An Art of One’s Own: Peggy Guggenheim
Art, as in many other fields, is a field that has remained under male domination for centuries. We rarely encountered women because of art history written by men, and men ignored women for centuries . Furthermore, now we are faced with such a woman that ignoring her is as difficult as trying not to see the elephant in front of your eyes. In a field like art where every stage is a men’s club, more difficult than being a female artist is probably to be a female patron, a collector. Of course, it is none other than Peggy Guggenheim who overcame these difficulties one by one and introduced us to many artists we fall in love with today. With her galleries and museums opened in different cities, being the first to introduce numerous artists to us and supporting many well-known artists, with her love and sex life, and most importantly, with her pure love for art, Peggy is a woman who should not be buried in the pages of history
Peggy Guggenheim takes the stage of history…
Peggy Guggenheim was born in New York in 1898. When Peggy was 12 years old, her father left his family to live with his mistress and died a year later on Titanic. She admires her father and has a nervous breakdown when he dies. She says she didn’t even feel like a Guggenheim after her father died, and in comparison to her cousins, Peggy was the poorest in the family. She makes her first marriage with the poet Laurence Vail, and from this marriage they had two children, Pegeen and Sindbad. After 7 years they divorced and Peggy fall in love with writer John Holmes, after 5 years with Peggy, John had died. She collapsed with this death but her tragedy doesn’t end here, one of her sisters died while giving birth to her children, and the other, according to some rumors, throw her own children off the roof of a hotel. She finds peace in art as a way of dealing with all this.
Furthermore, she wants to open a place and, on the advice of a friend, she opens an art gallery. Thus the “Guggenheim Jeune” opened in 1938. She made in this gallery first exhibitions of many famous artists like Kandinsky. Peggy, in her interview with Jacqueline B. Welds, which is used in the documentary “The Art Addict”, and which I will often talk about later in this article, said she learned a lot about modern art from Marcel Duchamp. Marcel Duchamp taught her the difference between surrealists and abstract expressionists and arranged most of her shows. Peggy calls him the great teacher, and he even gave first Boite-en-valise to Peggy in 1941. She is an art lover, its financial payoff doesn’t matter to her, that’s her way of living. That’s why she decides to close the gallery and open a museum in London, but when the war breaks out, it didn’t happen and she went to Paris, but when the war didn’t leave her here, she fled to America with Max Ernst and a few artists, opened the “Art of This Century” gallery here and married Max.
Moreover, New York is now turning into art center, and “The Art of This Century” becomes the first international gallery in New York. In this gallery, the works of many artists such as Mark Rothko, Robert Motherwell and Jackson Pollock are exhibited. Speaking of Jackson Pollock, his place is very special for Peggy.
She, says her first achievement in life was Jackson Pollock, and the second was her collection. Pollock, the carpenter at her cousin’s museum, and they meet when Peggy gets there. After exhibiting some of Pollock’s works, she offers him a one-man exhibition. In “ Seven Days in the Art World” Sarah Thornton says “If the art world has one common principle, it is that nothing is more valuable than art. Some really believe it, while others know they should, by good manners.” Peggy was one of those who truly believed in this, her love for art and her ability to understand and feel good art was the only thing that made him Peggy. She was very confident in Pollock, she bought her a house and mobilized all her means to do his art. Peggy didn’t just support new artists like Pollock, besides her support of many famous artists, she also opened an exhibition called 31 women for the first time with an exhibition consisting of women only. As a woman, I think it is an indication of Peggy’s vision that she supports female artists as well as trying to hold on in such a field. In 1947, she closed the gallery, leave New York and moved to Venice. She said about this I always wanted to go back to Europe, and she bought a Palazzo in Venice and turns it into a museum. What she said about Venice summarizes why she spent the rest of his life here.
“There is no normal life in Venice, here everything and everyone floats. It is this floatingness which is the essential quality of Venice. The reflections are like paintings, more beautiful than any painted by the great masters.” (The Art Addict)
Peggy carries an army of arts and artists with her wherever she goes. She not only opened the first international exhibition of American and European works in America, but also introduced American art and artists such as Jackson Pollock, Clyfford Still and Mark Rothko to Europe. Art historian Pepe Carmel said about it, “She identified key artists in the New York School, she showed them first and she helped build their career.” That’s why Peggy Guggenheim is very important part of art world even today. When she came to Venice, she made great contributions to the arrival of international modern art and this is very important for the future of Venice and the Biennial in the following years. Her great contribution to Biennial and Venice is undeniable, her museum still one of the most visited museums in the world and it has more than 326 art pieces from more than 100 artists.
