Copyright by Priyanka Sen 2012

The Thesis Committee for Priyanka Sen Certifies that this is the approved version of the following thesis:

The Architectural History of the Peggy Guggenheim Collection of Modern Art

APPROVED BY SUPERVISING COMMITTEE:

Supervisor: Richard Cleary

Christopher Long

The Architectural History of the Peggy Guggenheim Collection of Modern Art

by

Priyanka Sen, B.A.

Thesis Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of

Master of Arts

The University of Texas at Austin August 2012 Acknowledgements

I am grateful for the patience, support, kindness and wisdom of a number of people. First, I am very appreciative of Dr. Richard Cleary’s guidance throughout this project. His helpful observations and careful readings of many drafts helped to gear this project in a new and exciting direction. I am also thankful to my second reader, Dr. Christopher Long, who provided additional support during the research and writing process. Francine Snyder at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Archives and her staff offered me wonderful assistance in my short trip to the New York. I am most indebted to my family: Dad, Mom, Pritha and Tim – no one could ask for a better, loving support system. I would also like to thank Elizabeth Schaub and the entire Visual Resources Collection family for always lending an ear to new ideas and providing me with their support and friendship. I am especially lucky to be surrounded by wonderful, amazing colleagues. Most of all, Samuel Dodd, who will never be like the rest.

iv Abstract

The Architectural History of the Peggy Guggenheim Collection of Modern Art

Priyanka Sen, M.A. The University of Texas at Austin, 2012

Supervisor: Richard Cleary

Marguerite “Peggy” Guggenheim is best known for her legacy of collecting modern art in both Europe and the United States, but scholars have overlooked her importance as a patron of modern architecture, specifically the exhibition spaces that showcased her art collection. This thesis fills the gap of literature by tracing the architectural history of the collection. Guggenheim represented a catalyst for bridging the role of art and architecture by promoting modern art through three different spatial approaches: creating collaborative and didactic gallery workspaces at Galerie Guggenheim Jeune in London (1938-1939), establishing architectural spaces that employed unique display techniques at Art of This Century in New York (1942-1948), and instituting a final home-museum at Palazzo Venier dei Leoni in Venice (1949- present). Through the use of primary sources, such as Guggenheim’s autobiography, archival sources including familial correspondences, original black and white photographs, newspaper articles, and architectural drawings, I resituate Guggenheim as not only an art patron and collector, but also a benefactor of modern architectural spaces. v Table of Contents

List of Figures...... vii

Introduction...... 1

Chapter 1: Collaboration, Commerce and Display in the Modern Art Gallery...... 9 Collaborative and Didactic Workspaces...... 11 Gallery and Commerce ...... 14 The Power of Display Techniques...... 17

Chapter 2: The Final Home-Museum ...... 30 House Versus Home ...... 30 Guggenheim as Designer ...... 34 The Palazzo as Home-Museum ...... 39 The Female Patron ...... 42

Conclusion: "I am a Museum"...... 44

Illustrations ...... 46

Bibliography ...... 68

Vita ...... 71

vi List of Figures

Figure 1: Palazzo Venier dei Leoni plan drawn by Saul Furstein. Venice, Italy. Peggy Guggenheim Archives Box 786532, Folder 108, Solomon Guggenheim Archives, New York.

Figure 2: Palazzo Venier dei Leoni, Sitting Room and Library, Regione del Veneto Archivo, BN0003810.

Figure 3: “57 Street.” Fortune Magazine (September, 1946): 150.

Figure 4: Letter from Baroness Hilla von Rebay to Peggy Guggenheim, no date. Peggy Guggenheim Archives Box 100588, Folder 9. Solomon Guggenheim Archives, New York.

Figure 5: Letter from Peggy Guggenheim to Hilla von Rebay, dated March 17th, 1938. Peggy Guggenheim Archives Box 100588, Folder 10. Solomon Guggenheim Archives, New York.

Figure 6: Daylight Gallery at Art of This Century. Frederick Kiesler. 1942. Peggy Guggenheim and Frederick Kiesler: The Story of Art of This Century (New York: Guggenheim Museum Publication, 2004), 261.

Figure 7: Letter from Peggy Guggenheim to Frederick Kiesler. February 26, 1942. Peggy Guggenheim and Frederick Kiesler: The Art of This Century (New York: Guggenheim Museum Publications, 2004), 173.

Figure 8: Space Stage, model, Internationale Ausstellung Neuer Theaterechnik (International Exhibition of New Theater Techniques), Vienna, Austria. Frederick Kiesler. 1924. In ARTstor [University of California, San Diego]. [accessed 3 April 2012]. Available from ARTstor, Inc., New York, New York.

Figure 9: City in Space, Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industries Modernes, Paris, France. Frederick Kiesler. 1925. In ARTstor [University of California, San Diego]. [accessed 3 April 2012]. Available from ARTstor, Inc., New York, New York.

Figure 10: Museum of Non-Objective Painting, 24th East 54th Street, New York. Karole Vail. The Museum of Non-Objective Painting: Hilla Rebay and the Origins of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (New York: Guggenheim Museum Publications, 2009), 63.

vii Figure 11: “Brief Note on Designing the Gallery, page 1.” Frederick Kiesler. October 20, 1942. Frederick Kiesler: Art of This Century (Germany: Hatje Cantz, 2002), 34.

Figure 12: “Note on Designing the Gallery, page 1.” Frederick Kiesler. October 20, 1942. Peggy Guggenheim and Frederick Kiesler: The Art of This Century (New York: Guggenheim Museum Publications, 2004), 174.

Figure 13: Recreated floor plan of Art of This Century. Frederick Kiesler. 1942. Peggy Guggenheim and Frederick Kiesler: The Art of This Century (New York: Guggenheim Museum Publications, 2004), 183.

Figure 14: Hanging schemes for Art of This Century. Frederick Kiesler. 1942. Frederick Kiesler: Art of This Century (Germany: Hatje Cantz, 2002), 55.

Figure 15: Abstract Gallery, Art of This Century. Frederick Kiesler, 1942. Photograph taken by Berenice Abbott. Peggy Guggenheim Archives, Box 100588, Folder 34, Solomon Guggenheim Foundation Archives, New York.

Figure 16: Abstract Gallery at Art of This Century. Frederick Kiesler. 1942. Peggy Guggenheim and Frederick Kiesler: The Art of This Century (New York: Guggenheim Museum Publications, 2004), 190.

Figure 17: Hanging schemes for Art of This Century. Frederick Kiesler. 1942. Frederick Kiesler: Art of This Century (Germany: Hatje Cantz, 2002), 63.

Figure 18: Surrealist Gallery at Art of This Century. Frederick Kiesler. 1942. Peggy Guggenheim and Frederick Kiesler: The Art of This Century (New York: Guggenheim Museum Publications, 2004), 192-193.

Figure 19: Cutaway schematic representation of the viewing mechanism for Duchamp’s Boîte-en-valise. Frederick Kiesler. 1942. Peggy Guggenheim and Frederick Kiesler: The Story of Art of This Century (New York: Guggenheim Museum Publication, 2004), 251.

Figure 20: Palazzo Venier dei Leoni, Garden, Regione del Veneto Archivo, BN000185.

Figure 21: Peggy Guggenheim at the Greek Pavilion, XIVth Venice Biennale. Regione del Veneto Archivo, BN000277.

Figure 22: Palazzo Venier dei Leoni, Venice, Italy. Lorenzo Boschetti. 1748-1749. In ARTstor [Architecture of Venice (Sarah Quill)]. [accessed 3 April 2012]. Available from ARTstor, Inc., New York, New York.

viii Figure 23: Dining Room (Cubist Room), Palazzo Venier dei Leoni, Venice, Italy. Lorenzo Boschetti. 1748-49. Laurence Tacou-Rumney, Peggy Guggenheim: A Collector’s Album (Paris: Flammarion, 1996), 164-165.

Figure 24: Peggy Guggenheim in the Surrealist room, Palazzo Venier dei Leoni, Venice, Italy. Laurence Tacou-Rumney, Peggy Guggenheim: A Collector’s Album (Paris: Flammarion, 1996), 155.

Figure 25: Perspective view of reconstructed 3D model of Art of This Century. Frederick Kiesler. 1942 (2004). Peggy Guggenheim and Frederick Kiesler: The Story of Art of This Century (New York: Guggenheim Museum Publications, 2004), 202.

ix Introduction

As Peggy Guggenheim (1898-1979) eloquently described the city of Venice, Italy in her 1979 second edition autobiography Out of This Century: Confessions of An Art

Addict:

Everything in Venice is not only beautiful but surprising. It is very small, but so complicated because of the S-shaped Grand Canal that you are forever getting lost in its streets. You always come out eventually on the Grand Canal, but not at all where you expect.1

Her memory of the complex, maze-like city directly recalled the illusive location of her residential palazzo. I first discovered the Peggy Guggenheim Collection while cruising the Grand Canal on a Valporetto. The enormous, white, one-story façade made of Istrian stone was unmistakable against the urban fabric. Upon exiting the boat, I attempted to find the illustrious museum nestled away in the labyrinthine city. After an hour of searching, I nearly gave up until I came across a small alleyway that I had yet to explore.

To my astonishment, the path ended at Palazzo Venier dei Leoni, the final site for her celebrated art collection.

As I walked through the sculpture garden surrounding the structure, the palazzo beckoned me with large glass doors. Upon entering, I expected an expansive and sprawling exhibition space, as suggested by the prominent façade showcased on the

Canal, only to be pleasantly surprised to find the intimate and personal interior. As the

Collection’s director Philip Rylands declares, the palazzo represents “…this magical

1 Peggy Guggenheim, Out of This Century: Confessions of An Art Addict (London: André Deutsch Limited, 1979), 55. 1 place where paintings are not dwarfed by the enormous halls.”2 The palazzo possessed four rooms radiating off the central hallway (Figure 1). As I moved through it, the thoughtful placement of the artwork in each room crafted a seamless and natural flow between the exhibition spaces (Figure 2). The undecorated walls allowed the viewer to experience each work of art without any obstruction – to fully appreciate every brush stroke, every color – and to admire the varieties of modern art presented in this single collection.

