James Cahill dies at 87; scholar of Chinese art

Blog: More On Art and Artists

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Created on Monday, 28 November 2011 16:07

Written by James Cahill

Blog: More On Art and Artists

This blog continues the themes of the previous one, setting down some of my old and new ideas about art and artists. This one will no doubt repeat some of what the first one included--that’s the nature of old people’s reminiscences and records.

Now I want to quote from a long email that I sent several months ago to Julia White, Senior Curator of Asian Art at the Berkeley Art Museum (formerly, when I was there, University Art Museum.) Julia, who was once my student, has had a distinguished career as a museum professional, ending up (happily for us) in Berkeley. I was responding to some news in the monthly Film and Art Notes that the Museum and its Pacific Film Archive put out. My email included these paragraphs (along with others):

Dear Julia,

Good to see in the new BAM/PFA Notes that you’ve put together an exhibition of Four Wangs paintings. I wonder what other collections you’ve drawn on—where you got, for instance, a Wang Shimin, since I/we haven’t any. Anyway, good choice. I’m glad that Larry [the BAM Director] is so enthusiastic about Orthodox-school painting. Time was when everybody was wild about the splashy kinds of painting, and bored by this. My early Wang Hui hanging scroll really looks good in the Notes. What a marvelous painter he was in his youth, and what a bore he turned into, mostly, in his later years. Maybe my book [Pictures for Use and Pleasure] and our exhibition [of meiren or beautiful-women paintings] will create a taste for what used to be dismissed contemptuously as “academic style” painting. Wouldn’t that be a breakthrough.

If you live long enough, you can see virtually every conceivable style and taste in art—and in music and literature—have its day of being touted as the great final pinnacle of development, and then superceded by another. I remember very well when tonal music was declared dead, over forever, and even Stravinsky went twelve-tone at his end; then a while later, a short time when you look back from your eighties, there was John Adams (whom we came to know very well through Sarah, for whom he composed a piece) writing thoroughly tonal music to great acclaim. My first Chinese art professor, Otto Maenchen, would begin his classes by saying something like: “You have all come here to learn about Chinese art, and I know what it is you expect to see—“ and he would go on creating this awful image of ivory balls intricately carved within balls, and fragile teacups covered with colorful floral designs, and all the rest, and then he would say “If I had my way, I would take a sledge-hammer and smash them all to bits!” and he would jump around the podium doing that. But yesterday’s NYTimes Arts section had on the front page an enthusiastic review of a show at the Met, curated by two people I don’t know (one a curator in their Asiatic Dept.), of later Qing gewgaws, especially from the Qianlong era, as “an enthralling exhibition,” going all metaphysical about them, “A universe in the details..” And so forth.

One also lives to see the same first-ever discoveries made over & over, sometimes about the same artists & works. I write that after reading, in the new BAM/PFA Art & Film Notes, how your modernist curator is it? Barry Rosen and another have “rediscovered” Eva Hesse--with the air of people springing something completely new onto the art world, they write about their “unprecedented presentation” of her works. I remember very well--I was acting director of the UAM, if my memory is right--when Brenda Richardson organized the show from which the Museum’s Eva Hess objects were purchased and kept—I think I had the honor of authorizing the purchase, although at that time they didn’t look much like works of art to me—and I remember also how movingly Ann Wagner [Professor in the History of Art Dept., married to T. J. Clark] wrote about Eva Hessa in her book on women artists, making me really appreciate her work (as, I’m sorry to say, the new blurb doesn’t quite achieve). And here are these two, telling us breathlessly about how she  “expanded the conceptual and technical possibilities for art.”

