Peggy Guggenheim

by Mary V. Dearborn

This biography of Peggy Guggenheim charts the life of the infamous multi-talented art collector and personality. An extremely controversial figure, she was censured for everything from stinginess to sexual voraciousness. This book shows the culture that shaped her and that she went on to transform.

Genres: Biography, Art, Nonfiction, Art History, History, Biography Memoir, Italy

338 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2004

About the author

Biographer and author.

Reviews

[Christina Stind · Rating 3 out of 5]

Peggy Guggenheim was born in 1898 and died 81 years later, in 1979. She was born into the rich Guggenheim family although she was one of the 'poor' Guggenheims. She didn't want the traditional life of a Jewish girl in New York so she strived hard to find her place in life. She became an avid art collector, especially abstract and Surrealist art. She lived among the artists, payed artists regularly to help them, had various galleries where she showed her collection and also other works - among these works by Jackson Pollock, Max Ernst, Marcel Duchamp and Wassily Kandinsky. She also lived life to the fullest, was married several times, had lovers and was very frank and open about her sex life. Although she wasn't very pretty, she seemed to have had something about her that attracted people to her.
There's no doubt in my mind that Peggy Guggenheim was a very special person, a woman who broke free of her family's expectations and through trial-and-error carved her own place in the world - and at least to some extent in art history as well.
Unfortunately, the book doesn't take full advantage of this. In fact, the book isn't very good. It has a lot of issues. First of, the first chapters are really confusing with lots of namedropping. Both Peggy's paternal and maternal family are rather big and both are mentioned in few pages and I never quite got the idea of who's who. In fact, the author never solves the problem of introducing new persons to the book. Peggy meets so many interesting people in her life but the continuity of the story is often broken when new people show up and we then get their life stories in a few paragraphs or pages - or in some cases, just get the one interesting fact from the life in a sentence or in parentheses (no matter if the fact has any relevance for Peggy's story and life or not). When you're writing a biography about a person who meets a lot of different persons, you have to make their introduction into the biography smooth - this didn't happen here.
Another issue was that the writing didn't make you really connect with Peggy. You felt distanced for most of the book - even when various heart breaking issues happened, you didn't feel any emotional reaction. You never felt like you got under her skin. Now, I know Peggy was a complicated woman who had issues with being close to people and who seems like an exceptional bad mother - but we still ought to be able to feel her, to sense her, not just get a rational idea about who she was.
As if this wasn't enough, this book was also very repetitive. The same thing was said over and over. Sometimes in the beginning and end of a chapter, sometimes several chapters later. It made me feel that neither the author or the editor have done the final editing of the manuscript well enough.
I have no doubt that the author really likes Peggy. And I do too. But the author thinks that Peggy has been overlooked in art history books because she is a woman and because she had a rather healthy sexual appetite and wasn't afraid to talk about it. I'm not sure. I don't doubt that she was important in her day, that she made a difference in for instance Jackson Pollock's career. But I'm not sure that she was all that important when you look back. She had two important galleries, one in London and one in New York, but neither of them was open for more than a few years. She also had the museum in Venice but still. I think she had some impact but I don't think the author makes the point persuasively that she has been overlooked. I lean towards the thought that she has been given the credit she was due.
So - after all these negative things, I still gave the book 3 stars. The reason for this is Peggy. I'm not sure I liked her but she was extremely fascinating and I do like people who take their lives in their own hands and do something with it. Who fight against tradition and expectations and go after their bliss, so to speak. So even though I think the author makes a really bad job of writing about Peggy, Peggy herself makes the difference and thus, the 3 stars. I do also think the book becomes slightly better as it progress - but I'm not sure if I just got used to the badness.
I hope there are better biographies out there about Peggy because I think she deserves it. If not, then I recommend this one. Otherwise, I would definitely go for one of the other first.

[Christianne Hedtke · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is one of three bios on Peggy Guggenheim and it is the shortest, most vague, and doesn't spend much time creating atmosphere and placing her life in the context of history. It also tends to look at her actions through rose-colored glasses when in fact some of her less savory characteristics are the most fun to read about, and also probably a more honest depiction of a very dynamic woman. If you want the real deal read Peggy: The Wayward Guggenheim by Jacqueline Bograd Weld.

