9/17/07

Today's blog is a brief addition to yesterday's. In that I recommended two of my CLPs as embodying the messages I want to pass on to young scholars in East Asian art history, giving them some sense of what the field has gone through over the decades of my participation in it, and some (quite partisan) thoughts on where it might go from here, and on what I feel strongly should not be lost. One more recommended reading should be added, since it fills out the messages of those two. This is *CLP 178, the talk that I gave at the conclusion of the "Returning to the Shore" symposium held in Berkeley on April 28th, organized by my former students to honor my new octagenarian status. It includes, in particular, a citation from toward the end of an essay by Thomas Crow on art history as practiced in the U.S., which rings very true for me, but is stated more authoritatively than I could do it. I am happy to assume the role in which all this casts me (a role noted appreciatively in the anonymous note quoted in yesterday's blog) of representing, perhaps, a Retarded Art History. In an age when problematic or outright wrong directions are so open and tempting, Retarded Art History may well be as useful a corrective as, say, Slow Foods. James Cahill

9/17/07

Today's blog is to celebrate, and respond to, an anonymous message that came this morning via the "Contact" facility on my website. It reads:

"Professor Cahill,
Your website is a godsend. Ironically, your approach is "new" to me. The so-called New Art History is all I've ever known; to me, it is "old", it is the orthodoxy. I cannot thank you enough for your generosity in sharing your knowledge online. No password. No subscription. No membership. Your writings have not only stimulated my interest in style-history and connoisseurship, but have also given me bountiful ideas for research in my soon-to-begin graduate studies. Your noble spirit has my deepest respect."

Blessings on whoever wrote that; it warms the heart of this aging academic, makes him feel he still has a function in his field.

It also inspires me to recommend, to anyone who wants to read the messages that embody what I most want to communicate to young people coming into the field, two of my CLPs ("Cahill Lectures and Papers") that were written especially with that purpose in mind. One is *CLP 112, a talk titled "Passing On the Torch," given at a celebration held on Sept. 18, 1993, planned by Joe Price to honor three senior scholars of the history of Japanese painting as they were nearing retirement: John Rosenfield, Tsuji Nobuo, and myself. The other is *CLP 176, "Visual, Verbal, and Global (?): Some Observations on Chinese Painting Studies," delivered at a one-day symposium organized by Jason Kuo at the University of Maryland on November 13, 2005; attached to it is "position paper" prepared for a public conversation with James Elkins the next day. Together, these two can be taken as embodying the deepest messages that I would want young historians of East Asian art, potential or practicing, to receive from me.

Note of advice: Clicking on "Writings of James Cahill" on the home page calls up the whole list of CLPs; but only those with asterisks* are in digital form and so readable on the website. Click once on the orange "Cahill Lectures and Papers" title at left, under Directory, and a long list of numbers, small and black, appears below. Clicking on any one of those calls up the paper.

9/3/07

9/3/07. Two more items have been added to the "Writings" section of my website, both of interest chiefly to people who may want to follow up, as researchers or just out of interest, on my paper "Paintings for Women in Ming-Qing China?" published in Nan Nü: Men, Women, and Gender in China, vol. 8 (2006), 1-54. (Note: the original Nan Nü publication, through a publisher's error, lacked the color illustrations, which were later sent separately in a packet to subscribers. Library copies may be missing them. I have a number of disks with these color illustrations digitized on them, and can send one to anyone who mails me a self-addressed padded disk envelope and a request: serious users only, please.) A Chinese translation of this article was published in Yishushi Yanjiu (The Study of Art Hitsory), vol. 7, 1-37. As I told Harriet Zurndorfer (editor) and Paul Ropp (advisor) when they urged me to publish this, I meant it only as a preliminary form of something I intend(ed) to write up at greater length and in greater depth at some time in the future. For that purpose I kept a file of notes and references to be used in that expanded version; It contains a number of important leads for carrying the theme in new directions. I also kept a separate file titled "Suzhou/Women" listing relevant paintings, those with the subjects I meant to treat, as painted by Suzhou artists (and a few others). This is, in other words, follow-up and expansion material for my all-too-brief study. Uncertain now about when and whether I will write the longer version, I put these notes and picture references on the website for anyone who wants to use them. Send me a copy, please, of whatever you do that utilizes them.

