Order from a Major Online Bookstore
Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine
Save Your Time And Money
| AnyBook4Less.com | Order from a Major Online Bookstore |
|
| Home | Store List | FAQ | Contact Us | | ||
| Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine Save Your Time And Money |
||
 |
Title: Art Lover : A Biography of Peggy Guggenheim by Anton Gill ISBN: 0-06-095681-X Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: 13 May, 2003 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.2 (5 reviews)
Rating: 1
Summary: Huge Disappointment!
Comment: After anxiously awaiting the arrival of this book, it was so disappointing to realize that I was forcing myself to read it! The book reads like a term paper with so many quotes from PG's own book that I was wondering why I had not bought that one instead. Several friends have also attempted to read this book and just can't get past the first half. You have to be dedicated and determined to get through this one!
Rating: 5
Summary: Art, sex and high psychological drama!
Comment: I could not put this book down. I read it straight through over two days in complete fascination. A woman who so deeply influenced art of the 20th century and nourished improtant artists when they were unknown so that they could keep working, and yet so insecure, so troubled, so unsure of her own knowledge and taste. An exquisite portrait of this flawed and fabulous character. I am thrilled that the aucthor has created such a thorough and penetrating biography - Peggy certainly deserves it!
Rating: 5
Summary: A Life Devoted to Sex and to Art
Comment: The name Guggenheim is well known among museums and among art collectors. One thinks that all those Guggenheims were pretty well off, but everything is relative, and there were rich Guggenheims and poor ones. Benjamin Guggenheim in 1912 dressed in his best formal evening clothes, heroically helped women to climb into the lifeboats of the _Titanic_, and then drowned. He left half a million dollars to his family, but it was the legacy of a poor Guggenheim, not a rich one. His daughter Peggy managed to take her share, and independently of the other collectors in her family, made a highly-regarded collection of early twentieth century art. It was a great accomplishment. She also took plenty of lovers, many of them famous, which is somewhat less of an accomplishment. She was a reprehensible mother, and pinched pennies in ways that would make those around her uncomfortable. She was a contradictory bundle, and now a fun, big, gossipy biography, _Art Lover: A Biography of Peggy Guggenheim_ (HarperCollins) by Anton Gill, has put bright light on all the facets. It isn't always an uplifting story, but it sparkles.
Peggy was fourteen when her father drowned; Gill argues that she was always looking for a father figure after that. Her sexual enthusiasms may have been driven also by fretting over her looks; she was a good-looking woman with a fine physique, but she had a nose which one unkind friend (and she had many of those) said looked like an eggplant. She had two marriages, both to artists, the second one to the famous surrealist Max Ernst, but both were painful. She took hundreds of lovers, most of whom meant little but a night of fun. Someone asked her later in her life, "How many husbands have you had, Mrs. Guggenheim?" and the typical, sharp, self-deprecating and self-aggrandizing answer came: "D'you mean my own, or other people's?" She was far luckier in her pursuit of art (rather than of artists). As years went on, she referred to her collection as "my children" and showed more interest in caring for it than she did for the flesh-and-blood version. She was able to buy art from artists who are now household names before they became so, and before art prices skyrocketed. Her sponsorship of Jackson Pollock is a lasting imprint on American art. Although her famous collection of surrealist and cubist works is now widely appreciated, not everyone felt it was a success. When she welcomed the critic Bernard Berenson to it in 1948, she gushed, "Mr. Berenson, you were the first person to teach me about painting," to which Berenson replied, "My dear, what a tragedy that I wasn't the last."
The Tate Gallery in London had enough enthusiasm earnestly to try to acquire her collection (it did do restoration work), but because of her legal and personal problems, the deal never went through. Tellingly, she could not finally compete with the resources of her uncle Solomon's foundation and museum. She had made her Palazzo Leoni one of the high points to visit in Venice (where it contrasted with the ancient city to good effect), and upon her death, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation took it over as a public museum. Peggy died in 1979, and her cremated remains were interred near her collection, and also near her beloved dogs' resting place, but far away from any friends or relatives. She had done well with dogs and art, and not much more. It was an eccentric and unique life, often successful, but encompassing a good deal of lost opportunities and sadness. This generous but by no means fawning biography is a pleasure to read because it is full of fascinating detail, scandalous stories, and coruscating bon mots.
 |
Title: Confessions of an Art Addict by Peggy Guggenheim, Alfred H., Jr. Barr ISBN: 0880015764 Publisher: Ecco Press Pub. Date: 01 November, 1997 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
 |
Title: Peggy Guggenheim: A Collector's Album by Laurence Tacou-Rumney ISBN: 0847824616 Publisher: Rizzoli International Publications Pub. Date: 01 July, 2002 List Price(USD): $30.00 |
 |
Title: The Lives of the Muses : Nine Women & the Artists They Inspired by Francine Prose ISBN: 0060555254 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: 07 October, 2003 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
 |
Title: Clement Greenberg: A Life by Florence Rubenfeld ISBN: 0684191105 Publisher: Scribner Book Company Pub. Date: 01 April, 1998 List Price(USD): $30.00 |
 |
Title: Tales from the Art Crypt : The painters, the museums, the curators, the collectors, theauctions, the art by RICHARD FEIGEN ISBN: 039457169X Publisher: Knopf Pub. Date: 20 June, 2000 List Price(USD): $30.00 |
Thank you for visiting www.AnyBook4Less.com and enjoy your savings!
Copyright� 2001-2021 Send your comments