I once, after sitting through a long string of lectures by modernist candidates for our search, proposed at a faculty meeting that anyone who used that formulation be eliminated from consideration—it’s so commonplace, so facile, such a cop-out--because it’s never been, in itself, an adequate reason for recognizing anything as a valid work of art. Anybody who wants to can “expand the … possibilities for art,” and would-be expanders have been doing it ever since Duchamp’s clever urinal, with everybody responding by saying “Wow! He/she has really . . “ etc. And they have to go further & further into the unacceptable and trivial to go on expanding. That young Chinese artist [Gao something] who started out promisingly at the Academy in Hangzhou, whom Peter Selz, when he went there, declared to be the only artist worthy of notice in China--he was doing interesting spin-offs on traditional Chinese painting and calligraphy--ended up with a show in S.F. of used women’s sanitary napkins. (For which Peter wrote an enthusiastic pamphlet blurb, and told us how Gao had “broken the last taboo”--another oft-repeated claim.) And Herschel Chipp, when he was chairing the department (then both wings, History and Practice), had to cope with an MFA [Master of Fine Arts] studio show in which one of the works was a pile of shit in the gallery. Will the time ever come when that sign I proposed hanging from our highest balcony, when I became acting director, reading “Doing Dumb Things and Calling It Art is Over!” really comes true? I probably won’t live so long. And anyway, there may well (awful thought) be irreversible wrong directions. As I was writing Sarah recently, this one started when artists at last achieved their great dream of convincing people that art should be defined as whatever artists do and call art, and that people can no longer say to them “No, that isn’t what we want, and you won’t get any more money or recognition from us until you go back to making what we do want.”

Continuing: On the matter of artists’ rewards and recompense: I have in my “Curiosities” file an old Jules Feiffer cartoon series in which an artist, holding his brushes and palette knife (?), strikes a series of dramatic poses while saying: “My art exposes your commercialism--/ Your over-indulgence--/ Materialism—acquisitiveness--/ Your greed, your narcissism--/ Your corrupt ethics, morality--/ I dedicate my life as an artist to the free expression of my contempt for what you are/ (and, finally, as he strikes a particularly defiant pose): Fund me!” That catches it nicely.

Max Loehr used to quote Goethe, someone in one of his plays? saying: “Bilder, Maler, reden nicht!” Meaning: Pictures, Painter, don’t talk! And I often quoted both of them, Max and Wolf, with approval.

This still isn’t all I have to write about art and artists; I will have a third blog on this theme. I need to make clear that I have not, throughout my long career, been unenthusiastic about, or opposed to, recent and contemporary art as a whole, even to the extent that Gombrich was. I want to outline some of my old enthusiasms, to counter somewhat the negative views about artists that this and the previous blog have set forth. And I still have a few more stories and memories to relate. Old people enjoy reminiscing, but even more, ranting.

Blog: On Art and Artists

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Created on Friday, 25 November 2011 01:27

Written by James Cahill

Blog: On Art and Artists

In an email correspondence with my daughter Sarah some months ago--we discuss and argue (in friendly ways) about lots of things by email--she sent me an excerpt from the play Travesties by Tom Stoppard in which Tristan Tsara is one of the characters, and he has a conversation with someone named Carr in which  Carr ends up saying, “Don't you see my dear Tristan you are simply asking me to accept that the word Art means whatever you wish it to mean;  but I do not accept it.”

She was right, that resonated strongly with me--in fact, it seemed to echo in my mind something I myself have been arguing for decades. (Maybe Tom Stoppard and I think alike--after all, we both wrote plays--mine a playlet, recently posted here--featuring Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern.) In reply to Sarah, I wrote this:

Your friend’s quotation from a Stoppard play reminds me of something along the same lines that I once said in an Arts Club argument—the kind of thing you say and think is profound and no one notices, so you remember it forever. It was something like this:

It all started going wrong when we accepted, as artists wanted us to, the proposition that art is whatever artists make or do, and whatever they decide is art. Before that we knew what art was, and could say to artists: No, that isn’t what we want, and you won’t get any recognition or money from us until you give us what we want. Now we can’t say that any more, and art has gone terribly wrong as a consequence.

