Peggy Guggenheim
El escándalo de la modernidad
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- $10.99
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
Pobre niña rica, coleccionista de maridos y de cuadros, fundadora de la galería y de la colección que dieron entidad al arte del siglo xx, viajera, amante de la noche y de la vida social, gran lectora, divertida, manipuladora, complicada... el perfil humano y profesional de Peggy Guggenheim se desvela por fin en esta biografía breve pero completa, basada en el propio relato de su protagonista y el de quienes la conocieron. Y de fondo, todo el mundo cultural europeo y estadounidense del último siglo.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
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.