Art Lover: A Biography Of Peggy Guggenheim [Hardcover]

Anton Gill (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 2, 2002

"Mrs. Guggenheim, how many husbands have you had?" she was once asked. "D'you mean my own, or other people's?"

Peggy Guggenheim's tempestuous life (1898-1979) spanned the most exciting and volatile years of the twentieth century, and she lived it to the full. How she became one of the century's foremost collectors of modern art-and one of its most formidable lovers-is the subject of this lively and authoritative biography.

Her father, Benjamin Guggenheim, went down with the Titanic en route home from installing the elevator machinery in the Eiffel Tower, and it was in Paris in the 1930s that the young heiress came into a small fortune and began to make her mark in the art world. Uneasily married to the alcoholic English dilettante writer Laurence Vail, she joined the American expatriate bohemian set. Though her many lovers included such lions of the worlds of art and literature as Samuel Beckett, Max Ernst (whom she later married), Yves Tanguy, and Roland Penrose, real love always seemed to elude her.

In the later 1930s, Peggy set up one of the first galleries of modern art in London, quickly acquiring a magnificent selection of works by Picasso (who snubbed her), Magritte, Miró, and Brancusi, and buying great numbers of paintings from artists fleeing to America after the Nazi invasion of France. Escaping from Vichy, she moved back to New York, where she was hugely influential in assisting the beginnings of the new American abstract expressionist movement (in particular, Jackson Pollock).

Meticulously researched, filled with colorful incident, and boasting a distinguished cast, Anton Gill's biography reveals the inner drives of a remarkable woman and indefatigable patron of the arts.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

A larger-than-life biography of a larger-than-life art patron.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Guggenheim, a classic "poor little rich girl," was known as much for her sexual exploits as for her championing of modern art, a fact Gill, the author of numerous works, including An Honorable Defeat: The German Resistance to Hitler (1994), examines with candor, sensitivity, and mellifluous grace. After her father died aboard the Titanic when she was 14, Guggenheim evolved into a lonely, rebellious young woman painfully self-conscious about her less than perfect appearance and therefore burdened with low self-esteem. She preferred Europe to America, loved to read but never attended college, sought validation in men who didn't love her but who were eager to spend her money, and insisted on a woman's right to shape her own destiny. Gill patiently records every battle in her two violently contentious marriages (one to artist Max Ernst), her compulsive promiscuity, miserable failure at motherhood, and peripatetic lifestyle, then, with a sigh of relief, concentrates on her vision and generosity in supporting avant-garde writers and artists and her influential role as gallery owner and pioneering modern art collector. In spite of much chaos and unhappiness, Guggenheim--flamboyant and audacious, a magnet for gossip and a champion of artistic freedom--did move culture forward in the face of fascism, virulent anti-Semitism, and pervasive sexism. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 496 pages
• Publisher: Harper; 1st edition (April 2, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060196971
• ISBN-13: 978-0060196974
• Product Dimensions: 9.7 x 6.5 x 1.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #524,574 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A LASTING MEMORIAL, May 1, 2002

By 

MOVIE MAVEN (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Art Lover: A Biography Of Peggy Guggenheim (Hardcover)

I never really knew who Peggy Guggenheim was until I visited her home filled with art: the Palazzo Venier dei Leoni in Venice, Italy. The gardens and terraces as well as all the rooms open to the public are filled with wonderful examples of the modern art collected by Guggenheim, including, tellingly, a larger-than-life white statue of a horse situated outdoors on the main terrace overlooking the canal. The horse has a happy male rider. The rider sports a large erection.

So who was Peggy Guggenheim? Anton Gill goes a long way to providing her with a lasting memorial but far from a stuffy one. His well-researched, entertainingly and wittily written book ART LOVER is a fascinating read. Guggenheim was not one of the wealthier Guggenheims; her Dad went down on the Titanic and she was left with a goodly sum of money, but far from the vast fortunes her relatives had. And so, as Richard Adler & Jerry Ross said about their heroine, Lola, in "Damn Yankees," Guggenheim used "A Little Brains, A Little Talent (With An Emphasis On The Latter)." She had, according to her own account over one thousand "sexual liasons" with men as famous as Samuel Beckett and as nasty and vicious as her alcoholic first husband who emotionally and physically abused her.

