Peggy Guggenheim: Art Addict

Peggy Guggenheim did not found the famous New York museum that bears her family's name—that was her philanthropist uncle Solomon—but she amassed a collection of modern art that rivaled the world's best and fostered the careers of many of the foremost artists of her time, including Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, and Robert Motherwell. As Lisa Immordino Vreeland's biographical documentary emphasizes, Guggenheim also led a very eventful and often sad life. Following the death of her father on the Titanic, Guggenheim left for Paris, where she hobnobbed with many of the cultural luminaries of the 1930s (sharing beds with some, according to rumor), and opened a gallery to showcase their art, mostly acquired at modest cost (which she was able to later bring to New York in 1941). After the war, Guggenheim decamped to Venice, where she would eventually establish the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, one of Europe's premier museums of modern art. Vreeland structures her profile around excerpts from long-lost interviews with Guggenheim conducted by her biographer Jacqueline Bograd Weld in 1978-79, to which Weld adds her own observations, along with those from a variety of acquaintances and art experts (as well as Robert De Niro, whose parents were among the many artists Guggenheim assisted). As the title indicates, the interviewees sometimes succumb to armchair psychoanalysis about Guggenheim's motives and needs, but Vreeland's film provides a fascinating portrait of a woman who, whatever the nature of her obsessions, was able to put them to good use. Extras include extended interviews, and a Q&A with Vreeland. Recommended. Aud: C, P. (F. Swietek)