Confessions of an Art Addict Read online

  The Biennale, which was started in 1895, is an international exhibition of contemporary art, which is held every other year in the Public Gardens at the end of Venice, on the lagoon near the Lido. A lot of very ugly buildings put up in the time of Mussolini give it a distinct character. The trees and the gardens are wonderfully looked after and make a beautiful background for the various pavilions. In the middle of June, when the Biennale opens, the lime trees are flowering and the perfume they exhale is overpowering. I often feel this must compete strongly with the exhibition, as it is so much pleasanter to sit in the gardens than to go into the terribly hot and unventilated pavilions.

  The foreign countries that exhibit are each responsible for the shows in their own pavilions, which are run under the auspices of their various governments. In the main Italian pavilion there are miles and miles of very boring paintings, though occasionally something good is shown. There are also innumerable large and small one-man shows which are supposed to be devoted to contemporary painters, though sometimes earlier artists, such as Delacroix, Courbet, Constable, Turner, and even Goya have slipped in. No one knows why. Most of the Italians who exhibit go on doing so year after year out of habit. There have also been one-man shows of Picasso, Braque, Miró, Ernst, Arp, Giacometti, Marini, Klee, Mondrian, Douanier Rousseau, as well as shows of the Fauves and the Futurists. Before 1948, only Picasso and Klee were known in Italy, apart from the Italian Futurists.

  The Biennale is opened by the President of Italy, who comes in full pomp and regalia to inaugurate it, and the Venetian state boats of the past are brought out for the procession from the Prefettura, the Prefect’s palace, to the Public Gardens.

  In 1948, after so many years of disuse, the pavilions were in a bad state and there was an awful lot of repairing going on up to the last minute. My pavilion was being done over by Scarpa, who was the most modern architect in Venice. Pallucchini, the secretary-general, was not at all conversant with modern art. He was a great student of the Italian renaissance, and it must have been very difficult for him, as well as very brave, to do his task. When he gave a lecture in my pavilion he asked me to help him distinguish the various schools; he was even unfamiliar with the painters. Unfortunately I had to go to the dentist, but he claimed that he had managed without me.

  Pallucchini was very strict and tyrannical. He reminded me of an Episcopalian minister. He would not allow me into the Gardens until my pavilion was finished. I was very upset, as everyone else in Venice who was interested in modern art seemed to be getting passes. Finally I was invited to come, and was taken all over by Pallucchini’s aide-de-camp, a lovely man called Umbro Apollonio. I don’t know how, but while talking to him I sensed that this was the first time in his life that he was doing a job that he enjoyed, and my recognition of the fact touched him so much that we immediately became friends. Like Pallucchini, he knew nothing about modern art. In Italy, the Surrealists, Brancusi, Arp, Giacometti, Pevsner and Malevich had never been heard of. If Santomaso was conversant with what was going on outside Italy, it was only because he had been to Paris in 1945. Also, he and Vedova had both seen copies of Minotaur and Cahiers d’Art, brought clandestinely into Italy.

  In 1948 the foreign pavilions were, naturally, à la page. But some were still very much behind the Iron Curtain. I was allowed to hang my collection three days before the Biennale opened. Actually, I wanted to go to Ravenna with Dr Sandberg, the director of the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, who had already finished his work in the Dutch pavilion. But this was out of the question, so I buckled down to work. Fortunately I was given a free hand and a lot of efficient workmen, who did not mind my perpetual changes. We managed to get the show finished in time, and though it was terribly crowded it looked gay and attractive, all on white walls—so different to Kiesler’s décor for Art of This Century.

  The opening of the Biennale was very formal, but, as usual, I had no hat, stockings or gloves and was in quite a dilemma. I borrowed stockings and a girdle from a friend, and instead of a hat wore enormous marguerite-flowered ear-rings made out of Venetian glass beads. Count Zorzi, the head of the press office and the Ambassador of the Biennale, who had actually extended to me the Biennale invitation, gave me strict instructions that when President Einaudi came to my pavilion I should try to explain to him as much as I could about modern art in the five minutes he would remain with me. I received exactly contrary orders from Pallucchini, who said the President was lame and would be terribly tired after visiting the whole Biennale, my pavilion being his last effort.