Continuing with things I’ve written in other contexts over the years: That same belief underlies my feelings about Duchamps and John Cage and the like: their admirers say of them, in what they take to be praise, that they “opened up art,” or “called the whole concept of art into question.” That’s a formulation I’ve come to mistrust, and lose some respect for those who parrot it. We heard it so often in talks by modernist candidates (in our U.C. Berkeley History of Art search for a modernist replacement for our faculty) that I proposed in a department meeting that anyone who said it, in any form, be eliminated from consideration. (Some of my colleagues, needless to say, didn’t agree.) And when I myself was appointed acting director of the University Art Museum for a year (1973-4 I think it was) after Peter Selz was retired, I said half-jokingly at a staff meeting, thinking back over some of the exhibitions Peter had shown there, that we were going to hang a big sign from the highest balcony reading: DOING DUMB THINGS AND CALLING IT ART IS OVER.

That didn’t happen, of course. But the belief behind it—and it’s a real belief--has also affected my scholarly writing. At some time along the way I came to the realization that the great switch in Chinese painting, in the 17^th-18^th centuries and later, from valuing traditional (careful, technically high-level) styles to valuing xieyi (“drawing the idea,” quick and spontaneous styles) was in some part engineered by artists, since it made their lives a lot easier. And I found documentation for that argument—complaints by prominent Chinese of that time, collectors and artists among them, who weren’t happy about the change and wrote protests against it, which I quoted along with writings by artists promoting the idea. All this I made into a lecture-article titled “Xieyi As a Cause of Decline in Later Chinese Painting.” (An abbreviated form of it appears in the last section of my Three Alternative Histories of Chinese Painting book.) Among the places I presented it was in a lecture given at the Chinese Artists Association in Shanghai, and there (as I relate in Reminiscence no. 9 on my website) it called forth the most angry response I’ve ever received to a lecture.

It’s also true that the central argument of my recently-published book Pictures for Use and Pleasure: Vernacular Painting in High Qing China is an extension of the same belief, since the traditional and careful styles are carried on mostly by the artists who make what I call vernacular paintings, a kind that wasn’t valued or collected in China, while the really prestigious artists, the ones whose works are praised and collected, mostly do the kinds of paintings in which distinctive brushwork and personal style, taken to be expressive of the artist’s feelings, are most valued. And at the end of my Pure and Remote View series of video-recorded lectures, when I’m talking about how the great landscape tradition from the Song dynasty wasn’t really continued in China, because of the “takeover” of painting by the scholar-amateurs in the early Yuan, I make an even stronger and broader assertion: that the great curse of China, over the centuries, has been its reluctance or inability to challenge central orthodoxies (such as the doctrine of literati painting—but I also give other examples) and allow sufficiently for divergence and dissension.

Just so I won’t be misunderstood: it isn’t that I have turned against the great tradition of scholar-amateur painting as such—many or most of the great masters of later Chinese painting belong to it (although their “amateur” status, as my Painter’s Practice book makes clear, was often problematic.) What I am against is the continuing acceptance of scholar-amateur painting and all its doctrines, including its rejection of other kinds of painting, as central truths in our field, to be taught to acolytes as the Buddha taught the Six Noble Truths. This is out of keeping with all our other (presumed) beliefs, such as our deep mistrust of self-serving arguments made by dominant minorities; and it is, I now think, quite wrong. It has harmed our field of study by drastically narrowing its scope of inquiry.

It will be difficult or impossible, however, to persuade my colleagues and the broader public to give up their deep belief in the truth and centrality of the literati painting ideal, because it’s one of those doctrines that have a kind of immediate appeal to beginning and unserious students of art that logical argument or art-historical truths can’t easily counter. As I point out at several points in my recorded lectures, and in some of my writings: certain propositions or beliefs have a kind of built-in rhetorical advantage over others—they sound better, that is, without really being better. New students coming into my courses on Chinese painting would mostly say that they find the bold, simple, and splashy kind of painting attractive and exciting, and are bored by the careful, “academic” kind. New students coming to China to study Chinese art in the 1970s-80s, as I remember, mostly wanted to learn more about the eccentric ink-splasher Xu Wei, and about xieyi. Southern School or “Sudden Enlightenment” Zen has this rhetorical advantage over Northern School, or “Gradual Enlightenment.” And so forth—the artists who persuaded their public that xieyi is better than xiesheng (drawing [from] life) knew this and exploited it. There is no use in telling the students and others that the ultimate pleasures of art, for those of us who have spent lifetimes deeply engaged with it, are more likely to be found elsewhere—it’s like telling the young to give up listening to rock music and join me in listening instead to the late quartets of Beethoven.

