Five former graduate students of my father gathered for a mini-reunion in town in early June. Kurt, Susan, Janet, David and Pat have all had successful careers in Chinese or Japanese art history as professor, curators, architect and art appraiser/author. I was uniquely privileged, as a ‘bee’ on the wall, to listen to two full days of reminiscences of how each became his students, his pedagogy, teaching and mentoring style, and his and my mother’s impact on their lives. While here, they viewed his Chinese ink art collection including some that I have recently added while interpreting colophons and poems, linking paintings to classical painters, placing them in their historical context, and providing many stylistic and technical insights. Not only did I learn a lot, most of all their refreshing view of my parents, quite counter to my own, was frankly lifechanging.
I knew that my father was a dedicated scholar of Yuan dynasty painting, having written several monographs on the artist Chao Mengfu. My mother told me he was one of the very first chaired professors at the University of Kansas and ultimately trained around 25 PhD and 75 Masters students, apparently the record in liberal arts, so surprising for such an arcane field. Nancy Steinhardt of Penn wrote ‘every student during this period turned to Li’s Autumn Colors on the Ch’iao and Hua Mountains as the model for both study of a seminal painting and the specific questions to ask about a masterpiece’. This gathering, which of course cannot be considered unbiased, confirmed that he is considered amongst the three giants in the field including Wen Fong and James Cahill. Yet staying out of the art history politics and not self-promoting, he may not have attained the full recognition he deserved.
And, I also knew that my father discovered and promoted the 5th Moon Group led by Liu Kuosung in Taiwan, an avant garde ink painting group, then completely unappreciated. While other scholars group largely ignored this new movement, my father presciently and proactively plunged into this new wave by organizing exhibitions, writing catalog introductions, and grants to bring these artists to the US to provide additional training and exposure. All of his efforts radically changed their career trajectories from struggling in Taiwan to success and appreciation in the West. The reunion group described his efforts as an ‘obligation’ of one in a high position to help struggling artists whom he viewed as the future of Chinese ink painting. In effect, he became their academic ‘patron’ a role which has a long history in China.
So what was it like to be Dr. Li’s graduate student? They all recalled the thrilling Thursday evening seminars held in the storage room of the Nelson-Atkins Gallery where Laurence Sickman the Director and my father would preside over monumental Song Dynasty (900 AD) paintings just for teaching purposes! That couldn’t happen today. My father emphasized broad connoisseurship training (knowing objects) that enabled them to either become scholars or hands-on curators. Today, the narrow training focused on a specific research area no longer prepares them to teach survey courses or discern fake from genuine objects. He was ‘fatherly’ in his approach taking on ‘project’ students, writing innumerable letters of introduction to scholars and curators in Taiwan, Japan and China to facilitate their doctoral research, and successfully obtaining fellowships to support their overseas training … even approving their marriage partners. He organized two ongoing ‘internship’ positions at Taiwan’s Palace Museum dedicated to KU graduate students and similarly at Nanjing University when China finally opened its gates. He avoided asking students to work on his projects, as many professors do to further their own efforts, instead had them chose their own dissertation subject. In hindsight, some wished he had pushed some to work on contemporary Chinese artists he was helping on the side as that would have put them at the forefront of an emerging field. If he didn’t know much about a particular painter or topic, he would connect students to other international experts. He seemed to know and be respected by everyone, everywhere all at once (sounds like a current Asian movie). And, he constantly invited visiting scholars and artists to visit and teach. In essence, he was a selfless and relentless advocate, neither territorial in advancing his own research agenda nor limiting their exposure to alternative viewpoints. He was uber mentor and prepared teacher but … he had a boring lecture style. My mother also played an important team role as a thoughtful sounding board, even guiding students on how to navigate my father. Such a team.
So how did I experience my parents? Hmmm, it’s hard to recognize them as the same persons described above. My mother was an Uber controlling Tiger that two of my pediatric colleagues called abuse. Unquestionably her demanded discipline, delayed gratification, and home summer schooling laid the foundation for my eventual professional success for which I’m appreciative. Although the other parent or a sibling mitigates the impact, my father later admitted that he had fully delegated my upbringing to my mother. Perfect storm. The unintended costs were several rounds of counseling to extinguish one memorable episode that allowed me to posthumously achieve peace with her. My father was aloof, unapproachable as he went directly from dinner to newspaper to nightly type-written research stint from 9 pm to 3 am. He was hypercritical and, not unlike his Chinese peers, never uttered a word of praise. One which could be taken as such occurred after my being elected president of our professional society. I had hoped for a compliment at the pinnacle of my career, but he immediately rejoindered ‘now you can be a dean’, which I took as falling short of his raised bar, a memorable crestfallen moment. When caring for him near the end, I recognized I had very few father-son memories other than in museums – all others involved fathers of friends. And it finally explained why from age 11-34, I sought a male mentor at every stage of my life to fill an immense void in my four-chambered soul. Before she passed, Teri asked me to continue in therapy and I finally attained peace with him too. We all have our respective parents to bear.
This gathering of former students provided a wonderful appreciation of how much he gave of himself in his uniquely selfless way. They constitute his penultimate extended as his fatherly concern was dispersed so widely and tangibly to so many students, artists and colleagues and the game-changing good that resulted. As well as my mother’s important adjunctive role. In the overall cosmic balance, their gains outweighs my loss. Ironically, my segue to get him to talk with me was to ask about his work especially about the artists he discovered. I began to appreciate his prescient, aesthetic eye and his key role in facilitating the development and careers of contemporary Chinese ink artists. This seed grew into deeper appreciation of the art and a commitment to expand his collection into the 21st century. I do know he would be surprised and proud. And while much of my life was spent trying to distance myself, ironically I now discover that not only do I use a similar approach to my mentees, I even trapse in his giant art footsteps.
