Peggy Guggenheim

1. Peggy Guggenheim Patron of the Arts

2. 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/

3. 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.

4. 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/

5. Copper – one type of metal that made Meyer Guggenheim rich. http://www.gwydir.demon.co.uk/jo/minerals.copcomp.htm

6. 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 avant-garde, and they liked her because she had money and could fund their art.

7. 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.

8. After a few years of relative peace, another war had to be started to fuel the economy, which supported well-to-do folks like Peggy Guggenheim, who supported ridiculous artists. This war was called WW2.

9. 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.

10. 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).

11. Max Ernst http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peggy_Guggenheim_Collection

12. Artwork by Jackson Pollock http://moma.org/collection/depts/paint_sculpt/blowups/paint_sculpt_019.html

13. 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

14. 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.

15. There is not much more to say about Peggy Guggenheim, except that she died in 1979 and is buried next to her dogs.

16. May she rest in peace. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peggy_Guggenheim_Collection