Peg­gy Guggen­heim: Art Addict

“Because of her lack of beau­ty she was nev­er going to make it as a siren,” offers one bitchy (male) com­men­ta­tor when asked what made the late Peg­gy Guggen­heim grav­i­tate towards the accu­mu­la­tion of art. This out­ra­geous­ly enter­tain­ing, quick-fire film boasts the rat-a-tat rhythm and the lust for life of a screw­ball com­e­dy, as it intro­duces us to a woman who rose above the sneer­ing, and carved out a name for her­self as a cre­ative patron, vora­cious lover and bon vivant.

Lisa Immordi­no Vree­land fol­lows the fas­ci­nat­ing Diana Vree­land: The Eye Has to Trav­el with a well-spun, ener­get­i­cal­ly edit­ed yarn that’s in part told by Peg­gy her­self, after nev­er-before-heard audio inter­views were tan­ta­lis­ing­ly unearthed. Dubbed a ​‘mix­ture of the old-fash­ioned and the very, very mod­ern’, Guggen­heim oblig­ing­ly swings between prim polite­ness and pleas­ing frank­ness (“my book is all about fuck­ing”), her deliv­ery both slur­ring and sharp.

Born into priv­i­lege in 1898 but mired in mis­for­tune (her father going down on the Titan­ic was sad­ly just the begin­ning), New York­er Peg­gy refused to rest on her rich­es, or to resign her­self to the role of trage­di­enne, instead becom­ing a self-con­fessed art addict. After being turned on to the avant-garde scene through her job in a NY book­store, she befriend­ed a num­ber of notable artists in the 1920s – includ­ing Man Ray and Mar­cel Duchamp – as she decamped to Paris, and became a major influ­ence on British think­ing about mod­ern art when she opened a gallery in Lon­don, show­cas­ing the sur­re­al­ists and putting on Kandinsky’s first Eng­lish exhibition.

Return­ing to Paris, Peg­gy saved a wealth of art from Nazi destruc­tion in 1939, which she smug­gled out dis­guised as house­hold goods (this would form the nucle­us of her col­lec­tion, pur­chased for a mere $40,000 and fea­tur­ing works by Dali and Picas­so). She also helped artists flee to Amer­i­ca, notably Max Ernst who became her phi­lan­der­ing hus­band. Lat­er Peg­gy would be known for her finan­cial sup­port and encour­age­ment of Jack­son Pol­lock, the achieve­ment of which she was most proud. Described as a ​‘pol­li­na­tor’, she formed a cru­cial link between the Euro­pean and Amer­i­can mod­ernist move­ments, bring­ing sig­nif­i­cant indi­vid­u­als and their work together.

Vreeland’s vibrant film com­bines per­son­al biog­ra­phy and art his­to­ry, spit­ting out daz­zling mon­tages of paint­ings, exhi­bi­tion posters, pho­tographs and movie clips, inter­spersed with amus­ing anec­dotes and scin­til­lat­ing ver­bal swipes from her sub­ject. A var­ied assort­ment of inter­vie­wees offer their con­sid­ered con­tri­bu­tions – from biog­ra­ph­er Jacque­line Bograd Weld, to Mari­na Abramović and Robert De Niro (whose artist par­ents were cham­pi­oned by Guggen­heim) – while art his­to­ri­an John Richard­son throws a few back­hand­ed com­pli­ments Peggy’s way.

We see how Peg­gy ploughed on despite rou­tine sex­ist dis­par­age­ment and the appar­ent hur­dle of her looks (she opts to ​“guts it out with a fun­ny face” after a botched nose job). Vree­land suc­ceeds because she embraces the many facets of Peggy’s per­son­al­i­ty: her inse­cu­ri­ty and self-acknowl­edged clev­er­ness, her flam­boy­ance and noto­ri­ous cheap­ness. It’s a suit­ably colour­ful por­trait of an art lover who defied the naysay­ers to make one hell of a mark.