  When His Excellency arrived he greeted me by saying, ‘Where is your collection?’ I said, ‘Here,’ and he corrected himself and asked where it had been before. I tried to obey Count Zorzi rather than Pallucchini, and put in a few words, but luckily the photographers intervened and the entire official party was photographed with Gonella, the Minister of Education, the President and me under my lovely Calder mobile.

  The same morning I had a visit from the American Ambassador and the consular staff. The United States pavilion was not open, as the pictures had not arrived in time, and James Dunn, our Ambassador, was very pleased that at least I represented the United States. Looking at one of my abstract Picassos, he seemed rather happy to note that it was ‘almost normal’.

  The introduction to the Biennale catalogue for my show was written by Professor Argon. It was very confusing, as he was all mixed up about the different trends in modern art. Upon the insistence of Bruno Alfieri, the owner of a bookshop, I had made a little catalogue of my own to sell in my pavilion, although I was included in the Biennale one. I wrote a short introduction for my own catalogue, but it was so badly translated that I became quite hysterical and even wept. I could not speak Italian well enough to cope with the situation and begged Marga Barr, Alfred’s wife, who is half Italian, and who was then in Venice, to help me. But the moment I chose was on board a vaporetto and she had to get off before she could finish her task.

  The two most unfortunate things that occurred at the Biennale were the theft of a little piece of bronze from a David Hare sculpture representing a baby; it must have been taken as a souvenir. And the other was Pallucchini’s decision (as some priests were coming to visit my pavilion) to take down a very sexual Matta drawing of centaurs and nymphs. The drawing itself was so annoyed that it fell on the ground and the glass broke into smithereens, thus obviating its insulting removal.

  A third catastrophe was avoided by Bruno Alfieri, who saved a dismantled Calder mobile from being thrown away by the workmen, who thought that it was bits of iron bands which had come off the packing cases.

  My exhibition had enormous publicity and the pavilion was one of the most popular of the Biennale. I was terribly excited by this, but what I enjoyed most was seeing the name of Guggenheim appearing on the maps in the Public Gardens next to the names of Great Britain, France, Holland, Austria, Switzerland, Poland, Palestine, Denmark, Belgium, Egypt, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Roumania. I felt as though I were a new European country.

  My next illustrious visitor was Bernard Berenson. I greeted him as he came up my steps and told him how much I had studied his books and how much they had meant to me. His reply was, ‘Then why do you go in for this?’ I knew beforehand how much he hated modern art and said, ‘I couldn’t afford old masters, and anyhow I consider it one’s duty to protect the art of one’s time.’ He replied, ‘You should have come to me, my dear, I would have found you bargains.’ He liked best the works of Max Ernst and Pollock. Nevertheless, he said Max’s were too sexual and that he did not like sex in art; the Pollocks, to him, were like tapestries. He was horrified by a little bronze Moore, a reclining figure of a woman, which he said was distorted.

  The next time I saw Berenson was at I Tatti, his own home near Florence, and I was more polite to him than he had been to me as I admired his collection. I thought it very sad that so little was left of all the marvellous paintings that had passed through his hands. I begged him to visit me in Venice and promised to p
ut sheets over all my paintings, if that would be an inducement for him to come. He asked me to whom I was going to leave my collection when I died, and though he was already eighty-five at that time, he looked at me with horror when I replied, ‘To you, Mr Berenson.’

  As a result of all the publicity, I was plagued by everyone who wanted to sell me something and I couldn’t come down into the lobby of the hotel where I was staying without being accosted by innumerable people. I asked Vittorio Carrain, a young friend, who was one of the owners of the Angelo restaurant, to protect me. As a result, he became my secretary and worked with me for years. He was intellectual, musical and very knowledgeable, and also served me as a key to the life of Venice, as I never read any newspapers. He loved the atmosphere I lived in and was exceedingly kind and a devoted friend, and a great help when we made exhibitions and catalogues.