[Czarny Pies · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Mistress of Modernity" is a remarkably uninformative book about Peggy Guggenheim one the great art collectors of the 20th Century , gallery owner and founder of the museum that bears her name located on the Grand Canal of Venice containing works of the cubist, surreal, futurist and other schools. Author Mary Dearborn makes the statement on page 259 that exemplifies her problem: "Serious art historians and cultural critics indeed credited Peggy Guggenheim with playing a role in the history of modernism and abstract expressionism." (p. 259) In a nutshell, Dearborn who possesses a doctorate in English literature from Columbia University of New York knows nothing about art or at least goes to elaborate efforts not to pose as someone who does. She avoids commenting on any painter, movement or artist. Whenever an opinion is expressed, she attributes it to someone else.
The problem is that not believing herself to be an expert in either painting or sculpture, Dearborn devotes too much time to Peggy Guggenheim's very sordid personal life. Guggenheim who once boasted that she had slept with over 1000 men, had two abortions, drank to excess, destroyed the marriages of numerous friends, and neglected her children. While this all reprehensible, most readers would have preferred a more complete analysis of her ideas on art, collecting strategies and organizational skills.
Indeed Guggenheim's accomplishments as a dealer were extraordinary. Dearborn writes: "Without her artists, such as Pollock, Hare, Baziotes, Motherwell, Rothko, Ray, De Niro, Admiral, McKee and others, would not have thrived or perhaps would have gained recognition, much later in their careers - some might have given up on their work because of a lack of critical response or sales." (P. 259-260) In other places, Dearborn identifies, Alexander Calder, Clyfford Still and William de Kooning as also having benefitted greatly from Guggenheim's support. In short, Guggenheim launched many careers and presided over the transfer of the centre of the art world from Europe to the United States. While Dearborn acknowledges all of this things she provides neither explanations nor details as to how Guggenheim was able to do them..
Dearborn also fails to explain the reasons for Peggy Guggenheim's decision in 1969 to give her collection and museum to the foundation of her uncle Solomon Guggenheim. Peggy Guggenheim was not particularly close to her uncle and disagreed with most of his ideas. Nonetheless, at the end she felt that that the team he assembled by would be the one best able to preserve her legacy.
"Mistress of Modernism" is a book of gossip about artists rather than analysis. In places it reminds one of Hemingway's "Moveable Feast" or Gertrude Stein's "Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas". It is most similar however to John Glassco's "Memoirs of Montparnasse" which contains a number of common characters and which is specifically cited by Dearborn. The expatriate community of the mid-twentieth century is fascinating for many. If you are in this number, then "Mistress of Modernism" will please you in many places. Otherwise it is very disappointing.

[Rebekah · Rating 4 out of 5]

'Many nasty stories sprang up around Peggy over the decades: some still surface occasionally. Evidence of her cheapness was so widespread that it is nearly impossible to count the anecdotes; her generosity is well documented too, but hardly ever given the credit it deserves. The generall assessment was not only that she was unimportant but that she was a fright, a predator, and, finally, a joke....But there is more to it. Peggy was a powerful person during her five years in New York: as one of America's leading art impresarios, she could make careers. Some observers were uncomfortable with a woman wielding so much power: such a woman must not only be retrospectively erased, she must be eviscerated. American culture has seldom been receptive to the spectacle of a woman with frank sexual desires - especially one whose activity does not flag in middle age or even beyond. Some people are particularly threatened by erotic energy in a woman of power and influence. ...

Peggy was well aware of the burlesque aspects of her life; she often put them on display. But she also desperately wanted and deserved to be taken seriously...At last, attention was paid her, and for what really mattered; her collection. Peggy's presence is indelible."

My great heroine. This lovingly written biography was a joy to read.

[Keren Andrews · Rating 3 out of 5]

Finally finished!!!! This author makes the life story of a very interesting person so boring!!! I finished it as I was interested in Peggy Guggenheim, but this author just was not creative at all in making it easy to read!! It was tough going!

[Melanie · Rating 4 out of 5]

http://mdevrieze.tumblr.com/post/9644...