I mentioned somewhere that two-and-a-half chapters from my projected Early Qing volume were on my website. Two are under Writings as Early Qing 1 and 2; the half chapter, on Nanjing painters of early Qing, is under the CLPs, as CLP 154.

We have been having a lot of problems of format, due to the difference between the Microsoft Word program in which I typed the texts and the language of the internet; much is lost in the translation. In the WCP lectures, all spacing, all underlining, all boldface etc. have disappeared, leaving only huge unbroken paragraphs, hard to read. Barry has been working on this, and we will try to have them easier to look at and read before long. Also, both the newly-added sections described above, WP Notes and Suzhou/Women, have come through with everything underlined. Please be patient and put up with these faults.

James Cahill

7/16/07

Again, I must use this blog to apologize for faults in the website and announce the correction of them, thanks to my able research assistant Barry Magrill. First, an extraneous text had been inserted wrongly into the CYCTIE, the "Imperishable Ephemera" section, as Part 2. It has been removed, and the CYCTIE is complete in two parts. (The "Hamlet at Wittenberg" piece is at the end of Part 1.) Secondly, I gave out the wrong numbers for the CLP texts that correspond to the two attachments to my announcement: CLP 178 is the "Berkeley Talk," and CLP 176, now openable, is the "Visual, Verbal, and Global?" paper. Apologies to those who wasted time trying to open it over the past few days.

I have had many positive and interesting responses to my sendout, some from people I haven't heard from in years. Thanks to all who sent encouraging emails. The website will be further improved with corrections and additions; write me if there are problems.

t/11/07

The glitches in my website have been largely repaired, and it is ready to be announced. My long-planned send-out will finally be carried out, today and tomorrow. Those of you who receive it: note that if downloading the attachments is difficult or too much time and trouble, the same texts are on the website as CLP 176 and 177.

So, this cumbersome and overloaded vehicle will at last be under way. Piling so many writings and jottings onto it does not imply that I think they are all worth reading; it is intended for free browsing, especially by people with special interests in the many subjects treated in the texts. It will be added to from time to time.

7/9/07

7/9/07.
There are still a few minor glitches in the website that need to be corrected, but it is close enough to ready for me to announce it. A note on opening the "Writings" section: There is a "Directory" at left, with the categories in orange type below; clicking once on any of those should make a more detailed menu appear below it in small black type, and clicking on the items in those menus should make the texts appear. For some reason, clicking the "Responses and Reminiscences" one doesn't yet produce a menu, and the latter part of it is unavailable until that is fixed; it goes only to 26 now and should go to 36. For some reason, under WCP, WCP 5 and WCP 5 Illustrations are reversed. The "illustrations" are only notes for myself on where to find slides etc.; not much real information on where to find the pictures. That can come later. In the "Writings" category, there is a "Search" box at the top which should allow you to locate references to particular subjects.

Under CLP, the whole list appears first, with asterisks beside those items that are digitized and accessible on the website. Call down the menu by clicking on that item under the Directory, and then click any CLP by number. Items on the complete CLP list lacking asterisks can in principle be obtained, by anyone with a legitimate research purpose, by writing me and paying the cost of copying it from my hard copy and sending it to you; my research assistant is willing to do a limited amount of that work, with pay for his time of course included. I assume that requests of that kind will be few.

So, have fun. Jim

7/3/07

My first words on this "blog" will be an acknowledgement that the name is probably wrong—it appears that "blog" is more often understood as something like "chatroom," with anybody who wants to contributing, and that certainly wasn't what I had in mind—I don't want to take on the administering of any such grand collective forum. This is only to be a place where I can post information and ideas from time to time. As stated in the Welcome, you can email me and I will try to respond, especially if the response can be simple and quick.