Mar 19, 2015 - Sale 2376

Sale 2376 - Lot 217

Price Realized: $ 3,500
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,500 - $ 2,500
LIEBERMANN'S PHILOSOPHY OF ART LIEBERMANN, MAX. Group of 6 Autograph Letters Signed, to "Mr. Seclin" or unnamed recipients, in German, mostly on various aspects of his views on art. Together 12 pages, 8vo or 4to; condition generally good. Vp, 1908-25
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19 November 1908: "What is under attack in art today is an ever-repeating appearance. . . . How should a public understand a language that it does not yet know, understand, or even estimate? Also, it is difficult for anyone to unlearn what they've learned, or for an entire generation of artists who were brought up in certain traditions to be threatened by the emerging new talent.
"The same accusations . . . which are now against us can be found in antiquity. Donatello was accused of brutality, and Titian, he did not inspire confidence. . . ."
30 October 1909: ". . . There is only one art . . . so there can be neither moral nor immoral. A work that is moral as such, would not be art. . . ."
"The majority would never realize that the content in art is the form and the substance completely indifferent. It is a very noble effort to educate people about art and I think we should not stop, even if we cannot expect success, and I would, of course, do everything I can to help, but, unfortunately, I do not know how. . . ."
5 November 1913: ". . . [T]here can be a separation between the successful from an artistic point of view, and the successful from a material point of view. Despite his financial failure, Rembrandt had the highest artistic success. . . ."
16 September 1914: "Of artists whose names are known abroad, the following come to mind: the musicians Strauss and Humperdinck; the painters Klinger, Stuck and Habermann; sculptors Hildebrand, Tuaillon; art historians Von Bode and Wölflein--Bode is especially well-known in France, England and America. . . ."
26 July 1925: ". . . Above all I thank you for Gulliver . . . . Your translation reads like the original. . . . How wonderful the realism! Humankind has hardly changed in 200 years, and the ministers and dignitaries of the Lilliputians are exactly similar to those of Wilhelm II. . . ."
Complete transcriptions available.