[Mandy Partridge · Rating 5 out of 5]

Women like Peggy Gugenheim show us what good rich people do- support artists, collect contemporary art, and build galleries so that everyone can see great art. Not have a space-wank.

[Lily · Rating 3 out of 5]

A nuanced portrait of a very complicated lady. Unfortunately, there was very little art history analysis, instead focusing on her acquisitions (boring) and her truly wild libertine life (fascinating.) Thus: a three star rating.

Peggy's romantic relationships and her relationships with her children were so beyond dysfunctional. She was married three times and linked to countless members of the avant garde elite in the 1930s and 1940s (Tanguy, Max Ernst, etc.) Sadly, her marriages were all marked by domestic abuse, sometimes meted out in public scenes as in her first marriage. Upon picking up her career in art patronage, she is able to come into her own and find her own worth and independence, not to mention change the art world and introduce the public to Jackson Pollock, Kandinsky, Brancusi, and Rothko (although mystifyingly she hated Rothko.)

Peggy Guggenheim believed in free love long before the 1960s. She wasn't too bothered by her husbands' lovers (even when they were her own friends) and took plenty of her own. Her friends describe her as a "sexual explorer." Obviously, the press loved to tear her down. They were always saying mean things about her large Jewish nose, calling her a hag, making fun of her clothes and her libido and her airs and her Jewish heritage. She spent most of the 30s in Paris and rarely seems to even notice the world changing events or how they might affect her. In 1930-goddamned-9, she travels to the south of France with no real intention of leaving the country. A friend warns her to tell collaborating Frenchmen she is American but to hide the fact that she is Jewish and she and her family get out in the nick of time. The fact that she needed someone to tell her that should tell you everything about how aware she is of anything outside the art world. The book barely mentions the war after that. How odd! If Dawn Powell is to be believed, rich Americans (and some rich Europeans if Ingrid Keun is to be believed) didn't even give the war a second thought and treated it as a very far away thing that was only faintly interesting.

Famous friends include the writer Djuna Barnes, with whom she had an incredibly tense friendship their whole adult lives. Djuna made vicious fun of her and constantly griped about her apparent miserliness. That I thought was a little unfair. When she wasn't griping about how tightfisted Peggy was, she was bitching about how Peggy spent too much on her and gave too many gifts. Pick one, Djuna. She had many gay friends in a time when that was as fringe as you could get. She was also close friends with Yoko Ono in later life! Mary Dearborn used the term "girlfriends" and it is so funny to think of Yoko being girlfriends with anyone.

Peggy's relationship with her kids was what really kept me coming back to this book. She makes Emily Gilmore look warm and maternal. First of all, she hilariously named her children Sindbad and Pegeen. When she and their father break up, Laurence takes Sindbad and Peggy takes Pegeen, no doubt scarring both children for life. The author points out that divorce was rare enough, and coparenting even more so. Poor Pegeen! She had no chance. Peggy gave her zero affection, brought hundreds of boyfriends into their lives modeling some very weird relationship patterns, and in general cared vastly more for her career and her artworks than for her daughter. She named her dog Pegeen (and another dog after a friend of hers. Very strange move.) Obviously, Pegeen grows up with complex upon complex--drinking like a fish, barely eating, taking too many pills, threatening suicide to get any attention from her mother. Mary Dearborn writes:

"Peggy was clearly trying to ensure that Pegeen would not make the same mistakes she had made, but she never seems to have recognized that she herself had done best when she was without a man, when she discovered her independence after her first three marriages...The only future she could envision for Pegeen was for her to enter a man's orbit."

How depressing. These ambitious, cutthroat women of yore often had very tortured relationships with their children. It's really so sad. It just points to how much a woman had to sacrifice back in the day in order to fulfill herself with a career, especially an art-world-changing one like Peggy's. Largely thanks to Peggy's patronage and hard work starting galleries, the hub of the art world switched from Paris to New York (also thanks to World War II, credit where credit is due.) She took art out of frames and hung canvases directly on the wall. She brought art to the masses by democratizing it and taking it down from its hoity-toity pedestal. I would love to see her apartments in Venice someday.