After exploring the exhibition, I sat outside on the balcony facing the Grand

Canal, reflecting on the woman for whom this collection was named, the collection itself, and the intimate space. Several questions became the guiding framework for this thesis:

What inspired her to start her own collection? What other exhibition locales, if any, did she establish before the palazzo? How did these other spaces compare to the collection’s final site in Venice?

The scholarship on Peggy Guggenheim examines her role as an art collector and patron. Art historian Fred Licht asserted in his 1980 Art in America article commemorating her career: “[Guggenheim] had risen with spectacular glamour from being a highly individual and capricious person to being something of an art historical institution.”3 The 2001 compilation of essays, Before Peggy Guggenheim: American

2 Philip Rylands, “Press Release, Dated December 1979,” Peggy Guggenheim Archives, Box 100588, Folder 2, New York, Guggenheim Foundation, Guggenheim Museum Archives. 3 Fred Licht, “Peggy Guggenheim: 1898-1979,” Art in America (February 1980): 21. 2 Women Art Collectors, sets Guggenheim as “the enduring force and inspiring thrust of il collezionismo al femminile,” the epitome of the female collector.4

Other works focus on the role of the collection in the art historical context.

Angelina Zander Rudenstine inventoried her collection in 1985, publishing Peggy

Guggenheim Collection, Venice, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, which also provided essays discussing each artist’s work and their relationship to the anthology.

Nicolas and Elena Calas’ The Peggy Guggenheim Collection of Modern Art, originally published in 1966 and updated in 2001; the 1969 exhibition catalog of the retrospective of the collection Works From the Peggy Guggenheim Foundation, with an introduction by Guggenheim; and Karole V.B. Vail’s 1998 Peggy Guggenheim: a Celebration, all recognize the canonical quality of the collection.

Renowned art historians such as Clement Greenberg (1909-1994) established

Guggenheim as the driving force behind the extraordinary collection.5 Greenberg once said of her artistic penchants:

Her taste was not always sure or judicious, but she felt what was alive, she possessed an intuition for life which made her recognize authentic conviction in a

4 Sergio Perosa, “Concluding Remarks,” in Before Peggy Guggenheim: American Women Art Collectors, ed. Rosella Mamoli Zorzi (Venice: Marsilio Editori, 2001), 254. Perosa’s conclusion to the anthology of essays discussing the world’s most famous American female art collectors, including Isabella Stewart Gardner, Louisine W. Havemeyer, Gertrude Stein, and Hilla Rebay, situated Guggenheim amongst these other art collectors and established her place as the paradigm, female art collector and patron. 5 Clement Greenberg was an American modern art critic. Greenberg wrote several seminal essays, including the 1939 “Avant-Garde and Kitsch,” published first in Partisan Magazine and the 1959 “Collage,” written in Art and Culture. The essays transformed the trajectory of modern art criticism. Greenberg also notably promoted Abstract Expression artists in his 1955 essay “American-Type Painting,” specifically focusing on the work of Guggenheim protégé Jackson Pollock, as well as Willem de Kooning, Clyfford Still, and Barnett Newman. For more on Greenberg, see Alice Goldfarb Marquis, Art Czar: The Rise and Fall of Clement Greenberg (Boston: MFA Publications, 2006). 3 painting. It was a much more reliable basis than taste for discovering true originality.6

Guggenheim formed a lifelong friendship with another art historian, Alfred H. Barr, Jr.

(1902-1981).7 The museum director wrote the introduction to the second edition of her autobiography, asserting her lasting legacy as an art patron and collector: “Today, in

Venice, Peggy Guggenheim, her collection and her exhibition gallery continue to work.

Visitors who study the collection with the sounds of the Grand Canal in their ears should know something of the history of the collector as patron…”8 The declaration of these two important modern art figures solidified Guggenheim’s role as collector and the significance of her collection in the larger canon of modern art.

Barr’s use of the word “patron,” however, proves to be a one-sided understanding of her contributions partial to just the art historical context. A significant body of literature considers Guggenheim’s collection and role as art patron, but limited scholarship examines her architectural patronage of exhibition spaces, especially in relation to the final installation at the palazzo. This thesis attempts to fill this gap of research by tracing the architectural history of the collection and resituating Guggenheim

6 Sandro Rumney, “Foreword,” in The Peggy Guggenheim Collection of Modern Art Catalogue, ed. Paola Gribaudo (New York: Rizzoli, 2001), 8. Clement Greenberg, an American art critic and modern art theorist, was quoted in The Nation in New York in 1945 examining the role of Peggy’s artistic prowess in her collecting habits. 7 Alfred H. Barr, Jr. was the first director of the Museum of Modern Art from its inception in 1929 until 1943. His work in creating exhibitions and catalogs at the Museum helped to define the sects of modern art as well as identify the significant role of the museum in developing the field of art history. For more on Barr, see Sybil Gordon Kantor, Alfred H. Barr, Jr. and the Intellectual Origins of the Museum of Modern Art (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2002). 8 Alfred H. Barr, Jr, “Introduction,” in Out of This Century (London: André Deutsch Limited, 1979), xviii. 4 as not only an art patron and collector, but also as the benefactor of spaces to exhibit these works.

Guggenheim utilized three distinct spatial approaches in establishing her role as architectural patron: creating collaborative and didactic workspaces that facilitated the development and promotion of the modern artistic language, commissioning an architectural space that employed innovative display techniques to exhibit modern art, and instituting a final home-museum that canonized both the collection and the patron.9

By mapping the architectural course of Guggenheim’s collection from the Galerie

Guggenheim Jeune (1938-1939) in London, to the Art of This Century (1942-1948) in

New York, and, finally, Palazzo Venier dei Leoni (1949-present), I have found her role extends far beyond the status of art patron and exposes her significant position in creating and endorsing modern settings for the display of art.

The study of installation design, and its connection to architectural history, is a relatively new discipline. Mary Anne Staniszewski’s 1998 book The Power of Display: A

History of Exhibition Installations at the Museum of Modern Art examines the way in which artwork is displayed within a specific space. She works to develop a historical category that inherently links the art with the exhibition place, arguing that the spatial milieu transforms the collection’s meaning and its interpretation by the viewers.10

Staniszewski’s primary claim, that one cannot contemplate the role of a collection

9 A gallery presents exhibits with the intention of selling works by the artists, while a museum resides as a space to show a permanent collection. 10 Mary Anne Staniszewski, “Introduction,” in The Power of Display: A History of Exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The M.I.T Press, 1998), xxi. Staniszewski also specifically credits Frederick Kiesler for advancing the role of avant-garde exhibition display techniques within both the European and American context. 5 without considering its spatial confines and installation techniques, establishes the analytical foundation for this thesis.

I attempted to overcome the lack of scholarship on Guggenheim’s architectural legacy with archival source materials, made available by the Solomon R. Guggenheim

Foundation in New York. The evidence utilized from the archives include: familial correspondences, original photographs of the interior of Art of This Century taken by

Berenice Abbott (1898-1991), newspaper articles, and a floor plan completed after the

1980 renovation of the palazzo, mapping out each room and the modern art genre represented in each space. This material provides background information on

Guggenheim’s familial discords, images of the avant-garde display techniques employed by Austrian architect Frederick Kiesler (1890-1965) at Art of This Century, and the similarities in organization between the New York museum-gallery and the final floor plan of the palazzo in Venice.

Guggenheim’s autobiography chronicles her experiences working with artists and developing these different galleries. Though autobiographies represent significant pieces of primary evidence, information taken from them should be utilized cautiously, and critiqued for its subjective matter. As literary critic Harry Hansen once stated in his review of the book, “Sometimes her remarks are amusing, but gradually the reader feels that this book is a social document: a testimony of reckless Bohemianism…”11 The autobiography provides a substantial background on her collaborations with artists, original intentions of starting a collection, and potential architectural influences;

11 Guggenheim, 322. 6 however, it only represents her personal interpretation of events. I objectively utilize the autobiography to gain insight to Guggenheim’s personal sentiments, while additional materials, including the archival sources, attempt to create a full understanding of the woman and her motives.

Guggenheim originally published her autobiography in 1946 under the same title; however, the last chapter of her life, her return to palazzo and the establishment of the

Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice, did not occur until 1948. She republished Out of This Century in 1979 to include several chapters discussing the 1948 Venice Biennale, the purchase and renovation attempts of the palazzo, and the finalization of her collection. Additionally, she added a conclusion that acted as her own epitaph.

Guggenheim’s updating of her autobiography to include these sections suggest that the role of the palazzo and her final years in Venice were incredibly important to include in her life story - one of the only documents that represents her legacy in her own words.

Due to the subjective manner of the autobiography, I also consulted secondary biographies including: Anton Gill’s 2001 Peggy Guggenheim and Mary Dearborn’s 2004

Mistress of Modernism: The Life of Peggy Guggenheim. Both authors utilized the autobiography as a point of departure in an attempt to fill certain voids left by

Guggenheim. Gill models his book on the autobiography, but also assembles a variety of different sources to develop a complete picture of the heiress, while Dearborn also gathers additional information through personal correspondences between Guggenheim and her friends, diary entries citing Guggenheim and her relationships, and newspaper clippings. 7 The examination of Guggenheim’s architectural spaces sets up several dichotomous themes throughout the thesis, including the gallery versus the museum, temporary versus permanent exhibition places, high art versus popular culture, the architect versus the patron, and commercialization versus canonization. This thesis is divided into two chapters – “Collaboration, Commerce and Display in the Modern Art

Gallery,” and “The Final Home-Museum.” Chapter one examines the collaborative and didactic space of Guggenheim Jeune and this model’s transition to the museum-gallery

Art of This Century’s Daylight Room; the role of business and commerce in

Guggenheim’s enterprises and familial competition with her uncle, Solomon R.

Guggenheim (1861-1949); and how Kiesler’s exhibition display techniques created an instructive environment for the visitor by exercising the notion of the democratic and populist museum-gallery in an attempt to bridge the high culture of modern art with popular society.

