Letter from Erich Kahn to J.P. Hodin

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[Translation/transcription]

1 Albert Studios
4 Albert Street
NW1

EUSTON 6507

22 January 1961

Dear Pepi,

I’m sending you here two sheets of commentary on my essay about beauty. Continuation to follow. And if I live, it will be a long continuation (if not quite comparable to J. J. Rousseau’s Confessions).

I have been in touch with Dr Loeb – two letters from him, and two from me. A re-recording of my statements would be possible. Unfortunately I don’t have any material other than the prospect of the kindly promised expertise.

I hope you’re all well.

The Ben Uri is currently showing my ‘La belle juive’, the background to your ‘Portrait’.

Sincerely yours,

Erich


[Enclosed typescript]

Further Reflections on Beauty

This heading harbours the potential for pedantry. I have much to paint and little to describe, but when I must write, I do so against strong internal resistance, which takes a significant toll of time and energy and entails no small amount of anxiety. Painting, a constant occupation that I am only rarely able to enjoy, is NECESSARY for the resolution of conflict and chronic discontent; I did not choose painting as a profession as one chooses architecture, jurisprudence or medicine; I am old enough to be under no illusions as to the social status of the artist – above all in England – and I know that talent, when not paired with a comfortable social position, tends to illicit more resentment than respect. I repeat that I paint out of necessity and that I would do the same – would have to do the same – even if I were rich (in which case it would never occur to me to exhibit my paintings, let alone try to sell them).

When I paint I am not aware of the concept of beauty (or of ugliness, or, better put, the grotesque); but when I write I must make some attempt at the artificial isolation of abstract concepts.

The scene to be formulated, illuminated and brought before the conscious mind is a dimly perceived confusion on a ground without substance. I feel no inner compulsion to write such as I do to paint, and this deprives my writing of any élan it might otherwise have had and reduces it to pedantic pseudo-philosophising. Sometimes, when it all becomes too absurd, the desolation drives me to gallows humour, and I become cynical. This form of avoidance, negatively and implicitly, is a better indication of my response to the word beauty than I could ever express in beautifully turned words.

In other words, the intellect is of little use here, and now that I’ve betrayed my position, I can try to analyse it, and the result – which cannot be foreseen in any detail at this point – will show whether the analysis has been successful, or at least whether the attempt was intellectually warranted.

Gallows humour! I barely know where to begin, for my embattled memory contains hundreds of Jewish jokes, which swirl around like leaves in the autumn wind, along with the pages of Freud’s Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious. What does gallows humour have to do with beauty? Or straight humour for that matter? Well, nothing. As little as it does with wealth, fortune or death. And yet it is well known that undertakers and others who have to do with death have their funny side, and there are countless jokes and anecdotes about schnorrers and bochurs (to cite just a couple of examples). The explanation Freud gives of humour as a means of sparing one’s feelings – or does he say mood? – is irrefutable.

I should like to keep this short – and I wish I could: there is a difference between the sort of jokes one finds in the satirical Fliegende Blätter [Flying Leaves] and those one reads in Jewish joke books such as the Perlen jüdischen Humors [Gems of Jewish Humour]. The difference is akin to that between a satisfying sneeze after a pinch of tobacco and a chronic susceptibility to colds with regular sneezing fits. In other words, humour tends to manifest itself occasionally or, under constant emotional strain, chronically, as a conspicuous expression of one’s attitude towards life, in which case its biological function becomes a dangerous companion, habit ultimately leads to resignation, and all that remains is laughter, the bitter laughter of the cynic.

Painting permits of no such attitude. It is positive by its very nature. Like all other forms of creative work or endeavour it need make no conscious attempt to introduce beauty the way one smuggles little silver talismans etc into the Christmas pudding. The end result – the work – has attained the level of perfection that the conscientious artist has been able to achieve. The artist may say: I don’t want beauty! My paintings are supposed to be ugly, that’s how I want them, épatez le bourgeois etc etc. But if the ‘ugly’ painting is then sold, perhaps even hung in a museum, or, better still, reviewed favourably by a critic, who could be happier than the misanthropic painter? Pleased as Punch! His painting has done something for him; his courting of recognition may have been unconscious, but it was successful nonetheless.

Continuation to follow

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