The career of socialite, collector, patron and salonnière Peggy Guggenheim must be the most mind-bogglingly eventful in the history of 20th-century art. Lisa Vreeland’s documentary does full justice to it, interviewing art critics and historians and rattling through her star-studded life story – the term “name dropping” hardly covers it – using some fascinating audio interviews with Guggenheim herself, who with authentically patrician understatement casually alludes to her acquaintance with some of the biggest names in art. The wealthy daughter of Benjamin Guggenheim (who went down with the Titanic) and niece of Solomon Guggenheim (founder of the famous New York museum), Peggy became a passionate collector of art and artists; she founded galleries in London, New York and finally Venice where her museum still stands. The origin of her work was a brilliant early coup, buying up dozens of great works by Picasso and others in Paris at the outbreak of war, when prices were at their lowest. And she had, as people used to say, a string of lovers, including Samuel Beckett and Max Ernst, but also a deeply unhappy family life, an odd, introverted manner and in her latter years a botched nose job. This is an extraordinary story: I was on the edge of my seat.