The second chapter focuses on Guggenheim’s role as designer, both for her space at the 1948 Venice Biennale and at the final home-museum at Palazzo Venier dei Leoni.

Unlike the revolutionary techniques employed by Kiesler, Guggenheim reverted back to more traditional exhibition principles to create a private, intimate, domestic space to enjoy her collection and to share it with the rest of the world – monumentalizing the woman behind both the art and the architecture.

8 Chapter 1: Collaboration, Commerce, and Display in the Modern Art Gallery

“The places where art is sold vary with different approaches to selling.”12 This photograph caption in the article “57th Street,” published in Fortune Magazine in 1946, connected the American art exhibition space to the commercial power of the artwork

(Figure 3). The article examined “the heart, brain and nervous system of the art business in America” on 57th Street in New York and how each venue effectively marketed the space and the exhibition to sell artwork for specific clientele. The “approaches to selling,” as illustrated by the photographs of the spaces, directly related to the display techniques utilized to present the work to potential buyers. The first photograph of the sequence, Edith Halpert’s Downtown Gallery, represented the traditional “modern interior,” with the frames of each work prominently posed.13 The other three similar images depicted “sober,” “comfortable,” and “domestic” atmospheres in creating commercial galleries. In striking contrast, the second image portrayed the “resolutely advanced” museum-gallery Art of This Century, owned by Peggy Guggenheim and designed by Frederick Kiesler. The juxtaposition of these galleries exemplified the essence of why Guggenheim commissioned the architect to design her exhibition space – to reject the traditionalist display techniques and to advertise modern art in a new way.

Guggenheim’s extraordinary life experiences, including extensive traveling in both Europe and America, and the artistic connections she cultivated through this traveling, developed a unique blend of mentorship and personal awareness about art and

12 “57th Street.” Fortune Magazine September (1946): 150. 13 Ibid. For more on the Downtown Gallery, see Lindsay Pollock, The Girl with the Gallery: Edith Gregor Halpert and the Making of the Modern Art Market (New York: Public Affairs Inc, 2006). 9 architecture that later informed her decisions on collecting and exhibiting. After receiving her inheritance in 1919, she yearned for more than fiscal autonomy.14 She began working for her cousin, Harold Loeb, who partially owned “a little radical bookshop,” the Sunwise

Turn Bookstore in New York.15 The store functioned as both a publishing house for new writers and creative place where new “cultures” were collaboratively created. A 1922 speech given by Loeb declared this mission of the organization:

a phase of American unrest engendered perhaps by a generation of critics who have revealed to us in all sorts of upsetting ways how lacking we are in the rudiments of ‘culture.’ Vague hopes of taking part in the amelioration of a general condition of dullness in our civilization move many souls to feel called upon to do something about it.16

Though Guggenheim was in Europe during this speech, she certainly knew the intentions of the bookshop and, subsequently, attempted to implement these ideas in her own endeavors.

While working for Sunwise Turn, Guggenheim met art dealers, artists, and literary figures who utilized the store as an informal workspace to share their work and ideas. Though she performed menial tasks such as sweeping the office, writing checks, and organizing the inventory of books, the exposure to the inner workings of a small, creative collaborative stayed with her as she developed her first gallery, Guggenheim

Jeune in London in 1938.

14 Guggenheim, 21. 15 Ibid, 23. 16 Harold Loeb, “The Small Bookshop” Speech, dated January 27, 1922, Sunwise Turn Bookshop Archives Box 1, Folder 1, Harry Ransom Center, the University of Texas, Austin, Texas. 10 Collaborative and Didactic Workspaces

Guggenheim acquired her understanding of the modern art scene, both the collaborative efforts set forth by these groups and the artwork itself, by pioneering artists such as Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968) and through her friendship, and eventual marriage in 1922, to artist Laurence Vail (1891-1968). Vail played an integral role in exposing her to the intense European intellectual, cultural, and social life, taking his wife to

Montparnasse cafés, including Le Dôme Café and La Rotonde, to meet artists such as

Man Ray and The New Yorker art critic Robert Coates.17

In 1924, the Soirées de Paris was the first event where Guggenheim met

Duchamp, Max Ernst (1891-1976) and Pablo Picasso (1881-1873).18 The introduction to these art circles clearly influenced Guggenheim’s career and life endeavors, particularly in the opening of Guggenheim Jeune, and later, to a lesser degree, at Art of This Century.

Through Duchamp’s friendship, Guggenheim became a fixture in the twentieth-century modern art scene in Europe, permitting her to open a gallery that functioned in a similar capacity as the Sunwise Turn Bookshop.19

Opening Guggenheim Jeune was a collaborative effort from its inception. She rented the spacious second floor of a building located at 30 Cork Street in the heart of

Piccadilly in the West End of London, though very little is known about the design of the

17 Karole P.B. Vail, Peggy Guggenheim: A Celebration (New York: Solomon R. Guggenheim, 1998), 24. 18 Guggenheim, 51. 19 Ibid, 160. Duchamp played a crucial role in Guggenheim’s artistic education and the establishment of Guggenheim Jeune. She chronicles this in her autobiography, crediting the artist for teaching her the difference subsets of modern art, specifically between Surrealist and Abstract art, and also eventually helping the curatorial efforts at Guggenheim Jeune. 11 interior space of the gallery.20 New art galleries that showcased modern art centered around this specific part of London in the early twentieth-century, a fact that Guggenheim would have certainly been aware of through Duchamp and Vail.21 Additionally,

Guggenheim heavily relied on Duchamp not only to bring new collections to the gallery, but also to act as the curatorial creator of each show. As she stated, “He planned shows for me and gave me lots of advice… [he] hung the shows and made [them] look beautiful.”22

With this gallery, Guggenheim hoped to promote older avant-garde artists whose work no longer made headlines in their home countries as well as develop an educational center for new artists. In a letter to her uncle Solomon and aunt Irene, she discussed one of the first shows at the gallery in February of 1938, an exhibition of the Russian artist and Bauhaus educator Wassily Kandinsky declaring, “This is the first time that

[Kandinsky] has had such an important show in London and I hope to place some paintings in museums in England.”23 Guggenheim hoped that the show would assist in

Kandinsky’s wider acceptance within the mainstream avant-garde through both the exhibition in London and the potential permanent placement of his work in a museum.24

The status of his work in a London museum would only solidify Kandinsky’s classification as one of the leading modern artists.

20 Vail, 31. 21 Guggenheim, 161. 22 Ibid, 165. 23 Peggy Guggenheim to Solomon and Irene Guggenheim, “Letter dated February 15, 1938,” Peggy Guggenheim Archives, Box 100588, Folder 12, New York. 24 Ibid. 12 The gallery’s secondary purpose centered on exposing inexperienced, young artists to some of the great modern masters. Guggenheim cited one particular incident where an art teacher from a London public school requested to take several Kandinsky paintings to share with his art class: “…He begged me to allow him to show ten

Kandinskys to his pupils at the school… when the schoolmaster brought back the paintings he told me how much they had meant to the school.”25 British reporter

Theodore Goodman remarked on Guggenheim Jeune’s dual function in promoting older artists and creating a didactic center for young artists:

Her aim is to introduce to the art student, those painters whose art is not facile or easy enough to attract the commercial galleries and which only gets a showing after the artists have achieved fame in the ordinary way. Miss Guggenheim is willing to experiment.26

The gallery’s reputation continued to grow with the exhibitions of well-known

European artists including Kandinsky, sculptor Alexander Calder (1898-1976), and painter Yves Tanguy (1900-1955) showing at the gallery, despite the backlash of some traditional museums in London like the Tate Gallery.27 As British Surrealist and art historian Roland Penrose (1900-1984) declared, “Peggy’s influence in London was considerable…Cork Street was where the important things were happening. Everybody

25 Guggenheim, 170. 26 Mary Dearborn, Mistress of Modernism: The Life of Peggy Guggenheim (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004), 149. 27 Rumney, 11. As Rumney cites in his essay, the curator of the Tate Gallery accused Guggenheim of exhibiting works of only “scraps of iron, pieces of wood and stone,” by artists like Jean Arp, Alexander Calder, and Constantin Brâncuşi. At the time of Guggenheim Jeune’s first exhibition in 1938, J.B. Mason was the curator of the Tate and highly despised the role of modern art in a museum context, favoring traditional British artists. 13 came there, and Peggy brought an international flavor to it all.”28 The commercial gallery allowed for a promotion of modern art that Guggenheim yearned for through sales and didactic measures; however, she also wanted to further endorse these artists in a more permanent capacity than a temporary exhibition and sales gallery space.

Gallery and Commerce

Guggenheim Jeune’s key function existed in the commercial aspects of selling artwork to profit the artists, not the patron. As she opened the gallery, her uncle Solomon, with the help of artist and advisor Baroness Hilla von Rebay, simultaneously worked on developing his own collection and foundation in New York. Though Guggenheim focused her efforts as an art dealer rather than collector, the matter of opening multiple

“Guggenheim museums” soon proved to be a contentious point between family members.