  I requested Ingeborg Eichmann, a Sudeten art historian, to give a lecture in my pavilion to explain the various trends in art. So many people came to the first lecture, on Cubism and abstract art, that we had to call off the second lecture, on Surrealism, in order to save the pictures from damage. They had all just been marvellously cleaned and refreshed by a Venetian painter called Celeghin, a charming man with enormous mustachios.

  I used to go myself to the Biennale every few days and take my dogs with me. They were very well treated by a restaurant at the entrance called the Paradiso, and always given ice-cream on their way in. Therefore whenever I asked them if they wished to accompany me to the Biennale, they wagged their tails and jumped with joy. They were the only dogs admitted to the exhibition, and when they were lost in this labyrinth I always found them in the Picasso exhibition; which proves how valuable their education had been at Art of This Century, where they had accompanied me every day.

  At the end of the Biennale, the question arose of what to do with the pictures. I had taken it for granted that if the Biennale had brought them to Europe, paying all the expenses, at least that they would be allowed to remain in Italy. But this was not the case. They had been brought in on a temporary permit and had to go out again. For several months I hesitated about what to do. I was expected to pay three per cent duty for importing them permanently into Italy. So I decided they would have to be taken out and brought back again at a lower valuation.

  In the meantime the museum of Turin asked me to exhibit them there. I was delighted, but at the last minute, the day before the collection was to leave for Turin, the authorities of that city decided against showing anything so modern. A well known critic, Dr Ragghianti, then asked me if I would show the collection in Florence, in the Strozzina, the cellar of the Strozzi Palace, which he was about to turn into a modern art gallery. He wanted to have my collection to inaugurate it, and made an excellent catalogue, which has been the basis ever since for my Italian one.

  When I arrived in Florence I was shocked by the lack of space in the Strozzina and by some dreadful screens that resembled shower curtains, which had been set up to make more space. Dr Ragghianti was very agreeable about removing these horrors, and accepted my proposal to give three different expositions. The first one was of Cubist and abstract art, the second Surrealist and the third dedicated to the young painters. This idea was very successful and permitted me to make three visits to Florence, all of which I enjoyed immensely, staying with my friend Roloff Beny. We had a very social life, and here I met a charming lady poetess from Dublin, New Hampshire, called Elise Cabbot. She was amazed by the number of my paintings shown in Florence and said, ‘How did Peggy ever have time to paint them all?’

  After this, I was invited to exhibit in Milan in the Palazzo Reale. Here there was no space problem. I have never had so many rooms at my disposal before or since. This show was such a great success that the catalogues had to be hired out while new ones were being printed. Francesco Flora wrote the preface to the catalogue and the show was given for the benefit of the Associazione Artisti d’ltalia, as a result of which all the debts of this association were paid off.

  When the collection came back from Florence the problem again arose of what to do with it. I had reached no settlement with the authorities in Rome, though I had offered the whole collection to Venice on my death, if the Italian government would waive the duty they were claiming. But the old fogies in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs were adamant and would not let me off. The pictures in the meantime were housed in the modern museum in Venice, the Ca’ Pesaro, a beautiful seventeenth-century building designed by Longhena, where Dr Perrocco, its curator, kept them for me. I was allowed to borrow a few at a time, but not too many.

  A year after the Biennale exhibition Dr Lorenzetti, the director of the Ca’ Pesaro, had asked me to make an American exhibition in two small rooms. Poor man, I am sure he was only doing his duty, as he must have hated modern art a thousand times more even than Pallucchini did.

  At this same time, at the request of Michael Combe Martin, who was director of the British Institute, which was in the beautiful Palazzo Sagredo, I made a show of British painters there, so the pictures did manage to be seen.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  PALAZZO VENIER DEI LEONI

  Finally, in 1949, Flavia Paulon, secretary of Count Zorzi, found me a lovely abode. It was an unfinished palace on the Grand Canal, started in 1748 by the Veniers, a famous Venetian family who had given two doges to Venice and who were alleged to have kept lions in their garden. The front of the palace bore eighteen lions’ heads, which may be the reason for the name given to it: Venier dei Leoni. It stands opposite the Prefettura, the palace of the Prefect of the Veneto.

