“I’m not gregarious. I’m a lone wolf.” Such is the bold statement of the central figure of Lisa Immordino Vreeland’s sophomore doc, Peggy Guggenheim: Art Addict. Guggenheim may claim to have been a lone wolf but Vreeland gives us a stunning, delightful character study of a woman positively surrounded and celebrated by people her entire life.
Through the peaks and troughs that a bourgeois upbringing, risqué temperament and a keen artistic palate brings, Guggenheim is presented as a thoroughly modern woman. Vreeland brings together insightful modern testimony and supporting portraits of the key personages in the international art world of the 20th century to help shape our understanding of the enigmatic woman who championed them and exposed them to the world. What results is an addictive, amusing film who’s charms are hard to resist.
Framed as both patron and patron saint of modern art, Guggenheim holds a special place in the heart of the international art community. Springing from a moneyed and eccentric clan of New Yorkers, Guggenheim always insisted on shocking good society, choosing to live as a bohemian Parisian at a young age over becoming a socialite housewife. It turns out that that choice would be a pivotal one: She emigrated in the early 1920’s, arguably at the dawn of the era of modern art in Europe. Moving and shaking within a veritable and infamous who’s-who on now-famous artists (do Picasso, Ernst, Dali, Tanguy, Pollock ring a bell?), Guggenheim’s taste in art translated into her collecting the then under-appreciated works of her friends and showcasing them in her own galleries.
While Art Addict plays in a straightforward birth-to-death documentary fashion, Vreeland and those interviewed are more concerned with the themes that surround Guggenheim than the events of her life. What becomes evidently – and tastefully so – is that Guggenheim has always, somehow, managed to stay on the cusp of what is on trend in the art world. Combined with a skill for collecting, schmoozing and showcasing said works, Guggenheim becomes a modern art savant.
Vreeland’s storytelling is careful and considerate. Each interview informs of the historical and cultural importance of Guggenheim’s life without feeling overly saccharine or critical. But what really makes this documentary a treat is the incorporation of a series of recorded interviews conducted for Guggenheim’s biography in her late years. To hear her enlighten us to the more candid moments in her life makes Art Addict feel all the more accessible. Even for those uninitiated into the deep history of 20th century art and the landmark movements it encompasses, this is a documentary that can act as primer or extended study. There is no shortage of colour, wit and wonder here.
In the final moments, Guggenheim (on recording) states: “I can’t be jealous of the past. Only the future.” And with Art Addict, viewers may only end up being jealous of Peggy.
