- Hardcover: 544 pages
- Publisher: HarperCollins (15 Oct 2001)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0002570785
- ISBN-13: 978-0002570787
- Product Dimensions: 23.6 x 15.5 x 5.3 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 934,003 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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More About the Author
Product Description
Review
‘Learned and wonderfully gossipy. Gill’s book is ripping, zestful and a treasure trove of spicy anecdotes and bitchy quotes’ Miranda Seymour, Sunday Times
‘Often touching and always richly entertaining, like its subject’ Hilary Spurling, Daily Telegraph
‘Anton Gill tells this extraordinary story with vigour and panache’ Selina Hastings, Sunday Telegraph
Product Description
The wayward life (1898–1979) of the voracious art collector and great female patron of world-famous artists.
‘Mrs Guggenheim, how many husbands have you had?’ ‘Do you mean my own, or other people’s?’ Peggy Guggenheim was an American millionairess art collector and legendary lover, whose father died on the Titanic returning from installing the lift machinery in the Eiffel Tower. She lived in Paris in the 1930s and got to know all the major artists – especially the Surrealists. (Later she bullied Max Ernst into marrying her, but was snubbed by Picasso.) When the Second World War broke out, she bought great numbers of paintings from artists fleeing to America; as a Jew she escaped from Vichy France and set up in New York, where in the 1940s and 50s she befriended and encouraged the New York School (Jackson Pollock, Rothko, etc.)
Her emotional life was in constant turmoil – a life of booze, bed and bohemia (mostly rich bohemia). Her favourite husband was a drunken English dilettante writer called Lawrence Vail, but she bedded many others, including Samuel Beckett. Later she moved to Venice, where her memory is enshrined in the world-famous palazzo that houses her Guggenheim Collection.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
12 of 14 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
If you would like to read the life of Peggy Guggenheim then do not buy this book. It is an essay on modern art during the life of Peggy Guggenheim.
It is a very well researched book but it fails to give the life of Peggy Guggenheim. It is filled with too much details on arts and artists and their interconnections and influence on the 19th century modern art that at the end of the book I feel as if I know very little about the life of the collector.
I'm sure that an arts student or someone who has the basics to understand who's who the book is talking about would enjoy it.
I didn't. It took me three months to read and believe me I read it for the simple reason that I wanted to finish the book.
It is a very well researched book but it fails to give the life of Peggy Guggenheim. It is filled with too much details on arts and artists and their interconnections and influence on the 19th century modern art that at the end of the book I feel as if I know very little about the life of the collector.
I'm sure that an arts student or someone who has the basics to understand who's who the book is talking about would enjoy it.
I didn't. It took me three months to read and believe me I read it for the simple reason that I wanted to finish the book.
Format:Paperback
I can't agree with the other reviewer. Peggy Guggenheim was important for her position as a promoter of modern art after WW2. This is a most interesting book which puts her life into context along with the artists of the period particularly those that fled the Holocaust. If you don't like art history I don't know why you would want to read about her as art was what she was about and why her museum in Venice attracts a stream of visitors.
A great and informative read.
A great and informative read.
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