As another example of the greater attractiveness of certain words over others: The number of hits, or times watched, on my video-recorded lectures varies widely, with some receiving twice as many hits as others. And the really popular ones aren’t the ones I myself believe to be most visually and otherwise rewarding--not at all. They are lectures that have certain attractive words in their titles. Between nos. 5 and 6 on Five Dynasties painting, the one I (unwisely) subtitled “Reliable Works,” lecture 5, gets less than half as many hits as no. 6, on “the Great “Landscape Masters,” even though (as those who have watched them both know) 5 is much more original and interesting than 6. No. 8B on “Literati Painting” gets lots of hits, as does 9B, on “Political and Poetic Painting” in the Southern Song Academy. It’s the words that catch people’s attention: Literati! Poetic! Oh wow! But the lecture that is for me a high point, both in the greatness of the paintings and in the (I would hope) interest of the arguments made, lecture 7A on Early Northern Song Landscape, gets less than one-fourth the number of hits as the previous one on “the Great Landscape Masters” of Five Dynasties, which is made up mostly of imitations and school works, as I explain while showing them. And, as those who watch 8B all the way through learn, I see the “Literati Painters of Northern Song” as having produced works that represent, on the whole, a move sharply downward in quality and interest from the great masters that those scholar-artists scorned and largely supplanted. I should have devised titles for the lectures that would steer potential viewers to the best of them, as I’ve obviously failed to do; I must learn to choose words better in writing titles.

I will continue with more musings on Art and Artists in later blogs--this is all for tonight.

Literary Blog B, Hamlet At Wittenberg part 2

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Created on Friday, 04 November 2011 06:02

Written by James Cahill

Literary Blog B, Hamlet At Wittenberg part 2

I open this one with an Added Note to the Rhymes Blog posted some days ago. In that, I referred to the Major General’s Song in Pirates of Penzance. Now the Antiques section of last Friday’s NYTimes announces that the Yale Center for British Art is opening a show of “Johan Zoffany, the 18^th-century British painter” who was famous as a portraitist. This news can elicit only one response from Gilbert & Sullivan fans: we recall the great rhyme in another couplet of the Major General’s Song: (from memory)

“I can tell undoubted Raphaels from Gerald Dows and Zoffanys,

I know the “Croaking Chorus” from the Frogs of Aristophanes. . .”

I was aware before that Gerald Dow (or Dou) existed as a painter, but here encountered Zoffany for the first time. But of course Gilbert would never have made him up--that would have been cheating, and Gilbert never cheated. Pushed words around sometimes (rhyming “. . lot ‘o news” with “hypotenuse” in the same song) but didn’t cheat.

Now, back to my Hamlet/Faust parody, of which the first half was printed in the previous blog. Hamlet as a student returns to Wittenberg to learn that his favorite professor, Faustus, has been fired from the university for having sex with one of his students, whom he believes to be Helen of Troy. Hamlet summons him up to get the truth from him. Faustus has just left as this second half begins:

Faust. Adieu, adieu, adieu! Remember me.

(Lights out, then up; Faustus is gone.)

Ham. Oh all you host of heaven! Oh earth! What else?

To think that they have fired this worthy man

For making such a reasonable choice!

I'm now resolved more than I ever was

To make them reconsider their decision.

We cannot tolerate injustice!

Oph. Ham,

We all agree the time is out of joint,

But why are we obliged to set it right?

Ham. You talk like someone over thirty; who

Will do it if we don't? The only issue

Is whether we should try by peaceful means

Of fair persuasion to effect our end,

Or bring th'Administration to its knees

With crippling blows 'gainst its security.