In 1938, Rebay sent Guggenheim a note chastising her taste in art and her exploitation of the Guggenheim family name (Figure 4):

It is extremely distasteful at this moment, when the name of Guggenheim stands for an ideal in art, to see it used for commerce so as to give the wrong impression [of] this great philanthropic work… to be a useful boost to some small shop. Non-objective art, you will soon find out, does not come by the dozen, to make a shop of this art profitable…You will soon find you are propagating mediocrity, if not trash. If you are interested in non-objective art you can well afford to buy it and start a collection…The name of Guggenheim became known for great art and it is very poor taste to make use of it, of our work and fame, to cheapen it to a profit.29

28 Dearborn, 137. 29 Baroness Hilla von Rebay to Peggy Guggenheim, “1938 Letter,” Peggy Guggenheim Archives, Box 100588, Folder 9, New York, Guggenheim Foundation, Guggenheim Museum Archives. 14 Guggenheim, however, was not attempting to profit herself from selling art as Rebay suggested in the letter; she wanted the gallery to advertise these modern artists and their work to generate an income for their continued endeavors. In fact, as Guggenheim declared in her autobiography, one of the reasons for the gallery’s closure was caused by the lack of financial sustainability. As she stated, “It seemed stupid to go on with the gallery, which was suffering a loss of about six hundred pounds a year although it appeared to be a successful commercial venture. I felt that if I was losing that money I might as well lose a lot more and do something worthwhile.”30

The promotion and support of these artists represented a “worthwhile” business venture, despite its failure in generating revenue for Guggenheim. In a direct response to

Rebay’s letter (Figure 5), Guggenheim retorted:

I am very amused by your letter. Herbert Read suggests that I frame it and hang it in my Gallery. He also suggested that I have the right to use my own name, which you seem to object to. I think you have quite the wrong idea about my Art Gallery. It can hardly be called a business enterprise or small shop. For 16 years I have lived amongst and befriended artists. This is just a new way and a more practical one of continuing my life’s work…31

She addressed two key points in this quotation: that the gallery worked primarily to support the work of the modern artists that she befriended, and most significantly, that she believed that promoting these artists was her life’s mission – a seminal point that explains her continued efforts at establishing a museum to solidify the collection, and her, place in history.

30 Guggenheim, 196. 31 Peggy Guggenheim to Hilla von Rebay. “Letter dated March 17th, 1938,” Peggy Guggenheim Archives, Box 100588, Folder 10, New York. 15 Three years later in her New York, Guggenheim created the museum-gallery Art of This Century (1942-1948) with the aspirations of developing this permanent museum, while also maintaining a space for temporary exhibitions to sponsor new artists. Three of the four rooms utilized new avant-garde display techniques to present the work, discussed later in this chapter, but the final room of the floor plan, the Daylight Room (Figure 6), represented a similar workspace to Guggenheim Jeune. Int his gallery, Guggenheim networked with prospective buyers after they viewed the museum’s permanent collection.

Her desk was located in the room, granting her a strong presence over the space and allowing her to convince potential buyers to purchase pieces from these new artists.

Additionally, Guggenheim established a “spring salon” series that showcased new young American artists, including Jackson Pollock (1912-1956), Mark Rothko (1903-

1970), and Robert Motherwell (1915-1991) and sold their work in the gallery.32 The didactic nature of the museum-gallery continued, as Guggenheim stated in her autobiography, “As the gallery was a center where all the artists were welcome, they treated it as a sort of a club.”33 Though Guggenheim does not specifically chronicle the educational and collaborative atmosphere of the Daylight Gallery, it was inevitable that new artists met with older, established modern artists and shared ideas and critiques on each other’s works. As Licht declared, “What is less well known… [and] much harder to describe, is the educative effect the gallery had.”34

32 Rumney, 15. 33 Guggenheim, 317. 34 Licht, 22. 16 The main role of the other three rooms, however, promoted modern art through revolutionary display techniques. These principles attempted to create a didactic interpretation of the presented artwork in an effort to establish a democratic space that bridged the gap between high art and common society. Licht continued in his article,

“Very different in spirit from other galleries on 57th Street, Art of This Century eschewed both the shrine-like atmosphere favored by the elegant, ‘blue-chip’ dealers and the earnest communality of the social-consciousness places.”35 Returning to the Fortune photograph, the other commercial galleries represented the divergence between high art and the public interest in the art, but Art of This Century symbolized the unification of both entities, creating a more democratic and uncensored space. In addition, Kiesler’s display techniques added to the populist museum-gallery.

The Power of Display Techniques

Staniszewski’s discussion of avant-garde installation techniques in the twentieth- century museum illustrated how exhibitions “were conceived as integrated interiors that were…dynamic experiences for viewers who moved through and interacted with the installations.”36 Kiesler’s initial work in designing exhibitions with the Dutch De Stijl group advertised his strong abilities in creating new and innovative exhibition approaches. After returning to America in 1942, Guggenheim leased the top floor of 20-

30 West Fifty-seventh Street and hired him to redesign the space into a museum-gallery.

35 Licht, 22. 36 Staniszewski, 14. 17 As she stated in her letter (Figure 7), “May I show you the space, and also may I first show you my collection, so that you will have some definite idea of what is needed.”37

From the letter, Guggenheim clearly knew the unique character of her collection required a distinctive exhibition scheme – illustrating Staniszewski’s idea of the inherent connection between the artwork and the exhibition space. She felt that they both possessed the mutual wish “to develop a new method for exhibiting paintings, drawings, sculptures and so-called objects,”38 and to create an undeniable space that would solidify her collection’s importance within the art world, and by extension, affirm Guggenheim’s position.

As Dearborn observes in her biography, Guggenheim may have appreciated

Kiesler’s democratic approach to presenting art. She declares:

His insistence that there be no barriers between the public and the art was perfectly in keeping with what was to be a hallmark of the gallery and the dominant aspect of Peggy’s collecting life: a democratic impulse that broke down the barriers between high art and popular culture and insisted that art be viewed in the human framework, not aestheticized as in a museum.39

Guggenheim wanted to set up a space where artists and their work could be appreciated in a new, uninhibited manner by the masses of people, closing “the barrier between high art and popular culture.” This belief may have stemmed from her work at Guggenheim

Jeune, and more specifically, to the moment where the schoolmaster asked to show the

Kandinsky paintings to his class of art students. She wanted to continue the informal

37 Peggy Guggenheim to Frederick Kiesler, “Letter dated February 26, 1942,” Peggy Guggenheim and Frederick Kiesler: The Art of This Century (New York: Guggenheim Museum Publications, 2004), 173. 38 Eva Kraus, “ATC_A Reconstruction,” in Frederick Kiesler: Art of This Century, ed. Udo Kittelmann et. al (Germany: Hatje Cantz, 2002), 19. Kraus cites a letter from Kiesler or Guggenheim on the date of March 9th, 1942, in which Peggy countersigned the document to officially commission the architect. 39 Dearborn, 196. 18 didactic environment of her museum-gallery, both through the Daylight Gallery and

Kiesler’s specific display techniques.

Before Guggenheim commissioned Kiesler for her gallery, the architect had little success in finding work in the United States despite his prominent status in Europe. Born in Romania in 1890, he studied art and design in Vienna with the leaders of the

Secessionist Movement.40 In 1923, he joined the De Stijl group and worked closely with

Jean Arp, Theo Van Doesburg, and Piet Mondrian.41 Kiesler’s initial interest in designing exhibition spaces began at this time. In the 1924 Internationale Ausstellung Neuer

Theeaterechnik in Vienna, he created an architectonic installation with vertical, horizontal and diagonal wooden supports that created a freestanding structure to which paintings were fastened (Figure 8).42 These revolutionary ideas return almost two decades later in his design for Art of This Century. As he continued to develop a unique aesthetic approach, Kiesler also designed City in Space for the 1925 Exposition Internationale des

Arts Décoratifs et Industries Modernes in Paris (Figure 9). This project presented a utopian city model with a suspended framework of intersecting geometric planes and volumes.43

40 Lisa Phillips, Frederick Kiesler (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1989), 13. The Secessionist Movement marked one of the first European art groups that focused on exhibition displays. For more on the movement, see Leslie Topp, Architecture and Truth in the fin-de-siècle Vienna (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004). Phillips also declared that Kiesler claimed to work for Adolf Loos in post-World War II slum-clearing projects before pioneering his own career in theater stage design and productions. 41 Ibid. 42 Dieter Bogner, “Staging Works of Art, Frederick Kiesler’s Exhibition Design 1924-1957,” in Peggy Guggenheim and Frederick Kiesler: The Story of Art of This Century, ed. Susan Davidson et. al (New York: Guggenheim Museum Publications, 2004), 35. For more on this exhibition, see Cynthia Goodman, “The Art of Revolutionary Display,” in Frederick Kiesler (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1989): 57-84. 43 Bogner, 35. 19 City in Space was Kiesler’s crowning achievement in Europe, and he chose next to conquer the American architectural scene. He moved to the United States in 1926 and quickly recognized that Americans were not yet accustomed to modernist aesthetics, making it very difficult to gain any commissions his first years in the States.44 He only found success through his design for City in Space, because Jane Heap, editor of The

Little Review, asked him to re-create the project under the guise of the magazine.45

Kiesler’s strong penchant for exhibition design likely was one of the key reasons

Guggenheim eventually hired him for the renovation and installation at Art of This

Century. In her autobiography, she said she chose the architect for his reputation as

“…the most advanced architect of the century,” though she knew him to be a complicated character, as she put it “… a little man about five feet tall with a Napoleon complex.”46

This commission came after a decade of failed attempts at securing a job, including a position as partnering architect for Solomon R. Guggenheim’s museum.47 The earlier familial discord between Guggenheim, her uncle, and by extension, Rebay, on the

44 Phillips, 14. 45 Ibid. The Little Review was originally founded as a literary magazine and ran from 1914 to 1929. The founder of the magazine, Margaret Anderson, had asked Guggenheim for financial support in 1920 when the magazine was struggling. See Guggenheim, Out of This Century, 22. Under the new editorship of Jane Heap, the magazine became an avenue to introduce modernist ideologies to American culture. 46 Guggenheim, 270. 47 In the search to find an architect to propose a plan for the Solomon R. Guggenheim museum, Rebay friend and confidant Mondrian suggested hiring Frederick Kiesler to design the building as early as October of 1927 – more than a decade before Peggy Guggenheim commissioned him to create the space for Art of This Century in New York. Kiesler’s 1927 museum proposal played with planar geometries and volumes similar to his work for “City in Space,” reflecting his interest in Russian Constructivism and the Dutch De Stijl. A reproduction of the design was published in the 1930 Modern American Design magazine with the caption, “Project for a modern museum. Constructed of stainless steel, opaque glass; lighted and aired artificially.” The prospective project eventually disbanded, because Rebay, Kiesler and Solomon Guggenheim could not agree on a location. For more, see Don Quaintance, “Erecting the Temple of Non- Objectivity: The Architectural Infancy of the Guggenheim Museum,” in The Museum of Non-Objective Painting: Hilla Rebay and the Origins of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, ed. Karole Vail (New York: Guggenheim Museum Publications, 2009). 20 multiple Guggenheim galleries, may have affected her decision in hiring Kiesler for her own endeavor. Though Guggenheim believed in the architect’s abilities to renovate the space to properly present her collection, hiring the architect may have also been in direct response to Rebay’s failure in securing Kiesler for her own museum. Despite this,

Guggenheim added architectural patron to her repertoire of promoting different cultures of modernism. She initiated her influence on modern architecture by endorsing a struggling architect to create a new and innovative space.

