-known artists in China.

What are we to think of the Vatican's choice of this man? If Shen paints the Pope, is it propaganda? Of course, it's propaganda. All official portraiture is propaganda! To say it's not propaganda is propaganda.

Shen laughs and says, "I stopped my propaganda work in the 1970s.... Even Church commission work, this is part of normal artwork, part of commission, and part of history." Yes, normal artwork, commissioned by powerful institutions and individuals, is propaganda. Whether Pope Francis is a saint or a devil or somewhere in between, this is propaganda:



ADDED: All right, Mr. Shen, I'm ready for my portrait...