We plant a bomb, we occupy an office,

And soon or later, they capitulate.

Which do we think would be the wiser course?

Guild. It seems to me that we should first decide

Whether the reinstatement of old Faustus

Suffices, as a cause, for our involvement.

Perhaps his actions justify his firing.

Ham. A pox upon your indecision, sir!

The matter's very simple, as I see it.

We recognize the Church to be corrupt;

Heresy opposes to the Church;

Faustus they say has practiced heresy—

And therefore Faustus merits our support.

Such bootless arguing just wastes our time;

The only question is our course of action.

Since you are of no help, I must decide. (Pauses, holds head)

I feel a curious urge to draw apart,

Addressing certain words unto myself.

If you'll excuse me, I shall do so now.

Ros. I think, my lord, it's called soliloquizing.

In moderation it's a harmless thing—

But too much talking to yourself, they say,

Betokens psychological disorder.

So pray, don't let this grow into a habit.

(They withdraw to the side of the stage and sit there.

Hamlet strikes an attitude.)

Ham. To trash, or not to trash—that is the question.

Whether to aim at quiet revolution

By operating still within the system

Or to take arms against th' Establishment

For reasons of its gross inequities

And by opposing, hurt it. To trash, to sit-in—

Oh wow! and by defiant act, to end

The feelings of frustration that the young

Are heir to; truly 'tis a consummation

Devoutly to be wished. To demonstrate—

Perhaps to be arrested: there's the rub;

For in that fell arrest, what cops may come

To bloody up our heads with brutal clubs

Must give us pause; there's the respect

That makes calamity of confrontation.

For who would bear the stifling pressures of

This Late Mediaeval society

When he could, with a well-placed bomb or two,

Hasten the coming of the Renaissance—

Were it not that the Powers who oppose

The advent of a more enlightened age

Will ruthlessly put down such an attempt.

And thus the native hue of resolution

Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,

And enterprises of great pitch and moment

With this regard their currents turn awry

And lose the name of action . . .

Guild. Really, Ham,

You ramble over-long, and to no end.

If you intend to act, for God's sake do it!

Ham. Your words strike to my soul—I said that once.

You're right; procrastination is a curse.

I'll go at once and rouse my followers,

And ere the day is out, a hundred strong,

Confront the Chancellor with our demands.

And if they are not met—let them beware!

No one shall say that Hamlet cannot act!

(He rushes out. Others rise, Queen exits, chairs moved back.)

Ros. And so, my fair Ophelia (for we now

Must all revert unto our former roles,

The flashback being over) Hamlet went

And took decisive action, just this once,

And found himself arrested and expelled.

Oph. I understand—and ever since that time

He has been paralyzed by indecision

Through having learned, by harsh experience

The outcome of impetuosity.

Ros. One thing is very plain—that he is not

The kind of person you would want to marry.

Oph. He says unpleasant things to me, such as

That I should get me to a nunnery.

I've never even much liked Sunday school!

Ros. We must devise some plan to stop this match.

(Etc., as on p. 80 of W. S. Gilbert text.)

(Addition to ending, following Claudius's last speech on p. 89:)

Claud. So, Hamlet, get thee gone—and don't come back again!

Ham. I welcome your suggestion, and will go.

If what you say is true, then I shall make

A striking figure on their public stage.

It's plain I'm not appreciated here.

And when I tire of that, why, on again—

Unto a place that I have heard about

Called Harvard of the West. I'll change my name

To something foreign—let's say, Savio—

And there indulge my taste for rhetoric.

Perhaps I can regain the mode of action,

For better or for worse. And so, farewell!

To Engle-land!

(Business of farewell, Hamlet exits dramatically, others strike pose,

lights out.)

The Playwright adds: For those with short memories: Harvard of the West is of course U.C. Berkeley. Mario Savio was the student who, at a key early moment in the Free Speech Movement, climbed onto a car and made a stirring address exhorting the crowd to go off and occupy the University offices.

End of today’s blog.