Venice, the Biennale and Peggy’s contribution to all…
In 1895, Venice Biennale begins with the idea of bringing international modern art to Italy, at the initiative of Ricardo Selvetico. The first took place in Giardini, a public park area. With the participation of European and Italian artists, this biennial has become the center of artistic encounters and cultural interaction with the participation of different countries over the years. Their power played an important role among the factors determining the participation and pavilions of these countries. When we came to the beginning of the 20th century, the pavilions of some countries gradually became permanent and it was coinciding with this time that they became international. Later, they are starting to use Arsenal, one of the old shipyards, to open an exhibition. Thanks to this biennial, which becomes the heart of contemporary art every two years, the city of Venice also provides many tourists gains and the cultural economy develops. It was canceled between 1914 and 1918 because of World War I. In 1930, control of the biennial was taken from the city council and passed to the fascist government under Benito Mussolini. After that, they started to organize three more events as “Biennale Musica”, “Biennale Cinema” and “Biennale Teatro”. The biennial was interrupted when World War II broke out, and after the war they resumed sequentially. In 1948, the art exhibition part was opened. The division in post-war Italy also affected the art debates. There were disagreements about who and which art movements will be in the biennial, and these disputes were finally resolved. “Rather than taking a side with the cultural politics of one of the two main parties (DC and PCI), the Biennale developed an art historical program using quality as its principal backbone.” (Cagoll and Martini, 2020) Peggy Guggenheim was invited to open an exhibition in place of Greece whose pavilion was empty due to war. However, giving a small and distant place like the Greek pavilion showed that some concerns remained. This exhibition was indeed the most popular exhibition of the Biennial, it drew a lot of attention. Peggy said “What I enjoyed most was seeing the name of Guggenheim appearing on the maps in the public gardens next to the names of Great Britain, France, Holland, Austria, Switzerland, Poland… I felt as though I were a new European country” (Connelly, 2018)
Peggy Guggenheim’s pavilion was the most prominent, although other pavilions featured the works of Impressionists, Picasso, and “degenerated” art against the Nazis. For many, it actually showed what would be the role of post-war biennials. After the war, the rules of the game also changed and it was now more diverse, Peggy’s exhibition showed this very clearly and this was an exhibition that influenced all the following years of the biennial. Moreover, in the Peggy’s biennial exhibition many art movements and artists from many different nationalities were under the same roof, abstraction, surrealism, cubism, futurism were all in the same place. Even at an event that counts himself as “great mother” of the biennial activities, Peggy showed off who the great mother was. She exhibited 136 works from 73 artists, this exhibition included many works from Peggy’s private collection. Paintings by Jean Harp and Max Ernst, sculptures by Alberto Giacometti and mobile-like fixtures from Piet Mondrian.
Sarah Thornton in biennial part of the book said, “A biennial is not just a biennial show; It is a giant exhibition that is expected to capture the moment in global art” This capturing moment become more evident with the Peggy, as example we can give her memory from biennial. Bernard Berenson who is wrote about Renaissance art, visited Peggy’s exhibition and Peggy said him, how much she had studied his books and how much they had meant to her, and he replays why do you go in for this? Peggy’s replays for this show how much she care about capturing moment and she said “I consider it one’s duty to protect the art of one’s time”.
According to Thea Hawlin from Another magazine, “Guggenheim’s bravery, both in relocating to a new country and in having the courage to stand by the art she loved, invoked a new spirit in the Biennale to challenge and not merely comfort its audiences. It is a disposition that continues to this day.”
Peggy did not restrict its area of influence after settling in Venice and her collection has been exhibited in many cities such as Milan, Amsterdam and Zurich. Later she made her palazzo open to public, continued to invest in art throughout her life in Italy, and supported many of the artists there. I think even this is a situation that contributes to Venice and Italy’s soft power in general. Additionally, these are shows that Peggy was actively part of the art world in terms of many way and it is possible to find the works of many artists that she supported in galleries and auctions in her time.
Finally, before her death, she signed with her cousins and her collection became part of the Guggenheim Foundation. This museum is a cultural institution contributed greatly to the development of Venice. Venice is now seen as a city of contemporary art as much as it is seen as a historical city, and Peggy Guggenheim’s support for the artists, her participation in the biennial and her museum have greatly influenced the history and future of the biennial and Venice.
I would like to end this paper with quotation from again Thea Hawlin from Another magazine “The genius of artists such as Calder, Pollock, Rothko and Ernst remains unquestioned in the artistic canon today, yet the value of the woman holding their work aloft for the world to see, positioning canvases and hanging mobiles in an exhibition that came about by chance, has yet to be fully realized.”
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