Moderne Probleme der Malerei (Modern Problems in Painting) by Okakuro Kakuzo, Kiel 1907, Lecture given at the Congress of St. Louis 1904.
This book is inscribled "M. Ideler 1918, and is heavily annotated and underlined. The original of the speech is here. My read of what captivated Martin is the somewhat grandiose idea that the artist is a genius who transcends attempts to be put into a box, and who captures the beauty of both people and nature. In my opinion, this is indeed true, but the overblown diction of the 1900's and the sentimentality of the Japanese way of lecturing are for me, hard to penetrate. Martin's letters, however, are more emotionally aware than is common to find in 2013, so probably this is a real difference rather than a difference of expression.
It is interesting that, in Kakuzo's world, painting has such a central role in society. This was true in Germany, too, so much so that the Kaiser supported the arts with exhibitions and grants (the Berlin Secession was created by artists who couldn't get royal support). This respect for the moral suasion of the arts continued into Hitler's time, when certain artists were banned because they were considered to be anti-German, decadent, subversive. Is it better to be more or less indifferent to the power of art, as we could be said to be today, or hyper sensitive as the Japanese and Germans were during Martin's youth?
It is also notable that Kakuzo is writing just before painting was shattered by modernism. He asserts that painters desire to be true to nature. Martin, at the time that he read this essay, had already experimented with Cubism. Did he think of Cubism as true to nature?
It is interesting that, in Kakuzo's world, painting has such a central role in society. This was true in Germany, too, so much so that the Kaiser supported the arts with exhibitions and grants (the Berlin Secession was created by artists who couldn't get royal support). This respect for the moral suasion of the arts continued into Hitler's time, when certain artists were banned because they were considered to be anti-German, decadent, subversive. Is it better to be more or less indifferent to the power of art, as we could be said to be today, or hyper sensitive as the Japanese and Germans were during Martin's youth?
It is also notable that Kakuzo is writing just before painting was shattered by modernism. He asserts that painters desire to be true to nature. Martin, at the time that he read this essay, had already experimented with Cubism. Did he think of Cubism as true to nature?
Passages from Kakuzo that Martin highlighted
! Our reverential attitude towards all true expressions of art can be explained by our old axiom to approach a picture as one were to enter the presence of a great prince.
!! I wish to distinguish between the problems which concern the individual painter and those which concern society. ... The painter himself is but half-cognizant of the secret which makes him a master, for each new idea imposes its own modes and laws. ... it is the sharing the gladness of the artist in his discovery of a reawakened life in the universe ... it is the magnificent innocence of the playful genius which is too selfish to be exclusive that makes all great art so unapproachable and so welcoming to us all.
Value! The value of a picture is in the man that speaks to you behind the pigments.
... the Napoleonic geniuses of the brush are constantly winning victories mindless of the dogmatic strategy of the academicians. The world ... feels at liberty to dictate where it ought to worship, to criticize where it ought to comprehend.
[In primitive art,] the burden of artistic effort must have been proportionately the same, for the desire of its real votaries is to carry all it can bear.
! The modern scientific mind is apt to have considered itself to have conquered matter by simply labeling it.
!! The demarcations into the classical, romantic, or the realistic schools, are meaningly applied to the great masters, for they meant to represent one and all of those modes. They are in a sense anachronisms, for they transcend all time.
A painting is the whole man, with his infinite susceptibilities to the thoughts of other men and nature around him.
The climate of the land in which he worked, the amount of light, the landscape, the occupations of men, his hereditary memories, the moral and the scientific ideas of the age ...
[Heavily marked]: ... the problems of the painter are individual and subjective ... the method of expressing his personality lies entirely with each artist and forbids any interference from outside.
!! What are the modern problems of painting that society can fitly discuss at all? ... it is the relation of painting to society itself.
[Heavily underlined]: Art is the sphere of freedom, society that of conventions. The vulgar ever resents the ideal. Society is somehow always afraid of the living artist. It begins to offer praise when his ears are deaf––flowers when he is safely laid in his grave. The success and popularity of a living painter in many cases are signs of lowness of spiritual level.
Kakuzo devotes several pages to a history of Chinese and Japanese art, which Martin read with a pencil in his hand but didn't underline. I find it fascinating that Kakuzo thinks art in the service of religion is powerful, but art without religion can feel bewildered. He says, "Art for art's sake is a wail of Bohemia." Wow. But Martin did not underline anything on that page.
[discarding color and shading] ... is not the simplicity of the child but the directness of the master-mind.
We can only become more human by becoming more universal. [But] ... the attitude of imitation is ... destructive of individuality.
To us it seems as if industrialization is making a handmaiden of art, as religion and personal glorification have made it in the past. ... The democratic indifference of the market stamps everything with the mark of vulgar equality.
!! I wish to distinguish between the problems which concern the individual painter and those which concern society. ... The painter himself is but half-cognizant of the secret which makes him a master, for each new idea imposes its own modes and laws. ... it is the sharing the gladness of the artist in his discovery of a reawakened life in the universe ... it is the magnificent innocence of the playful genius which is too selfish to be exclusive that makes all great art so unapproachable and so welcoming to us all.
Value! The value of a picture is in the man that speaks to you behind the pigments.
... the Napoleonic geniuses of the brush are constantly winning victories mindless of the dogmatic strategy of the academicians. The world ... feels at liberty to dictate where it ought to worship, to criticize where it ought to comprehend.
[In primitive art,] the burden of artistic effort must have been proportionately the same, for the desire of its real votaries is to carry all it can bear.
! The modern scientific mind is apt to have considered itself to have conquered matter by simply labeling it.
!! The demarcations into the classical, romantic, or the realistic schools, are meaningly applied to the great masters, for they meant to represent one and all of those modes. They are in a sense anachronisms, for they transcend all time.
A painting is the whole man, with his infinite susceptibilities to the thoughts of other men and nature around him.
The climate of the land in which he worked, the amount of light, the landscape, the occupations of men, his hereditary memories, the moral and the scientific ideas of the age ...
[Heavily marked]: ... the problems of the painter are individual and subjective ... the method of expressing his personality lies entirely with each artist and forbids any interference from outside.
!! What are the modern problems of painting that society can fitly discuss at all? ... it is the relation of painting to society itself.
[Heavily underlined]: Art is the sphere of freedom, society that of conventions. The vulgar ever resents the ideal. Society is somehow always afraid of the living artist. It begins to offer praise when his ears are deaf––flowers when he is safely laid in his grave. The success and popularity of a living painter in many cases are signs of lowness of spiritual level.
Kakuzo devotes several pages to a history of Chinese and Japanese art, which Martin read with a pencil in his hand but didn't underline. I find it fascinating that Kakuzo thinks art in the service of religion is powerful, but art without religion can feel bewildered. He says, "Art for art's sake is a wail of Bohemia." Wow. But Martin did not underline anything on that page.
[discarding color and shading] ... is not the simplicity of the child but the directness of the master-mind.
We can only become more human by becoming more universal. [But] ... the attitude of imitation is ... destructive of individuality.
To us it seems as if industrialization is making a handmaiden of art, as religion and personal glorification have made it in the past. ... The democratic indifference of the market stamps everything with the mark of vulgar equality.