Peggy Guggenheim
Patron of the Arts
A Brief Biography
Born into a wealthy NY
family in 1898 as
Marguerite
Guggenheim, Peggy
was the daughter of
Benjamin Guggenheim,
and the niece of
Solomon Guggenheim.
http://www.guggenheim-venice.it/english/
Benjamin Guggenheim died while smoking
cigars and sipping brandy on a big ship
that hit an iceberg. Though unfaithful to his
wife, he was kind enough to see that his
mistress, a French singer named Leontine
Aubart, made it safely off the boat. After
she left, he and his valet dressed in their
best clothes. Guggenheim is known for
stating, “ We’ve dressed in our best, and
are prepared to go down like gentlemen.”
In truth, Benjamin Guggenheim lived
largely off the fortune his father, Meyer
Guggenheim, made from metals. He
owned a lot of metal, and soldiers in WW1
needed it.
Here’s Benjamin Guggenheim and the ship he
died on, which Hollywood made a movie
about, starring heart-throb Leonardo
DiCaprio.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peggy_Guggenheim_Collection
http://www.titanicmovie.com/
Copper – one type of metal that
made Meyer Guggenheim rich.
http://www.gwydir.demon.co.uk/jo/minerals.copcomp.htm
Peggy used to work at a bookstore,
but decided she wanted to be cool
like all the artists she read about, so
she moved to Paris, France and
became friends with them. She liked
them because they were so avantgarde, and they liked her because
she had money and could fund their
art.
She became friends with people like Man
Ray, Constantin Brancusi, and Marcel
Duchamp. She married artist Laurence
Vail, who was a Dada sculptor and writer.
Dada was a movement of ridiculous art.
The people who created the ridiculous art
were people who had grown cynical of
humanity, and had developed a nihilistic
world view. They developed this world
view because they had gotten sick of
seeing people killing each other in WW1,
the war that caused Meyer Guggenheim to
amass his fortune, which ultimately led to
Peggy Guggenheim being a well-to-do
woman who supported the ridiculous
artists.
After a few years of relative peace,
another war had to be started to fuel
the economy, which supported wellto-do folks like Peggy Guggenheim,
who supported ridiculous artists. This
war was called WW2.
Peggy’s artist friends started trying all
kinds of styles after WW2 began.
Eventually, art people came up with
names for these styles, such as
“surrealism”, “abstract
expressionism”, “cubism”, and several
other “isms”, I’m sure.
Peggy purchased as much of her
friends’ art as she could.
In 1942, Peggy went to back to New
York, where she opened a gallery
called Art of This Century, where she
displayed all of the art she had
purchased from her friends.
She continued to support artists, like
Jackson Pollock and Max Ernst
(whom she married, but got divorced
from four years later).
Max Ernst
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peggy_Guggenheim_Collection
Artwork by Jackson Pollock
http://moma.org/collection/depts/paint_sculpt/blowups/paint_sculpt_019.html
Eventually, Peggy put her collection of
art in a one-story building in Venice,
Italy. Here is a picture of the Palazzo
Venier dei Leoni:
http://www.culturevulture.net/ArtandArch/PeggyGuggenheim.htm
Though you can’t see it in this view of
the museum, there is a bronze statue
outside by Marino Marini done in
1948. The statue features a man on
a horse with a huge erection. Rumor
has it, that the penis can actually be
screwed-off (no pun intended) so that
it can be hidden from view when
important, but easily offended people
come to visit.
There is not much more to say about
Peggy Guggenheim, except that she
died in 1979 and is buried next to her
dogs.
May she rest in peace.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peggy_Guggenheim_Collection