She knew she was not a great beauty (in fact in one of the terrific photos collected for the book she resembles Dame Edna!)so she used her brains and superb taste and knowledge of a true bargain to collect art from men as diverse and influential as Brancusi, Mondrian, Pollock, Duchamp and Ernst (her second husband), most of which were purchased during World War 2 when so many artists were fleeing Europe and selling their works cheaply.

Peggy Guggenheim was a true American original who led a wild life of art, society and sexual high-jinks in several countries and she has left us, at least, a wonderful, wonderful gallery of modern art in a Venetian palace, most of us can only dream about living in. Gill has done her proud. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

28 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Life Devoted to Sex and to Art, May 6, 2002

By 

R. Hardy "Rob Hardy" (Columbus, Mississippi USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Art Lover: A Biography Of Peggy Guggenheim (Hardcover)

The name Guggenheim is well known among museums and among art collectors. One thinks that all those Guggenheims were pretty well off, but everything is relative, and there were rich Guggenheims and poor ones. Benjamin Guggenheim in 1912 dressed in his best formal evening clothes, heroically helped women to climb into the lifeboats of the _Titanic_, and then drowned. He left half a million dollars to his family, but it was the legacy of a poor Guggenheim, not a rich one. His daughter Peggy managed to take her share, and independently of the other collectors in her family, made a highly-regarded collection of early twentieth century art. It was a great accomplishment. She also took plenty of lovers, many of them famous, which is somewhat less of an accomplishment. She was a reprehensible mother, and pinched pennies in ways that would make those around her uncomfortable. She was a contradictory bundle, and now a fun, big, gossipy biography, _Art Lover: A Biography of Peggy Guggenheim_ (HarperCollins) by Anton Gill, has put bright light on all the facets. It isn't always an uplifting story, but it sparkles.

Peggy was fourteen when her father drowned; Gill argues that she was always looking for a father figure after that. Her sexual enthusiasms may have been driven also by fretting over her looks; she was a good-looking woman with a fine physique, but she had a nose which one unkind friend (and she had many of those) said looked like an eggplant. She had two marriages, both to artists, the second one to the famous surrealist Max Ernst, but both were painful. She took hundreds of lovers, most of whom meant little but a night of fun. Someone asked her later in her life, "How many husbands have you had, Mrs. Guggenheim?" and the typical, sharp, self-deprecating and self-aggrandizing answer came: "D'you mean my own, or other people's?" She was far luckier in her pursuit of art (rather than of artists). As years went on, she referred to her collection as "my children" and showed more interest in caring for it than she did for the flesh-and-blood version. She was able to buy art from artists who are now household names before they became so, and before art prices skyrocketed. Her sponsorship of Jackson Pollock is a lasting imprint on American art. Although her famous collection of surrealist and cubist works is now widely appreciated, not everyone felt it was a success. When she welcomed the critic Bernard Berenson to it in 1948, she gushed, "Mr. Berenson, you were the first person to teach me about painting," to which Berenson replied, "My dear, what a tragedy that I wasn't the last."

The Tate Gallery in London had enough enthusiasm earnestly to try to acquire her collection (it did do restoration work), but because of her legal and personal problems, the deal never went through. Tellingly, she could not finally compete with the resources of her uncle Solomon's foundation and museum. She had made her Palazzo Leoni one of the high points to visit in Venice (where it contrasted with the ancient city to good effect), and upon her death, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation took it over as a public museum. Peggy died in 1979, and her cremated remains were interred near her collection, and also near her beloved dogs' resting place, but far away from any friends or relatives. She had done well with dogs and art, and not much more. It was an eccentric and unique life, often successful, but encompassing a good deal of lost opportunities and sadness. This generous but by no means fawning biography is a pleasure to read because it is full of fascinating detail, scandalous stories, and coruscating bon mots.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Art, sex and high psychological drama!, August 20, 2002

By 

Ava (Texas, United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Art Lover: A Biography Of Peggy Guggenheim (Hardcover)

I could not put this book down. I read it straight through over two days in complete fascination. A woman who so deeply influenced art of the 20th century and nourished improtant artists when they were unknown so that they could keep working, and yet so insecure, so troubled, so unsure of her own knowledge and taste. An exquisite portrait of this flawed and fabulous character. I am thrilled that the aucthor has created such a thorough and penetrating biography - Peggy certainly deserves it!