  The palace was all built in white stone and was covered with vines; ‘All’ is saying a lot, as the building never exceeded one floor, and in Venice is called ‘the palazzo non compiuto’, the ‘unfinished palace’. It had the widest space of any palace on the Grand Canal, and also had the advantage of not being regarded as a national monument, which things are sacred in Venice and cannot be altered. It was therefore perfect for the pictures. At the front entrance there was a lovely courtyard with steps going down to the Grand Canal, and at the back one of the largest gardens in Venice, with very old trees. The top of the palace formed a flat roof, perfect for sun-bathing. I naturally took advantage of this, but was rather worried about the reaction of the Prefect, my vis-à-vis. However, he merely said, ‘When I see Mrs Guggenheim sun-bathing on the roof, I know the spring has come.’

  Signora Paulon got her husband to do up the place for me. Actually, it was not in very bad shape, though it had changed tenants very often since 1938. Before that, in 1910, Louisa, Marchesa Casati, a poetess, had lived in one of the wings, giving fantastic Diaghileff parties and keeping leopards instead of lions in the garden. In 1938, the Viscountess Castlerosse bought the house and spent a fortune doing over what was then practically a ruin. (I believe the Marchesa Casati barely had a roof over her head.) Lady Castlerosse installed six marble bathrooms and beautiful mosaic floors. Her taste was not the same as mine, and I had to scrape off all the Liberty stucchi from the walls. After the first year Lady Castlerosse lent the palace to Douglas Fairbanks jnr., and then three armies of occupation, German, British and American, lived in it in turn.

  In the autumn of 1949, I made an exhibition of more or less recent sculpture in the garden, and Professor Giuseppe Marchiori, a well-known critic, wrote the introduction to the catalogue. We exhibited an Arp, a Brancusi, a Calder mobile, three Giacomettis, a Lipchitz, a Moore, a Pevsner, a David Hare, from my collection, and a Mirko, Consagra, Salvatore and two Vianis, which we borrowed from the artists. There was also a Marino Marini, which I bought from him in Milan. I went to borrow one for the sculpture show, but ended up by buying the only thing available. It was a statue of a horse and rider, the latter with his arms spread way out in ecstasy, and to emphasize this, Marino had added a phallus in full erection. But when he had it cast in bronze for me he had the phallus made separately, so that it could be screwed in and out at leisure. Marino placed the sculpture in my c
ourtyard on the Grand Canal, opposite the Prefettura, and named it the ‘Angel of the Citadel’. Herbert Read said the statue was a challenge to the Prefect. The best view of it was to be seen in profile from my sitting-room window. Often, peaking through it, I watched the visitors’ reaction to the statue.

  When the nuns came to be blessed by the Patriarch, who on special holy days, went by my house in a motorboat, I detached the phallus of the horseman and hid it in a drawer. I also did this on certain days when I had to receive stuffy visitors, but occasionally I forgot, and when confronted with this phallus found myself in great embarrassment. The only thing to do in such cases was to ignore it. In Venice a legend spread that I had several phalluses of different sizes, like spare parts, which I used on different occasions.

  The sculpture show was supposed to be held in the garden, but because Viani had brought two works in plaster they had to be exhibited in the house. So many people came wandering into all our bedrooms that we had to cordon off the exhibition. I had a house-guest, Philip Lasalle, staying with me at the time, who perpetually forgot that there was an exhibition and often found himself in the midst of strangers in his pyjamas in the garden.

  One of my Giacometti statues that I wanted to place in this show got stopped in the customs at Padua on its way from Milan. We went to fetch it in my open car. It was a beautiful thin figure without a head. We brought her back to Venice along the autostrada at great speed. Everyone who saw her must have thought she was a decapitated corpse. She was in very bad condition, so with the help of Consagra, a sculptor whom I knew, I got her back to her normal state and had her cast in bronze. But when the original one saw her new bronze sister, she was so scornful of her, and rightly so, as her own beauty far exceeded the other, that she remained intact ever since.