The invention of colonial Macau in Smirnoff's Paintings (1944-1945)

Macau is changing every day. New reclamations, new casinos, new buildings and projects are transforming Macau very fast. The old Chinese town along the inner harbor is dying and with it a unique heritage merging old shrines and yards to arcane houses and streets. High rise buildings are shadowing some proud and singular signs of Macau historical past as we witnessed in the famous Guia Lighthouse ‘case’ and debate. Nevertheless, in the vertigo of this last decade rapid economic growth Macau was able to obtain since 2005 an important global treasure through the UNESCO recognition of the ‘historic centre of Macau’ as a World Heritage Site.
Observing more closely, this ‘world heritage’ is not more than a set of 25 spots (23 buildings and 2 squares), and not really the historical heart of Macau. If we take each of the 25 sites as a singular spot or building, probably none would be turn into a singular candidate to become a ‘world heritage’ site. It is the set, the reunion, the linkages, the spatial context that gives to Macau its unique cultural ambiance. A city of parallel cultures where one can travel in few minutes from a very Catholic baroque church in Portuguese style to a unique Chinese corner offering temples, shrines and popular yards.
This dissertation is concerned with Macau cultural heritage preservation but doesn’t discuss directly the present challenges. Better, discusses the present by researching back the recent past of a unique Russian painter who was able to portray an important part of Macau historical heritage. Landscapes, churches, buildings, and streets were carefully painted in simple watercolors by George Smirnoff (1903-1947), an artist exiled in Macau after the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong. Along 1944 and, mainly, 1945, Smirnoff created a unique collection of scenes of Macau: more Portuguese than Chinese, more colonial than popular. Nevertheless, a unique portray of a city surrounded by the horrors of the Pacific War, albeit able to escape directly to the dramatic conflicts in the region.
George Smirnoff paintings of Macau are the subject of this dissertation. The 85 paintings and sketches made by the Russian architect and painter in 1944 and 1945 are the research theme of this thesis. Our main goal is not to add more details to the already very detailed biography of Smirnoff, but to revisit its ‘Macanese’ paintings with some new questions based in a clear and organized inventory of his Macau adventure. Therefore, the paintings are presented in this study in chronological order, are localized, and finally discussed and interpreted from this time-space perspective. Our main argument is that Smirnoff constructed much more than a simple collection of painted views of Macau, and mainly collaborated in the process of selecting the colonial heritage of Macau as its main realms of memory.