Great Gatsby was based on the life story of her father before he died on the Titanic, she had impeccable taste and unorthodox aesthetic sensibility; she made courageous choices, discovered the most glorious talents of 20th century art, created the business of art when it was about art, and had had the most extraordinary life. This afternoon, we went to see Peggy Guggenheim: Art Addict, a film directed by Lisa Immordino Vreeland at the Film Society of Lincoln Center, featuring the adventurous chapters of the collector/patron who helped shaping the avant-garde movements of modern art, and particularly Surrealism and Abstract Expressionism. The film, based on audiotapes that Vreeland uncovered in a biographer's basement, demonstrates that from all of her advisers, friends, lovers, it was Marcel Duchamp whose advice she came to consider crucial to the development of her career, and to her understanding of art. Frederick Kiesler, the Austrian-American visionary architect was in charge of designing her gallery “The Art of This Century” on 57th Street. He told her that it would not for the art that she would be remembered, but for the way it was displayed (by him); it took her years to convince Alexander Calder to create a bed headrest for her bedroom (above), but this is only one of the fascinating stories featured in this remarkable film.
Paggy Guggenheim with her then husband Max Ernst at the Gallery
The mural Jackson Pollock created for Peggy Guggenheim's townhouse
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