Kiesler’s display techniques were intended to highlight each individual piece of art. As Philip Ryland notes in his essay “Peggy Guggenheim and ‘Art of This Century’”:

Kiesler…was to be in the service of the communicativeness of the art: the result achieved – contrary to one’s expectations – seems to be a much better possibility for concentrating the attention of the spectator on each painting and therefore a better chance for the painting to communicate its message.48

The architect utilized this driving principle in his design, breaking many previous

American conceptions of modern exhibition display, including “penthouse” galleries, as presented in the Fortune Magazine article, and traditional display museums like the

Museum of Modern Art and the Museum of Non-Objective Painting.49 The photograph in

Fortune portrayed Art of This Century as the clear anomaly because of these revolutionary display techniques. All other four “penthouse” galleries presented works within frames hung against the wall, while Art of This Century suspended the works on

48 Philip Rylands, “Peggy Guggenheim and ‘Art of This Century,’” in Before Peggy Guggenheim: American Women Art Collectors, ed. Rosella Mamoli Zorzi (Venice: Marsilio Editori, 2001), 235. 49 Rebay initially named “her” Guggenheim museum The Museum of Non-Objective Painting, before the name was permanently changed to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum along with Frank Lloyd Wright’s final design completed in 1959. 21 triangular apparatuses hung from the ceiling. The interaction between the viewer and the collection was completely different in comparison to other galleries, forcing the spectator to experience the artwork in a specific, didactic manner to permit “the painting to communicate its message.”

After returning to America in 1942 and prior to opening Art of This Century,

Guggenheim visited her uncle’s museum, the Museum of Non-Objective Painting, housed in a converted automobile showroom at 24 East 54th Street in New York (Figure

10).50 Recalling the visit in her autobiography, she stated:

It really was a joke. There were about a hundred paintings of Bauer in enormous silver frames which overshadowed the twenty Kandinsky’s…From the walls boomed forth music by Bach – a rather weird contrast. The museum was a beautiful little building completely wasted in this atrocious manner.51

Guggenheim’s strong aversion to the “enormous silver frames” as a display technique in the museum may have led to her one request of Kiesler during the design process: frameless artwork. Though the architect’s initial conceptual essay in 1942 suggested that the idea was his, Guggenheim refuted his assertion in her introductory essay of the 1969 publication Works From the Peggy Guggenheim Foundation. She maintained that Kiesler

50 Guggenheim, 250-251. In preparation of opening her own museum, Guggenheim visited the key American precedent of modern art and exhibition, Barr’s Museum of Modern Art, in 1939. Though she never fully recounted her visit and her initial meeting with Barr, she made it clear in her autobiography that she had hoped to “study the workings of the [museum].” Architects Philip Goodwin and Edward Durrell Stone, under the advisement of Barr, created a unique exhibition space with removable walls that allowed for a flexible floor plan. For more, see J. Pedro Lorente, The Museums of Contemporary Art: Notion and Development (Surrey, England: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2011). 51 Guggenheim, 250-251. 22 possessed carte blanche on the overall design, but she required the artwork to be frameless.52

In his “Brief Note on Designing the Gallery” (Figure 11) from October of 1942,

Kiesler argued that the traditional framing system of art hindered unity and movement:

Today, the framed painting on the wall has become a decorative cipher without life and meaning, or else, to the more susceptible observer, an object of interest existing in a world distinct for his. Its frame is at once symbol and agent of an artificial duality of “vision” and “reality,” or “image” and environment,” a plastic barrier across which man looks from the world he inhabits to the alien world in which the work of art has its being.53

In another version of the same document, Kiesler added a footnote at the end of the first page stating, “Miss Guggenheim, director of the gallery, suggested to the elimination of the frame” (Figure 12).54 It is unclear which document was produced first, though both texts were written as conceptual essays clarifying specific design decisions made for the gallery. Though both Guggenheim and Kiesler acquiesced to the exclusion of the framing system, the patron and the architect contended over the credit for this innovative exhibition technique. The strife between Kiesler and Guggenheim continued with the architect’s conceited statement that asserted the patron “…would not be known to posterity for [her] collection of paintings, but for the way he presented them to the world

52 Peggy Guggenheim, “Introduction,” in Works from the Peggy Guggenheim Foundation (New York: Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 1969), 3. 53 Kraus, 19. 54 Frederick Kiesler, “Note on Designing the Gallery,” Frederich Kiesler: Art of the Century (Germany: Hajte Cantz, 2002), 32. 23 in his revolutionary setting.”55 This quotation exuded the architect’s attempts at taking credit for all the elements, including the frameless artwork, without giving any recognition to Guggenheim and her intuitive collecting. Though the his “revolutionary setting” set a new precedent for exhibiting artwork, the collection itself equally complemented and enhanced the space, nullifying Kiesler’s claim.

Despite this discord between architect and patron, Kiesler utilized his carte blanche to design four distinctively different exhibition spaces (Figure 13).56 From the reception area, the visitor first entered the largest of the four spaces, Abstract Gallery.57

The visitor then moved to the Surrealist Gallery with its concave walls placed right at the entrance of the room to disorient the viewer before entering the gallery. It was the second largest room; however, the concavity of the walls and the furniture made it appear much smaller and confined. The smallest room, the Kinetic Gallery, displayed two picture box mechanisms. Finally, the spectator arrived in the Daylight Gallery, where light spilled in from the northern façade of the building. Guggenheim’s desk was centered in the adjacent West Room prior to the visitor’s exit – both to greet her visitors and to persuade them to buy a painting from one of the new up and coming artists.

55 Don Quaintance, “Modern Art in a Modern Setting: Frederick Kiesler’s Design of Art of This Century,” in Peggy Guggenheim and Frederick Kiesler: The Story of Art of This Century (New York: Guggenheim Museum Publications, 2004), 262. 56 The original drawings and schematics for the final plan of Art of This Century have never been located. Though certain correspondences between Kiesler and partnering architects Robert Jahelka and Louis Allen Abramson suggest these drawings to exist, a thorough search of records at the New York City Department of Buildings has yielded no physical drawings or plans. The only municipal record that exists for the gallery renovation listed under tax appraisals in the Department of Housing and Building’s 1942 Manhattan Docket of Applications. For more, see “Note on the Reconstructed Plan,” in Peggy Guggenheim and Frederick Kiesler: The Story of Art of This Century (New York: Guggenheim Museum Publications, 2004). 57 Francis O’Connor, “Reconstructed Plan,” in Peggy Guggenheim and Frederick Kiesler: The Story of Art of This Century, ed. Susan Davidson et. al. (New York: Guggenheim Museum Publications, 2004), 182.

24 Kiesler’s initial conceptual drawings focused on the spatial experience of the visitor and how specific display elements would either help or hinder that encounter. He thoughtfully decided on the display and interpretation of Guggenheim’s collection, experimenting with different hanging devices and systems in order to optimize the spectator’s view of the artwork (Figure 14). He also built static and mechanized installation devices into the gallery spaces, creating a unique view of artwork in each individual setting by framing the viewer’s line of sight.58

The Abstract Gallery was the first room off the lobby. Kiesler manipulated the idea of a wall in this gallery and covered the western wall with a large canvas that floated away from the actual structure of the wall and became a three-dimensional sculpture, transforming the plain wall into a work of art. He created a new way to present the frameless paintings without placing them on the wall. The triangular suspension columns scattered throughout the space were its defining feature, imparting the concept of floating-in-the-air illusions (Figure 15).59 The triangular suspension system at the

Abstract Gallery continued Kiesler’s previous experimentations from the 1924 Vienna exhibition display techniques.

The room also created an almost maze-like effect for the viewer, causing the spectator to weave around the giant suspended sculptures to interact with the painting.

Berenice Abbott’s photographs of the space suggest that Kiesler accomplished this zigzagging effect, but not just with the triangular suspensions (Figure 16); he added the

58 Udo Kittelmann and Dieter Bogner, “Preface,” Frederich Kiesler: Art of the Century (Germany: Hajte Cantz, 2002), 7. 59 O’Connor, 56. 25 ergonomic forms of chairs that he began experimenting with at the Laboratory of Design

Correlation at Columbia University in 1942.60 Much of the furniture existed as both sculptural pieces themselves as well as pedestals on which Guggenheim placed sculptures for her collection. This unique arrangement permitted the spectator to closely study the artwork and examine it from all angles.

