Memorial Tribute for Dr James Cahill at the Berkeley Art Museum by Janet Roberts
I talked with Marsha Weidner, whose book I am rereading, Flowering in the Shadows. Women in the History of Chinese and Japanese Painting, along with Elizabeth Wilson who read the most moving letter, which James Cahill had written to her, which introduced her to her husband, the director of the Nelson Atkins Collection. She now has an art business, Asiatica. We had sat by one another at the Asia Society when her husband and the former director of the Met Asian department were in dialogue. I also spent some time talking with Sarah Handler whom I had met when she spoke about the furniture in the paintings at Cahill's exhibition; her essay is in that final exhibition catalogue. Of course, I was able to pay my respects and have some conversation with Dr Cahill's son, and daughter. Sarah, being a musician, and therefore in the "feeling" arts, was moved to tears during the presentation. Her brother, Nicholas, charmingly recounted an incident of James Cahill making a "man" for them out of stuff in the basement one Halloween, and Nicholas had loved this as a child...discovering that a clothes pin could be a "nose". I suggested to him that perhaps the "bones" and object had inspired him becoming an archaeologist; he simply replied, "I have always liked bones"!
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I would like to share my manuscript chapter, "Chi and the Brush" 1987, when I met Dr Cahill during his week long seminar at Fudan University in Shanghai. "Nature and Scenery, landscape or place are certainly the raison d'etre of the Chinese genre", Dr Cahill stresses. He goes on to illustrate that portraying a place represents or is "equal" to a person. For example, the views which have been made famous at West Lake, in Hangzhou on of the Yangtze or in the Huangshan demonstrate this landscape equivalency of the inner or psychic landscape.
Dr. Cahill and I meet later for some tea in his small room at the Foreign Guest House, across from the faculty housing where I live (and will again stay in 2008-9 on an exchange from the Univ of PA) as a US China American Friendship Association Exchange Faculty. Dr Cahill has purchased a couple of paintings from Chinese artists whom he discovered, who are now significant painters. He points to the act of "pushing the object to the edge or even beyond the frame so that only part of it is seen; rectilinear stalks and branches divide the composition geometrically into interesting shapes,." Dr Cahill summed up, "Chinese artists place themselves outside the normal expectations of society. To say the artist paints, disregarding the cultural context, distorts. The artist can only make an authentic space for himself in a corrupt society by refusing engagement. "I met Dora Chen, wife of ST Phen, in Dr Cahill's seminar, and both would become my "family" for the remainder of my time in Shanghai.
It would impress me that Dr. Cahill was giving a good portion of his library to the Hangzhou School of Art, as Hangzhou is considered the birthplace of Modern Art, in China, overshadowed today by the commercial market in Shanghai and Beijing and other cities ---however, many of the contemporary artists still teach quietly there, and most are graduates, though we do not hear much about this fact, in light of the extreme sums paid for their works. I mapped the history of these founders in Hangzhou for an article on the topic, --while in residence teaching at Zhejiang University, and while mentoring a young Fulbright art historian, who was especially in touch with the calligraphy as painting masters.
Whoever Dr James Cahill touched with his knowledge and passionate devotion to Chinese and Japanese art, and to his teaching career, experienced his generosity of spirit, and not only learned to see better, to see "into" art, but into themselves. As his former students recall in their memorial tributes, he "changed lives" and "Chinese art history" and by his example, of productivity, -- even in the very last year of his life -- educated others in enlarging our own humanity.
I am so grateful that my return from living 8 years in China and studying its art and culture and the geography of those paintings, coincided with Dr Cahill's gift to the Berkeley Art Museum, and the last year of his life. I am also very grateful that I did see him just a few weeks before his departure from this life, but his legacy well prepared for us, not only in the art, his library, his students but in the remaining members of his family. Every meeting with Dr James Cahill inspired us to become more fulfilled in our own lives. He had the quality of an early classical scholar in China, for whom students felt filial devotion as though he were a parent. .
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I would like to share my manuscript chapter, "Chi and the Brush" 1987, when I met Dr Cahill during his week long seminar at Fudan University in Shanghai. "Nature and Scenery, landscape or place are certainly the raison d'etre of the Chinese genre", Dr Cahill stresses. He goes on to illustrate that portraying a place represents or is "equal" to a person. For example, the views which have been made famous at West Lake, in Hangzhou on of the Yangtze or in the Huangshan demonstrate this landscape equivalency of the inner or psychic landscape.
Dr. Cahill and I meet later for some tea in his small room at the Foreign Guest House, across from the faculty housing where I live (and will again stay in 2008-9 on an exchange from the Univ of PA) as a US China American Friendship Association Exchange Faculty. Dr Cahill has purchased a couple of paintings from Chinese artists whom he discovered, who are now significant painters. He points to the act of "pushing the object to the edge or even beyond the frame so that only part of it is seen; rectilinear stalks and branches divide the composition geometrically into interesting shapes,." Dr Cahill summed up, "Chinese artists place themselves outside the normal expectations of society. To say the artist paints, disregarding the cultural context, distorts. The artist can only make an authentic space for himself in a corrupt society by refusing engagement. "I met Dora Chen, wife of ST Phen, in Dr Cahill's seminar, and both would become my "family" for the remainder of my time in Shanghai.
It would impress me that Dr. Cahill was giving a good portion of his library to the Hangzhou School of Art, as Hangzhou is considered the birthplace of Modern Art, in China, overshadowed today by the commercial market in Shanghai and Beijing and other cities ---however, many of the contemporary artists still teach quietly there, and most are graduates, though we do not hear much about this fact, in light of the extreme sums paid for their works. I mapped the history of these founders in Hangzhou for an article on the topic, --while in residence teaching at Zhejiang University, and while mentoring a young Fulbright art historian, who was especially in touch with the calligraphy as painting masters.
Whoever Dr James Cahill touched with his knowledge and passionate devotion to Chinese and Japanese art, and to his teaching career, experienced his generosity of spirit, and not only learned to see better, to see "into" art, but into themselves. As his former students recall in their memorial tributes, he "changed lives" and "Chinese art history" and by his example, of productivity, -- even in the very last year of his life -- educated others in enlarging our own humanity.
I am so grateful that my return from living 8 years in China and studying its art and culture and the geography of those paintings, coincided with Dr Cahill's gift to the Berkeley Art Museum, and the last year of his life. I am also very grateful that I did see him just a few weeks before his departure from this life, but his legacy well prepared for us, not only in the art, his library, his students but in the remaining members of his family. Every meeting with Dr James Cahill inspired us to become more fulfilled in our own lives. He had the quality of an early classical scholar in China, for whom students felt filial devotion as though he were a parent. .
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