
Peggy Guggenheim
The Shock of the Modern
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
3 months free
Buy for $14.58
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Carrington MacDuffie
-
By:
-
Francine Prose
A spirited portrait of the colorful, irrepressible, and iconoclastic American collector who fearlessly advanced the cause of modern art.
One of 20th-century America's most influential patrons of the arts, Peggy Guggenheim (1898-1979) brought to wide public attention the work of such modern masters as Jackson Pollock and Man Ray. In her time there was no stronger advocate for the groundbreaking and the avant-garde. Her midtown gallery was the acknowledged center of the postwar New York art scene, and her museum on the Grand Canal in Venice remains one of the world's great collections of modern art. Yet as renowned as she was for the art and artists she so tirelessly championed, Guggenheim was equally famous for her unconventional personal life and for her ironic, playful desire to shock.
Acclaimed best-selling author Francine Prose offers a listen of Guggenheim's life that will enthrall enthusiasts of 21st-century art as well as anyone interested in American and European culture and the interrelationships between them. The lively and insightful narrative follows Guggenheim through virtually every aspect of her extraordinary life, from her unique collecting habits and paradigm-changing discoveries to her celebrity friendships, failed marriages, and scandalous affairs. Prose delivers a colorful portrait of a defiantly uncompromising woman who maintained a powerful upper hand in a male-dominated world. She also explores the ways in which Guggenheim's image was filtered through the lens of insidious anti-Semitism.
©2015 Francine Prose (P)2016 Blackstone Audio, Inc.Listeners also enjoyed...




















People who viewed this also viewed...




Great book
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
An interesting story told well
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Could’ve been so good
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
A little dry
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
This biography presents her as an adventurous art lover, unafraid of navigating Nazi Europe in search of treasure, despite being Jewish. She had sophisticated tastes, but was driven by her carnal passions. The book doesn't shy away from her obsession with sex and numerous affairs, including with artists like Max Ernst, whom she married briefly. Many of the most renowned artists of the time make an appearance in this book. Her complete devotion to art circles may have negatively impacted her family life, particularly her relationship with her daughter, Pegeen.
I enjoyed listening to this well-narrated audiobook, but it felt to me like an outsider’s view of Guggenheim. I would have liked a closer, more intimate understanding of who she was.
A sketch from a distance
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Facts depictions of her life
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
A different life
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Art history and feminist theory
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Good overview
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I had no idea she was so exciting
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.