James Cahill dies at 87; scholar of Chinese art

9.Angry Response To Talk In Shanghai

9. Angry Response to Talk in Shanghai.
Hong Zaixin had heard about this from somebody, and asked me about it. I wrote him:

About my talk in Shanghai: I was a Visiting Scholar at Fudan U. in 1986, and gave the lecture for the Zhongguo Yishujia Xiehui at that time, probably the Fall of ’86, with a Ms. Zhou from Fudan as my interpreter. The lecture was titled “Xieyi as a Cause of Decline in Later Chinese Painting”; a somewhat shortened form of it is the “Afterword” in Three Alternative Histories (pp. 100-112.) I have never experienced such a hostile reaction—the audience was made up largely of artists, and it made some of them furious. I pointed out that it was in some part based on writings by Chinese writers, as quoted in the lecture, but that didn’t placate them. Of course, I can understand why; it undermines some of their most cherished beliefs.) I should mention that a senior artist, whose name I don’t remember, was sitting at the back and objecting noisily; at one point he shouted that one of the paintings on the screen (a Wu Changshuo) was a fake. I responded that he could be right, but I was only using it as an example, and its authenticity didn’t affect my point.

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