[Xander Mitchell · Rating 4 out of 5]

A better read than I expected. Dearborn obviously holds Peggy near and dear to her heart, and the biography tends to offer more sympathy to Peggy than may be justifiable. Nevertheless, Dearborn created a fascinating, if sometimes overly-romantic, portrait of one of the greatest patrons and collectors of twentieth-century art. An easy and well-researched bigoraphy.

[Dave · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm not sure I knew much of anything about Peggy Guggenheim. I did not know she was the queen of the Lost Generation in Paris in the 20s and the matron of mid-century American painting. She led quite a bohemian life floated by a relatively small slice of the Guggenheim fortune. Her father was the Guggenheim who died on the Titanic. Not as rich as other Guggenheims, it was enough to support her rejection of the staid but super-rich New York German-Jewish culture in which she was born. The book is not only a story about her but about the 19th Century art scene from Europe to New York and beyond, from Picasso to Pollack, who she championed and supported in his early years. Rising from an abused wife to a passionately committed bedder of men, she lived a life so outside of the norm -- and wrote about it all -- that it overshadowed her legacy as maybe the greatest incubator of art talent in the 19th Century. One of the best results of reading is picking up an unknown subject and discovering a new world that creates a fuller understanding of things you thought you knew.

[Patty V. Campbell · Rating 3 out of 5]

The art of writing biography is more than recording the events of someone's life with an occasional quotation from a letter or diary. Yes, the reader wants to know what happened, but equally, when the reader puts the book down, he or she wants to feel that they have in essence met the person and had some experience of them. That reader will be sadly disappointed with this biography of Peggy Guggenheim. We get the record of the events, but the person who emerges from this biography seems one-dimensional and unlikeable. Perhaps that is who Peggy Guggenheim was, but I'm left not knowing; there are hints that she was much more than that, but the reader is left to guess.

I wanted to know the sequence of events because I wanted to know why Peggy Guggenheim is so often mentioned when modern art is under discussion, and the book provides the list. Still, I don't know whether she's considered an important figure because she wrote checks or because she really had a feel and an eye for modern art as it emerged. I'm guessing her patronage had more to do with who she was sleeping with -- and she seems to have gone to bed with everyone -- than it did with any discernment on her part. Unfortunately, after just over 300 pages, I don't know. All I really know is that I don't like Peggy Guggenheim based on this book, and I'm not likely to pick up either her autobiography or another biography of her. I've had enough of Ms. Guggenheim based on this telling of her story.

[Saxon Henry]

I read this book during a trip to Venice, which made Dearborn's survey of Guggeheim's life more powerful. The experience resulted in an essay in my book “The Modern Salonnière.” I have excerpted it as a blog posts here: https://bit.ly/3ah3aYs - it is one of my traveling with intention pieces.

[Mariachiara Fardin · Rating 3 out of 5]

This Biography of Peggy Guggheneim tells her historic in cronologic way, for this it's full of events but it's not trasmit much pathos

[Janell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Learned so much! I’m

[Mairead · Rating 4 out of 5]

Engrossing

[Lori Lynn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Saw this in Venice at her museum and read it when I was home. Great read!

[Toula · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant. Nearly as brilliant as the woman herself. Oh to have been a fly on the wall! She’s my spiritual BFF.

[Hilde Appelmans · Rating 4 out of 5]

Zeer accurate beschrijving van het bewogen leven van de bijzonder intrigerende, kunstminnende, kunstzinnige, moedige en prachtige Peggy Guggenheim!

[K. · Rating 4 out of 5]

interessante biografie vooral in aanvulling op de geromantiseerde biografie Miss Guggenheim

[Phenomene · Rating 4 out of 5]

An entertaining and at times fascinating read.

[Carolyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating story about the woman who promoted modernism and abstract impressionism with her money and influence. The book focuses on Peggy's friendships and affairs with the interesting and the notorious in the art world. She never had as much money as people thought she had; even though she supported several people with life-long subsidies, she was often accused of being stingy. She adored her father, who died on the Titanic, and she thereafter embarked on some disastrous and abusive relationships until she eventually found her footing and began acting on her own passions, though not always wisely. Through her many relationships in the art world she became interested in art history and developed her own tastes in the modern movements, which lead to her sponsorship of emerging artists and her successful galleries. The author seems to want to disprove many of the rumors regarding her relationship with Jackson Pollock, but had to conclude that many of these stories remain unknowable. Thoroughly enjoyable read about creative and destructive people pushing the boundaries of art and living in the 20th century.

