Sadakichi Hartmann (1867–1944,) in full Carl Sadakichi Hartmann, was an American art and photography critic, novelist, poet, and man of letters. He was a celebrated figure in the American arts and literature world at the turn of the 20th Century.
Born to a German father and Japanese mother in Dejima Island near Nagasaki, Japan, Hartmann went to the United States as a boy. He befriended many of the significant artistic and literary figures in Europe and the United States, including Walt Whitman and Ezra Pound.
Hartmann recognized the value of French Symbolism and became friends with Stéphane Mallarmé and Maurice Maeterlinck. Influenced deeply by the Symbolists and oriental literature, he wrote the volumes of poetry Drifting Flowers of the Sea and Other Poems (1904,) My Rubaiyat (1913,) and Japanese Rhythms (1915.) He wrote the plays Christ (1893,) Buddha (1897,) Mohammed (1899,) Confucius (1923,) and Moses (1934.)
A prolific writer for Boston and New York City newspapers in the 1880s and ’90s, Hartmann started the Art Critic in 1893, wrote Symbolist dramas, and lectured. He was a disciple of photographer and art entrepreneur Alfred Stieglitz. Hartmann wrote for Stieglitz’s revolutionary magazine Camera Work, becoming a pioneering figure in art-photography writing.
Hartmann published A History of American Art (2 vols., 1901, 1932) and many other works advocating avant-garde art and artists’ recognition. Under the pseudonym Sidney Allen, Hartmann wrote Composition in Portraiture (1909) and Landscape and Figure Composition (1910; 1973.) His other works include Conversations with Walt Whitman (1895; 1972,) Shakespeare in Art (1901; 1973,) and Japanese Art (1904; 1971.)
The Valiant Knights of Daguerre (1978) is a collection of Hartmann’s critical essays and biographical studies.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Sadakichi Hartmann
After hearing a symphony the score remains. After seeing a play the text remains. An exhibition, as soon as it is dispersed, leaves nothing but the general impression and a few cherished recollections, that we may realize again only according to their general sensitiveness and strength.
—Sadakichi Hartmann
There is no art which affords less opportunity to execute expression than photography. Everything is concentrated in a few seconds, when after perhaps an hours seeking, waiting, and hesitation, the photographer sees the realization of his inward vision, and in that moment he has one advantage over most arts – his medium is swift enough to record his momentary inspiration
—Sadakichi Hartmann
Topics: Photography
All art a new combination of the work of previous generations. For no artist is so self-sufficient that he will shape his course unaffected by, and apart from, what has been done before. It is impossible to wipe one’s mind entirely clear of what one has seen and read and heard in intercourse with other beings. Every work of art must necessarily bear influences of previous accomplishments.
—Sadakichi Hartmann
It is the critic’s duty to enter an artist’s individuality, to discover his intentions—intentions of which the artist himself is perhaps unconscious—so as to judge how far he has realized them, and then to determine what place he occupies in contemporary art.
—Sadakichi Hartmann
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