The Surrealist Gallery was the most radical of the rooms. Kiesler manipulated the interpretation of the artwork with three techniques: the concave walls, wooden joists attached to protruding paintings, and the ergonomic seating within the room. He made a series of installation drawings for the projecting supports, testing various angles to determine the most auspicious point of view for the seated spectator (Figure 17). Kiesler coordinated the paintings and the lighting in the room to create a better spatial relationship between architecture, painting, and the spectator.61 The flexible seating for the visitors’ optimal view of the artwork also worked as a secondary display mechanism that allowed a unique interaction between the visitor, exhibition space and art (Figure

18).62

60 In 1934, Kiesler proposed an industrial design institute in New York, persuading Columbia to set up on experimental Laboratory for Design Correlation in the School of Architecture. The Laboratory functioned from 1937 to 1942 and existed as a testing ground for Kiesler to experiment with new materials and innovative concepts. For more, see Stephen Phillips, “Toward a Research Practice: Frederick Kiesler’s Design-Correlation Laboratory,” Grey Room 38 (Winter 2010): 90-120. 61 Kraus, 20. For more on the Surrealist movement and its particular effects on the Surrealist Gallery at Art of This Century, see Melvin Paul Lader, “Peggy Guggenheim’s Art of This Century: The Surrealist Milieu and the American Avant-garde, 1942-1947 (PhD diss, University of Delaware, 1981). 62 Frederick Kiesler, “Kiesler’s Pursuit of an Idea,” Progressive Architecture 42 (July 1961): 116. In his interview with the magazine, he recalled constructing the chairs with the help of a German carpenter in the Bronx – completing them out of oak and covering them with linoleum for only seven dollars apiece. These wooden seats also acted as multifunctional pedestals for sculpture pieces. 26 The Kinetic Gallery acted as the transition zone between the Surrealist and

Daylight galleries.63 Kiesler installed mechanical viewing devices, known as Vision

Machines, so that a large number of artworks could be presented in minimal space.64

First, the visitor came across the spinning spiral wheel that focused on fourteen different photographic and drawing reproductions of some of Duchamp’s most famous works in the Boîte-en-valise, a portable monograph in a leather suitcase (Figure 19).65

The Klee paternoster was in a recessed panel with paintings by the artist mounted in the compartments of the device.66 The visitor standing right at the front of the panel automatically activated the “electric eye” that set the conveyor belt into motion; the works were visible one by one through the viewing window as they came around the belt, allowing the viewer to stop the progression of images by pressing a button.67 Kiesler maximized the space of the room to present the greatest number of works, though his display techniques contrived a specific viewing the painting through the framing devices.

The innovative design of Art of This Century received mixed reviews. One critic aptly called it a “shelter for twentieth century ultra-modern art.”68 This accolade, however, does not simply celebrate Kiesler’s design, but also indirectly credits

Guggenheim for her role in the preservation and “sheltering” of this collection. Other

63 Kraus, 20. 64 Ibid. 65 This was one of Duchamp’s “ready-made objects.” Duchamp made many reproductions of in this series, covering a variety of his projects. 66 Angelica Zander Rudenstine, Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice, Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation (New York: H.N. Abrams, 1985), 770. A paternoster consisted of a series of compartments linked together by a chain. The compartment and chain moved slowly together to complete a rotating loop. 67 Ibid. 68 A.Z. Kruse, “At the Art Galleries: Art of This Century Presented in Novel Way by Peggy Guggenheim,” Brooklyn Eagle (25 October 1942). 27 reviewers detested the design, stating it was a “disturbing monument to egotism,”69 a

“decorated subway,”70 and a “whirring and blinking nickelodeon.”71 Through Kiesler’s employment of unique display techniques, Art of This Century still garnered the press that Guggenheim desired, and whether individuals appreciated the design or not, the museum-gallery promoted the artists, the collection, the architect, and the patron.

Art of This Century also endured financial difficulties.72 Guggenheim’s continued disinterest in the commercialization of modern art for her personal profit, in addition to her strong desire to return to Europe, triggered the museum-gallery’s closure. She stated,

“I loved Europe more than America, and when the war ended I could [not] wait to go back. Also, I was exhausted by all of my work in the gallery, where I had become a sort of slave.”73 Guggenheim’s financial responsibilities of maintaining a gallery as well as the immense workload clearly illustrated that she wanted to return to Europe to open a permanent museum – a desire she maintained from her opening of Guggenheim Jeune.74

69 George Baer, “Union art Versus Peggy Guggenheim,” press clipping, AoTC scrapbook, Peggy Guggenheim Archives. 70 “Inheritance of Chaos,” Time Magazine (2 November 1942): 47. Valentina Sonzogni has this press clipping in her essay “’You will never be bored within its walls: Art of This Century and the Reaction of the Press,” in Peggy Guggenheim and Frederick Kiesler: The Story of Art of This Century (New York: Guggenheim Museum Publications, 2004), 278. 71 “Fabulous Fancies,” (14 November 1942), press clipping, AoTC scrapbook, Peggy Guggenheim Papers. 72 Anton Gill, Peggy Guggenheim: The Life of An Art Addict (London: Harper Collins Publishers, 2002), 346. 73 Guggenheim, Out of This Century, 319. 74 Ibid, 196. After the closure of Guggenheim Jeune, Guggenheim wanted to open a permanent museum with the help of art historian Herbert Read; however, the dangers of World War II caused her to return to the United States and to postpone her hopes of opening a museum. 28 As one author stated, “Guggenheim destroyed Art of This Century” before she returned to Europe in 1948.75 Despite her difficult relationship with Kiesler and his

“Napoleonic complex,” the way in which the architect designed Art of This Century brought the collection to life in a manner that even she had not expected.76 Guggenheim solidified her position as architectural patron through the commissioning of the museum- gallery, but she aspired to create a permanent space, rather than temporary circumstance like at Art of This Century, to represent both her grandeur and the significant agency of the collection. For Guggenheim, the simple transition from architectural patron to designer at her own private residential palazzo accomplished both feats in the creation of her final home-museum.

75 Ingrid Whitehead, “Kiesler’s Unforgettable Interior: the Art of This Century,” Architectural Record 191, 9 (September 2003): 103. 76 Guggenheim, “Introduction,” in Works from the Peggy Guggenheim Foundation, 3. 29 Chapter 2: The Final Home-Museum

‘Today is the age of collecting, not of creation,” Guggenheim stated in 1979, “Let us at least preserve and present to the masses all the great treasures we have.”77 This quotation illustrated her final desire to “preserve and present” her entire collection in a permanent museum. Nicholas Coleridge’s article “Guggenheim: the Last Interview” stated, “Guggenheim’s move to Venice after the war was a shrewd one. Unlike Park

Avenue, where so many apartments were being turned into mini museums of modern art, the Grand Canal was still free of modern art collections.”78 Her return to Venice allowed

Guggenheim to once again become a pioneer in both the modern art and architecture world. The establishment of her home-museum afforded the opportunity to share these new works – in a manner that she carefully crafted through her experiences at

Guggenheim Jeune, Art of This Century and her work at the 1948 Venice Biennale.

Though these ventures inspired her in different capacities, the palazzo’s intimate and private space allowed her to display her collection much more on her own terms, providing her with authority and agency over the entire space.

House Versus Home

Guggenheim’s nomadic lifestyle caused her to reside in places of convenience rather than in a permanent home. Her first house that she described in the autobiography was the St. Regis Hotel in New York. After her father’s untimely death, Guggenheim

77 Anita Black, “Peggy Guggenheim Finds True Love – Venice,” Sentinel Wisconsin (November 16, 1979): 6. 78 Nicholas Coleridge, “Guggenheim: The Last Interview,” Peggy Guggenheim Archives, Box 787285, Folder 2, New York, 1. 30 described her traveling lifestyle, staying with various family members.79 Many of her more vivid recollections from her autobiography involve summer trips to Europe with her uncles and each of their individual estates. The Guggenheims stayed at an uncle’s villa in

Pompeii, Italy and another uncle’s replica château of Petit Trianon from Versailles. When describing her uncle’s Pompeian villa, she stated, “…the Italian villa [had] marble

Pompeian inner courts and beautiful grottoes and sunken gardens.”80 Guggenheim’s travels to Europe as a young child developed a specific affinity for villa and garden architecture.

Guggenheim’s proclivity for traveling continued as she left for Europe in 1920, and each new city required a new living location. In her autobiography, she sporadically examined some of these temporary houses and their relationship to accommodating her collection. After the closure of Guggenheim Jeune in 1939, Guggenheim moved into an apartment on the Ile St. Louis, but with no wall space to hang her growing collection, she relocated to a new flat in the Place Vendôme.81 Even when Guggenheim returned to the

United States in 1941, she still continued living in luxury hotels similar to that of her childhood. Guggenheim and second husband Max Ernst lived in the Great Northern Hotel on the famous 57th Street, the same thoroughfare where Art of This Century was

79 In attempting to return home to the United States after a business trip in Europe, Benjamin Guggenheim boarded the fateful Titanic ship at the port in Cherbourg, France on April 10, 1912. 80 Guggenheim, Out of This Century, 15. 81 Ibid, 52. Guggenheim worked with Belgian artist Georges Vantongerloo to redecorate the apartment in as a faux-museum to keep track of her ever-growing collection. 31 established.82 Later, they moved to the Belmont-Plaza Hotel, continuing this nomadic pattern until she left for Europe in 1948.83

Guggenheim spent more than half of her life in Europe, and many of her architectural memories potentially shaped her decisions at her Venetian palazzo. In particular, her interactions with English country homes during the summer of 1932, including Hayford Hall, Warblington Castle, and Yew Tree Cottage, could have affected her choice in picking Palazzo Venier dei Leoni. In her description of Hayford Hall, she declared, “The rooms centered around a large hall with a fireplace. This hall was well proportioned…”84 Warblington Castle, the “pretty farm house with nice gardens…a historic sight, since it could boast a twelfth-century tower, still standing on its grounds and forming part of a wall at a moat,” also left an indelible mark on her. Lastly, she resided at Yew Tree Cottage, where the central sitting room, with its charming exposed rafters and beams, offered a spacious place for visiting to sit and converse.85

These seemingly disparate architectural memories that Guggenheim described in her autobiography, including the centralized plan at Hayford Hall, the role of the gardens and its relationship to water at Warblington Castle, and a sitting space for guests at Yew

Tree Cottage all existed at Palazzo Venier dei Leoni. The palazzo possessed a central plan, centered around the long, axial hallway that connected the four principal rooms,

82 Guggenheim, Out of This Century, 245. 83 Ibid. 84 Ibid, 113. 85 Ibid, 139. 32 with the lobby at the center of the layout. Additionally, the garden around the palazzo was the largest on the terrafirma side of the Grand Canal (Figure 20).86

Despite all these architectural moments in Guggenheim’s life, none of these places represented a permanent and constant home to the heiress. Her intrinsic connection to Italy, and more specifically to the city of Venice, burgeoned as she visited the city with then-husband Vail in 1924:

I considered myself an efficient guide, since this was my fourth visit to Venice, and I knew where all the churches and paintings were…Laurence had given me an inkling of existence of another life in Venice, when he had taken me for walks on a few of the best known highlights of communication that zigzagged around Venice… Before that, I had traveled only in gondolas, like the idle rich and tourists, who never really get to know Venice. The following fall I was to learn every inch of my adored city…87

After this trip, Guggenheim yearned to purchase a palazzo, declaring, “It is unnecessary to go into the foul odors of Venice. They fade away or become unimportant compared with the overwhelming beauty of a city that still bears the architecture of ten centuries.

