Description
Author's Edition (self published), Hollywood, California, 1940. Pamphlet, 42 pp.
Rare, out-of-print & unusual books · Since 1997
114
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Catalog notes
Condition & notes
In good condition/ NO dust jacket. Grey paper covers have light bumping to edges and corners and light overall scuffing, aging and soiling. Binding tight (staple bound). A few pages are a bit discolored (looks like from a laid-in newspaper article), but pages are otherwise clean and unmarked. NOT Ex-Library. NO remainder marks. A collection of art criticism essays by one of the earliest and most distinctive voices in American art criticism. This is one of Hartmann's final and most personal statements on art and criticism which captures his late-life reflections on the American art scene, his skepticism of modernist trends, and his defense of artistic individualism. The work critiques what he saw as the growing superficiality of mass art and emphasizes the need for sincerity and technical mastery. Sadakichi Hartmann (1867 - 1944) was a German-Japanese American art critic, poet, and dramatist. Born in Nagasaki, Japan, he emigrated to the United States in his teens and quickly became a pioneering figure in American arts and letters. He was a close associate of Walt Whitman and Alfred Stieglitz and among the first American critics to champion photography as fine art. Known for his modernist leanings and iconoclastic voice, Hartmann contributed to publications like Camera Work and maintained a lifelong commitment to artistic independence and experimentation.