James Cahill on Meiren Paintings: The Discovery of a Genre

UC Berkeley Professor Emeritus James Cahill, illustrious art historian who has won nearly every distinguished award possible in his field of Asian Art, including the College Art Association and Freer Gallery meritorious awards,   Intimate interiors reveal the women in private moments of contemplation and reflection.  In bound feet and silks, they also have attributes signaling their profession of courtesan.   Settings show women as musicians in a garden, women with kittens, women in their homes and baths  Corresponding to the ukiyo paintings of beautiful women in the Geisha and courtesan quarters, in Japanese painting, Professor Cahill essentially founded a new genre uncommonly viewed in China.  The exhibition is on view at the UC Berkeley Art Museum, 2626 Bancroft Way  facebook.com/bampfa or bampfa.berkeley.edu   




We enjoyed seeing Dr. Cahill at the opening VIP reception, where he spoke warmly about the past studies and about the current catalogue of this exhibition.  He has given a gift of one painting to the UC Berkeley Museum "Putting out the Lamp" (detail) China, 18th c. ink and colors on silk.  In an earlier exhibition this fall on Chinese paintings, and their Japanese relationship, Cahill was honored with a viewing of the screen of a beautiful Chinese landscape  which he also gave to the BAM.
  

Janet Roberts and James Cahill Prof Emerita, UCB 



Screen Cahill gift to BAM



One of the warm welcomes to UC Berkeley was the return of the master teacher art historian, James Cahill, one of the "founders" of Chinese Art History study in the West.  I met him in 1987 in Shanghai, at Fudan University, when there was a total of 150 foreigners in the city.  He was giving a series of lectures and collecting, and shared some of his finds with me over tea, in his neighboring guest house apartment.  Anyway, then through the years I heard him lecture in Princeton, at the Institute for Advanced Studies, when I met his wife and tiny little boys.  One of those sons came to the opening of the "Meiren" exhibition at the BAM.  I met his daughter, Sarah, who is a music celebrity at UCB, and directs a concert series for the museum.  Thin, red haired and intelligent in appearance, in a long skirt and sweater, she accompanied her father, who was in fine form for the reception, but bed ridden for the inaugral lecture on Sunday. I have since watched her open the opera, Mary Magedeline on U tube.

  Undaunted,  a great scholar, as Cahill  is; he simply went on with the show, with a video slide presentation, and a photo of himself in his  home garden...and had the proceedings introduced and concluded by his curator, Julia White, the Asian Curator, of the BAM.  The 'Meiren" show is illuminating, as it presents portraits of women which have been suppressed, as they are erotic in nature, or as compared to their Japanese counterpart, the images of women who were highly literate and cultivated, and thereby courtesans, a step or many steps up from the dance hall pin up portraits, so popular, now with collectors.  My young neice in Vienna bought several to decorate her walls at Humboldt University in Vienna, when she visited me in Shanghai.  Dr Cahill answered the two questions I had, after carefully viewing the portraits....there must be Western influence, most likely the Dutch genre painters of women, and yes, of course, that is the case, as he showed in his illustrated lecture, Part I.  The other question was: are there portrait painters equivalent to a Utamaro for example, who chose these women as his subject, which was somewhat revolutionary, but also lucrative, at the time.   What Dr. Cahill revealed, I think, rather, enjoying the routing...was that a Harvard professor had proclaimed the first early portrait of this nature, to be a famous poetess, the one who represents herself as a man, to study with the foremost monk poet of the time, to whom she becomes a mistress.  It is a popular love story, so a real coup for this professor.  Dr. Cahill disproved it, and showed that the attribution written on the painting was a fake, and that this was one of the genre paintings that he had discovered, and proceeded to discover others, while he was at the Freer, which has awarded him their highest medal in art history, in the past years.   The Freer subsequently bought the painting.  The painting that Dr Cahill bought he gave to the BAM.  He reviewed the paintings in the show, and the ones, as well, which they were not able to obtain, as they could not travel to this venue.  I studied the portraits and noted the "attributes", the Buddah's hand, the fan, the book, and so on...many borrowed from the West, but some characteristic of the East.  I am reminded as Dr. Cahill tells how a foreigner, he, himself, broke the taboo, of discussing the erotic elements in these paintings .   He had published an earlier work, on women in Chinese paintings.   Women in paintings and women as subject of paintings is another matter.  Essentially, Dr. Cahill discovered and made valid a whole new genre, which contemporary China may be willing to accept and celebrate.   In any event, we are very much enjoying the celebration of these paintings and most of all, of Dr. James Cahill's achievement.