Peggy Guggenheim

July 20, 2015
Lively, complex, and inclined to shock, Guggenheim (1898–1979), the modern art collector, emerges as the embodiment of the age in Prose’s (Lovers at the Chameleon Club) judicious biography. Leaning heavily on Guggenheim’s provocative memoir, Out of this Century (1979), Prose reveals the collector as both insecure and irrepressible, someone who continually felt taken advantage of, which was frequently the case, and who seemed to gravitate to social drama. Though she invariably footed the bill and financially supported many people, she was always accused (with its anti-Semitic implication) of stinginess. While she could be reckless and insensitive, Guggenheim was, thankfully, never dull. She counted Herbert Read, Marcel Duchamp, and Alfred Barr as advisers, and Samuel Beckett, Yves Tanguy, and Max Ernst as lovers (she bragged about having slept with more than 400 men). In London, she established Guggenheim Jeune, a gallery that showed Jean Cocteau, Wassily Kandinsky, and Alexander Calder. Before the Nazi occupation of France, she rescued works of art and funded artists’ passages to the U.S., the importance of which Prose forcefully brings home. In New York, she founded a completely new kind of art space called Art of This Century, where she promoted an obscure Jackson Pollock. Finally, in Venice, she invigorated the city with her collection and hosted a bustling salon. Guggenheim, though, had a better eye for art than for men. She clung to problematic, if not abusive, relationships. In the description of the collector’s husband Max Ernst beating her while Duchamp looked on, Prose points to the dark underside of these times. Photos.

July 15, 2015
The latest in the Jewish Lives series focuses on a flamboyant champion of modern art. Art patron Peggy Guggenheim (1898-1979) was notable as much for her scandalous personal life as for her discerning aesthetic sense. In this deftly distilled biography, Prose (Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932, 2014, etc.) draws on Guggenheim's memoir, several biographies, and works by and about her wide circle of friends, offering a cleareyed assessment of the complicated woman and her indelible contribution to modern art. Guggenheim's Jewishness is handily dispatched. Subjected to anti-Semitism when she was turned away from a hotel, she claimed that her "inferiority complex" stemmed from her appearance rather than prejudice: specifically, her nose, which she hated and believed was an inheritance from her German ancestors. Convinced she was homely, she nevertheless "boasted of having had more than four hundred lovers," including artists Max Ernst and Yves Tanguy, and James Joyce's son Giorgio. For a woman of independent wealth and strong will, Guggenheim made surprising choices in men. "She lived in an era and a milieu," writes Prose, "in which women needed men to explain the world to them....Without a man to direct her, without the rewards of male attention...a woman was...a failed human being." Yet seeking a man's validation still does not explain why she endured a violent marriage to Laurence Vail, who beat her; nor to the drunken John Holms, "a writer who didn't write," who demeaned her; nor to Ernst, who married her, friends thought, for her money and connections. Prose notes Guggenheim's "lack of empathy" toward her lovers, their wives, and especially her children, a flaw more egregious than "promiscuity, shallowness, stinginess, and a sense of humor that sometimes crossed over into malice." The author also chronicles her groundbreaking galleries: Guggenheim Jeune in London; the exuberant Art of This Century in Manhattan; and her Palazzo in Venice, where her collection still resides. An adroit and lively portrait.

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August 1, 2015

Peggy Guggenheim (1898-1979) was an incomparable connoisseur and patron of modern art. Her passion for the work of such artists as Constantin Brancusi, Jackson Pollock, Max Ernst, and others led her to amass a superb collection for her New York gallery and, eventually, for her unparalleled museum in Venice. Here, Prose (Caravaggio; Reading Like a Writer) reveals the many aspects of Guggenheim's private life which was, at turns, startling, tragic, and unconventional, with challenges ranging from turbulent relationships to struggles with prejudice. Her ability to shock was legendary. Through it all, though, she was a champion of art, discovering and introducing emerging talents on a larger scale while building a collection of lasting renown. Prose skillfully blends the events of Guggenheim's experience with details about the 20th-century art scene, all in a vivid setting of time and place. Her depictions of key artists, family members, husbands, and others are distinctive in their complexity of character and contribute to a deeper understanding of the personal and professional facets of this enigmatic woman. VERDICT This finely researched and well-written work honestly examines the often disturbing world of an acclaimed figure. Readers who are interested in modern art and its background will find this of particular interest. For large arts and circulating collections.--Carol J. Binkowski, Bloomfield, NJ

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 15, 2015
The multitalented Prose (Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932, 2014) presents an incisive and dynamic life of modern-art pioneer Peggy Guggenheim (18981979). Prose zeros in on the qualities and circumstances that made Guggenheim at once tormented and unstoppable, revealing the sources of her raging inferiority complex and perpetual urge to unnerve. Wildly generous though never as wealthy as presumed, famously promiscuous, and oddly stoic, Guggenheim endured abusive marriages and tumultuous relationships while turning herself into an intrepid art expert. Collaborating with the likes of Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst (her notoriously unfaithful husband ), and Jackson Pollock, Guggenheim opened two game-changing galleries, Guggenheim Jeune in London and Art of This Century in New York, after shipping her European art treasures out of Hitler's reach while helping imperiled artists. Ultimately, Guggenheim housed her definitive art collection in her famous Venetian palazzo. With fresh insights and illuminating details, Prose vividly tells the poignant and remarkable story of this complex, combative, and passionate art champion and innovator, who weathered misogyny, anti-Semitism, betrayal, and her own demons to help build an audience for modern art.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)