[Alex · Rating 4 out of 5]

A thoroughly researched and thoughtfully written biography of a powerful and controversial woman, Dearborn's volume on Peggy Guggenheim is a good read. I was primarily interested in the second half of her life when she embarked on her collecting and gallery-managing endeavors, so the first half of the book was a little tedious. Still, definitely worth it for the fascinating view into the lives of various important figures of 1920s-50s culture, and the shaping of modern art institutions. I'm also impressed with all of Peggy's romances with famous people- Samuel Beckett! Marcel Duchamp! Max Ernst! What a lady!

[Susan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I learned so much about the various artists Peggy Guggenheim touched throughout her life. It was a fascinating way to increase my Modern Art knowledge. I truly enjoyed it because I recently taught an ArtLit course on Frank Lloyd Wright. I gained some special knowledge about the building of the Guggenheim Museum and was able to share it with the students. There were so many interesting background stories on her friends, lovers, husbands and artists - it kept my interest to the appendix! If you have an interest in art history, especially that of Modern Art - this is a wonderful book to read.

[Andrea Stoeckel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dearborn's bio of Peggy Guggenheim is also a biography of the times she lived in. A thoroughly modern woman, she championed causes that in some ways made the rest of her family just about disown her. But with her help, many important artists survived WW2 and she helped build on themes of modernist painting and sculpture as she promotedand protected people like ManRay, Rodin, Jackson Pollock, Emma Golwin, Andy Warhol and even Phillip Glass and up to Yoko Ono. Many of her collection are now in the Guggenheim Museum system.

Mary Dearborn is a wonderful biographer. Hunt her down and read non-fiction that reads like fiction

[E. V. Gross · Rating 2 out of 5]

I felt that Dearborn's handling of Peggy's personal life was a little too melodramatic. She definitely played up the Perpetually-Wayward-Girl-Child angle a bit and dismissed a lot of her actions/relationships as just being a product of daddy issues. But, it was a fun read. And I did learn a few interesting things about the artists that she worked with that I didn't know before (although, I'm kind of upset that she was so dismissive of Lee Krasner...although, lets be serious, everyone was). Disappointing but not awful.

[Mary · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting to learn about how Peggy Guggenheim broke free of her family's traditional expectations and pursued a lifelong role supporting new art and artists in the US and Europe. The pace is rather breathless with event following event, but I appreciate Dearborn's discipline in limiting her analysis. Guggenheim was a flawed and complicated person but it is helpful to consider her in the context of her own time, she really forged new territory as a woman and as a patron of the arts.

[Judy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well-written biography of the woman who championed abstract expressionism, in particular Jackson Pollock, and collected the works of many modern artists before they were well-known. Her personal life was always in an uproar, but her canny acquisitions affected the entire course of art history in the 20th century. If you ever have the opportunity to visit the Guggenheim in Venice, *go*--it's her legacy to Venice and the world.

[Pat · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an interesting book. I wanted to read it because I have been to the Guggenheim Museum in Venice which is the final rsting place of Peggy Guggenheim's collection of modern art. However, that was just the last place for the collection. She was an interesting person though not someone that I think I would have liked very much.

[Linda · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read Art Lover about Peggy Guggenheim but not listed in Goodreads records. I am sure they are similar. Peggy G was a fascinating person. She met every modern artist (and slept with many of them) and eventually had an amazing collection. Much of it is still on view in her museum in Venice. She lived a charmed but sometimes lonely life of excess and power in the art world. LOVED IT!

[Hannah]

I wasn't sure that this was going to keep me engaged all the way through but it was interesting to read about the life and works of the Modernists and Surrealists. Although Guggenheim is interesting to a point because of her key role as investor, buyer and promoter of so many famous artists, it's the promiscuous and incestuous lives of these people that keep you reading.