Needless to say I wanted to buy a palazzo…”88 Her decision to settle in the Venetian

Palazzo Venier dei Leoni as a residence proved to be a significant turning point in

Guggenheim’s life – it marked the first time she had her own home that allowed her complete control over the space and its design. She became her own patron and created an intimate and personal space to both live in and to present and preserve her extraordinary collection.

86 Gill, 367. 87 Guggenheim, Out of This Century, 52. 88 Ibid, 56. 33 Guggenheim as Designer

Prior to the purchase of the palazzo in 1949, Guggenheim had returned to Venice in 1948 to take part in the Venice Biennale. The General Secretary of the Biennale,

Rodolfo Palluchini, invited her to present her collection at the XXIVth exhibition.89 Since the United States Pavilion already claimed work of American artists, Palluchini provided

Guggenheim with the space of the Greek Pavilion (Figure 21).90 The Greek Pavilion, however, required a significant renovation. As Guggenheim remembered in her autobiography:

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…though [the show] was terribly crowded, [the exhibition] looked gay and attractive, all on white walls – so different from Kiesler’s décor for Art of This Century.91

In the open and expansive space Scarpa created, Guggenheim exhibited her artwork in a traditional way. Her inspiration for the palazzo clearly derived from her installation at the

Biennale, with Scarpa’s “white walls” and open layout inspiring her own collection.

Another essay written by Licht, “Remembering Peggy,” published in the 1994 book Peggy Guggenheim and Her Friends, cites the 1948 Biennale as a turning point in

Guggenheim’s life and career. He declared, “Then in 1948 came a moment so decisive

89 Guggenheim, Out of This Century, 326. Started in 1895, the Biennale occurred every two years and provided a platform for countries to present their work on an international stage. Each country designed a pavilion to represent their artistic aesthetic and the exhibitions held within the space represented the country’s visual philosophies at that specific time. For more on the history of the Venice Biennale, see Nancy Jachec, Politics and Painting at the Venice Biennale, 1948-64: Italy and the Idea of Europe (Manchester, NY: Manchester University Press, 2007). 90 Ibid. Greece was currently in a civil war and did not provide any exhibitions for the Venice Biennale. Therefore, the space proved to be ideal for Guggenheim to show her collection. 91 Ibid, 326-327. 34 and so historic that I feel it has [not] been fully understood yet.”92 Perhaps Licht attempts to characterize her designing role in the exhibition at the Biennale and its clear connection to the collection’s environment at the palazzo.

As Licht cited in his Art in America article, Guggenheim’s objective of exhibiting her collection at the pavilion took an unexpected turn: “The explosive impulse that was generated in the Greek Pavilion in 1948 increased art’s commercial importance exponentially. [Guggenheim, however] had no commercial ambitions.93 Though the beginning of her career focused on the commercialization of spaces to promote artists and the creation of a temporary museum-gallery that still functioned as a market endeavor, the palazzo represented the enduring Guggenheim legacy – no longer celebrating the moments of creation, but of collecting, preserving, and presenting in the institutionalized museum. The palazzo represented this turn from commercialization to the canonization of both the collection and the patron.

Guggenheim chose to convert the unfinished eighteenth-century Renaissance palazzo into her home-museum. Began in 1748, the palazzo architect Lorenzo Boschetti attempted to model the façade on the Palazzo Corner, designed by Jacopo Sansivino in

1532, opposite the location of Palazzo Venier dei Leoni.94 Boschetti originally designed a grandiose palazzo with the large first floor connected by two narrow wings – the only

92 Fred Licht, “Remembering Peggy,” in Peggy Guggenheim and Her Friends, ed. Virginia Dortch (Milan: Berenice, 1994), 16. 93 Licht, 22. 94 Philip Ryland and Chiara Barbieri, “Peggy Guggenheim Collection: A Brief History,” Peggy Guggenheim Collection Museum Brochure (New York: The Solomon Guggenheim Foundation, 2007), 3. 35 part of construction that was completed.95 Original drawings of the palazzo suggest the intention for a rectangular courtyard with an oval peristyle surrounding it, creating an enclosed garden space.96 The Venier family was reduced to living on the single floor of the house.97 The palazzo was left unfinished, though no official records to suggest why have been found.98

The history of the palazzo from its initial construction to the early twentieth- century is virtually unknown. It is posited that the palazzo changed several owners outside of the Venier family. In the 1920s, socialite Marchesa Luisa Casati, hostess to the

Ballets Russes, owned the palazzo and eventually sold it the family of Viscountess

Castlerosse.99 During the Viscountess’ ownership of the palazzo, three army occupations,

British, German, and American, created a great need of renovation for the building. The

Viscountess refurbished the palazzo by installing six marble bathrooms and beautiful mosaic floors.100

95 Umberto Franzoi, Palaces and Churches on the Grand Canal in Venice (Venice, Italy: Storti Edizioni Srl Venezia, 1987), 28. 96 Franzoi, 28. These are not drawings by the original architect, but are thought to be prints created from the original plan drawings of Boschetti, that were ultimately never realized. 97 The Venetian palazzo developed in to a unique design for the display and exhibition of collections. For more, see Richard Goy, Venice: The City and Its Architecture (London: Phaidon, 1997). The palazzo was split into several floors, including the ground level, or the sottoportego and the piano nobile. The sottoportego was usually reserved to act like a warehouse and business center for the merchant family and the piano nobile became the center of where many collections were displayed. For more, see Patricia Fortini Brown, “The Venetian Casa: A Panoramic View,” in At Home in Renaissance Italy, ed. Marta Ajmar and Flora Dennis (London: Victoria and Albert Museum, 2006). 98 Ryland and Barbieri, 3. The most common opinion exists that the family ran out of money, or perhaps the powerful Corner family blocked the completion of a building fit to be grander than their own. 99 Ibid. 100 Guggenheim, Out of This Century, 103. 36 In 1949, Guggenheim purchased the palazzo from the Viscountess Castlerosse in hopes of making it a home-museum. As Guggenheim proclaimed after purchasing the palazzo:

The palace was all built in white stone and covered in 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 my 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.101

Guggenheim strongly abhorred the excess ornament and eventually changed much of the interior by scraping off the decoration and converting the bathrooms into functioning art exhibition spaces.102

As Coleridge cites, “The décor [was] surprisingly ascetic (apart from the paintings) with low, rather functional furniture, as in a Japanese home.”103 Guggenheim may have incorporated this low furniture to ensure that no obstructions or barriers blocked the visitor from viewing the artwork, whether standing or sitting. This point also resembled the dual function of the palazzo – both as a home and as a museum, working in conjunction with one another.

Guggenheim’s converted palazzo, with the classic, modernist design aesthetics, including open plan spaces, flat, whitewashed walls and rectilinear design, created an entirely different spatial experience then the winding layout of the New York gallery

101 Guggenheim, Out of This Century, 333. 102 Ibid, 334. 103 Coleridge, 1. 37 (Figure 22). Her praise of Scarpa’s work at the pavilion in the Biennale suggested it affected her design aesthetics for the permanent exhibition of her collection in Venice.

Though Guggenheim enjoyed working with Scarpa, there was no mention in her autobiography of a continued relationship with the architect.

Guggenheim’s role as potential architectural patron in Venice also initiated discussions surrounding her new exhibition space. Coleridge’s article cited:

Her arrival was hailed by the Italian critic Santomaso, among others, as the start of a second Italian Renaissance that would provide both patronage and a dynamic cultural center. A scheme was even devised for a vast glass gallery, drawing on both the Doge’s palace and Le Corbusier, to be built on the flat roof.104

The unfinished palazzo lacked the amount of space Guggenheim desired to be able to exhibit the maximum number of paintings.105 Though she apparently never utilized an architect to redesign the interior space of the palazzo, she contemplated attaching an addition to the roof of the building. In conjunction with Coleridge’s understanding of the situation, Guggenheim confirmed:

“…the next problem was one of space. I got three architects in Milan, [Ludovico] Belgioioso (1909-2004), [Enrico] Peressutti (1908-1975), and [Ernesto Nathan] Rogers (1909-1969), to draw up plans to make a penthouse on my roof. They were all very much under the influence of Le Corbusier, and thought of an arrangement that reminded one of him, namely a two-story gallery elevated from my roof on pillars two feet high. The front was to resemble to Doge’s Palace, and in their minds they conceived something that they thought would be a link between the past and the present. I found it very ugly and I was certain the Belle Arti of Venice, the authority that controls all rebuilding in the city, would never have allowed it to be built.106

104 Coleridge, 1. 105 Guggenheim, Out of This Century, 337. 106 Ibid. 38 Guggenheim’s rejection of the design illustrated her strong personal architectural intentions, allowing her to focus efforts on the interior space of the palazzo and the conversion the first floor in to a piano nobile where she exhibited her artwork.107

The Palazzo as Home-Museum

Paula Findlen’s essay “The Museum: Its Classical Etymology and Renaissance

Genealogy” addresses issues of creating a space for memory and preservation while establishing the etymology of the word musaeum and its relationship to the Renaissance culture of collection and display. Findlen asserts that the musaeum became the appropriated bridge between social and intellectual life, blurring the distinction between the public and private realms, specifically in the domestic sphere.108 Guggenheim’s palazzo became a prime example of a modern interpretation of this notion of a home- museum. The private museum residence allowed Guggenheim the flexibility to curate the exhibit as she deemed fit, and with no designer or confidant helping her with it, she took complete ownership of the space and its layout. Rather than utilize Kiesler’s display techniques that created a didactic and imposed viewing of the artwork, Guggenheim reverted to more traditional exhibition principles to establish a private, intimate space that allowed the viewer to develop their own interpretation of the art.

