Art Lover: A Biography of Peggy Guggenheim [Paperback]

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

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.