The layout of the single floor plan created a unique exhibition layout intertwined with Guggenheim’s personal belongings. The residence was split into two spheres: the

107 Guggenheim, Out of This Century, 339. 108 Paula Findlen, “The Museum: Its Classical Etymology and Renaissance Genealogy,” Journal of the History of Collections I, No. I (1989): 59. 39 “public” sphere included the entrance lobby, the dining room and the “Surrealist” gallery and the “private” realm including Guggenheim’s personal library, sitting room, and bedroom. Thomas M. Messer (1920-present), director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim

Foundation, verified the dual home-museum/public-private nature of the palazzo:

“During these years the Palazzo was for Peggy both home and museum. She divided these functions according to a nicely balanced sense for what is public and what is private, giving each its due.”109 The main hallway within the palazzo functioned as an interior loggia, providing a corridor that separate these two areas, and also provided openings that led to each of the separate rooms.

The first room off the entrance lobby to the left was Guggenheim’s dining room – denoted at the “Cubist Room” (Figure 23). Guggenheim placed Cubist paintings within the intimate and close environment of her dining room where her guests could marvel at the large paintings on the pristine wall. Juxtaposed to the large paintings, she placed several primitive sculptures that she felt complemented the Cubist works on the walls.110

Guggenheim set up the “Surrealist” room (Figure 24) off the other side of the foyer existed as the only “public museum” space within the palazzo that did not have a dual private function, as the dining room.

Despite the striking contrast between Kiesler’s design and the interior of the palazzo, Guggenheim clearly was influenced by specific aspects of Art of This Century: the overall floor plan divided into the subsets of modern art and the Daylight Room. The

109 Thomas M. Messer, “Peggy – A Postmortem,” in Peggy Guggenheim and Her Friends, ed. Virginia Dortch (Milan: Berenice, 1994), 177. 110 Laurence Tacou-Rumney, Peggy Guggenheim: A Collector’s Album (Paris: Flammarion, 1996), 165. 40 plans of both Art of This Century and the palazzo followed a similar layout centered on the Abstract, Surrealist and Kinetic modern art. An architectural drawing of the palazzo represented these similarities in the modern art classifications.

The original brownstone that housed the Art of This Century in New York faced the north side, allowing generous amounts of light to enter the gallery – leading to its name. From photographs and reconstructed renderings (Figure 25), the palazzo interior resembled the Daylight Gallery. The large bay-like windows facing the Canal presents one of the most striking features of the exhibition space in the backend of the palazzo.

The light streaming through these windows illuminated the space and the artwork. As art historian Russell Lynes (1910-1991) asserted in his essay “From Private Palazzo to

Museum of Treasures,” published in the May 1982 Architectural Digest, “On that bright morning, the light that danced on the canal was reflected on the ceilings of the [back] galleries, which in Peggy’s time were the living rooms and bedrooms.”111 In looking at original pictures of Guggenheim’s space, it is clear why these two back rooms served as her personal oasis – her living room, bedroom and office.

Additionally, the Daylight Gallery’s use of white, undecorated walls to exhibit the spring salons also resonate in the design of the palazzo and its simple white walls. In one of the rare essays that examined the installation at the palazzo, Guggenheim’s 1969 introductory essay to the retrospective catalog declared that Kiesler’s installation “décor rivaled the pictures.”112 Perhaps this statement suggests why Guggenheim rejected

111 Russell Lynes, “From Private Palazzo to Museum of Treasures,” Architectural Digest (May 1982): 58. 112 Guggenheim, “Introduction,” in Works from the Peggy Guggenheim Foundation, 3. 41 Kiesler’s didactic exhibition display techniques in favor of a simple and understated interior space to allow the artwork to stand on its own.

The Female Patron

Overall, this thesis does not address the issue of Guggenheim as a female patron; however, the role of the palazzo as her home, and the intimate and personal feeling that she cultivated clearly stemmed from her role as female patron. Alice Friedman’s book

Women and the Making of the Modern House: A Social and Architectural History declares that female clients proved to be effective agents in the creation of modern domestic architecture – precisely the efforts Guggenheim put forth in her work at the palazzo.113 She interspersed her private domain of furniture, personal pictures, and her treasured collection, into a modern space, establishing this feeling of domesticity and privacy never before seen at any of her other galleries or museum.

Architectural historians and gender studies scholars alike have examined the role of the woman in both the family and the social space of the home, arguing that their particular aptitude towards household duties and their nurturing role as mothers helped to shape the ideal home.114 Friedman declares that these female traits:

…find expression in the design of houses… [and] that privileged women, given the opportunity to act as clients in their own right, would seek out new architectural solutions to accommodate unconventional ways of living.115

113 Alice Friedman, Women and the Making of the Modern House: A Social and Architectural History (New York: H.N. Abrams Publishing, 1998), 16. 114 Friedman, 15. 115 Ibid, 16. 42 Friedman’s quotation directly relates Guggenheim’s dual role as patron and designer of space in her attempts to develop a new architectural solution to accommodate her unconventional lifestyle living amongst her artwork collection. Guggenheim redefined the definition of domesticity with her creation of the home-museum at the palazzo. The home became the nucleus for her life – where she and the collection resided in her beloved city of Venice. The intimacy through domesticity that Guggenheim achieved ultimately created a museum that she had desired for so many years. Rather than utilizing

Kiesler’s didactic display techniques to do this, the visitor now experienced the artwork in a traditionalist exhibition manner.

Friedman also argued that some unmarried female patrons desired a well-designed residential/work space for the single woman, validating their decision to not marry.116

Guggenheim’s palazzo represented the home that became the center of personal activities and the economic core for the single woman. Though Guggenheim was married twice, she spent the majority of her life as a single, independent woman, choosing to live alone once she returned to Venice.117 The palazzo functioned as the museum Guggenheim had yearned for, and it represented much more than just her legacy to modern art. The establishment and creation of the architectural space, and curatorial layout of the artwork, carefully crafted her position in both the modern art and architecture context.

116 Ibid, 17. 117 Guggenheim lived alone throughout her tenure at the palazzo in Venice, though her daughter Pegeen briefly lived with her after the breakup of her marriage from artist Jean Hélion. 43 Conclusion: “I am a Museum”

Through this examination of Guggenheim’s three spatial approaches, her collection can no longer be considered without the context of their exhibition spaces. Her contributions to the field of architectural history span several decades and culminate with the palazzo home-museum. In 1979, after reflecting on her career that spanned more than forty years, Guggenheim declared: “A collection means hard work. It was what I wanted to do and I made it my life’s work. I am not an art collector. I am a museum.”118 She synonymously immortalized not only the collection, but also the museum - linking the two entities. The creation of her the home-museum represented the final apex of a stellar career and life, establishing a permanent monument to the collection and its famous patron – canonizing the collection and the space it is presented.

In returning to Staniszewski’s concept that a collection must be considered in the spatial context which it is presented, Guggenheim’s set of artwork possessed two very different interpretations based on the exhibition space. Though both Art of This Century and the palazzo attempted to create a didactic environment that bridged high art and public access to these works, each space achieved this in distinctively different approaches. The palazzo represented the moment in which Guggenheim defined the collection on her own terms, unlike Guggenheim Jeune where her inexperience caused her to heavily depend on her advisors like Duchamp, or Art of This Century where

Kiesler’s installation design influenced the viewers understanding of the work.

118 Peggy Guggenheim, “An Interview,” in Peggy Guggenheim and Her Friends, ed. Virginia Dortch (Milan: Berenice, 1994), 15. 44 Based on Guggenheim’s ability to establish an intimate and personal exhibition at her home-museum, the canonization and importance of the collection, and the architectural space, which it is presented in, institute on of world’s most well-known museums. As Sandro Rumney asserts in the foreword to The Peggy Guggenheim

Collection of Modern Art catalog, Guggenheim:

emphasized her determination to preserve, above and beyond herself, the spirit of a collection that was the very essence of her existence. It is a collection that according to her wishes, will maintain a special place in the constellation of Guggenheim Museums, and because of this, contribute to the influence of this mythical name.119

Messer also asserted, “…above the home and above the museum loomed Peggy

Guggenheim’s person in all her majesty. What she projected to the world was not a home separated from her central art passion, nor a museum devoid of her personal idiosyncrasies.”120 The palazzo maintains its distinctive and unique status in “the constellation of Guggenheim museums,” because she created the intimate and personal space.

119 Guggenheim, “An Interview,” in Peggy Guggenheim and Her Friends, 15. 120 Messer, 177. 45 Illustrations

Figure 1: Palazzo Venier dei Leoni plan drawn by Saul Furstein. Venice, Italy. Peggy Guggenheim Archives Box 786532, Folder 108, Solomon Guggenheim Archives, New York.

46

Figure 2: Palazzo Venier dei Leoni, Sitting Room and Library, Regione del Veneto Archivo, BN0003810.

47

Figure 3: “57 Street.” Fortune Magazine (September, 1946): 150.

48

Figure 4: Letter from Baroness Hilla von Rebay to Peggy Guggenheim, no date. Peggy Guggenheim Archives Box 100588, Folder 9. Solomon Guggenheim Archives, New York. 49

Figure 5: Letter from Peggy Guggenheim to Hilla von Rebay, dated March 17th, 1938. Peggy Guggenheim Archives Box 100588, Folder 10. Solomon Guggenheim Archives, New York. 50

Figure 6: Daylight Gallery at Art of This Century. Frederick Kiesler. 1942. Peggy Guggenheim and Frederick Kiesler: The Story of Art of This Century (New York: Guggenheim Museum Publication, 2004), 261.

51

Figure 7: Letter from Peggy Guggenheim to Frederick Kiesler. February 26, 1942. Peggy Guggenheim and Frederick Kiesler: The Art of This Century (New York: Guggenheim Museum Publications, 2004), 173. 52

Figure 8: Space Stage, model, Internationale Ausstellung Neuer Theaterechnik (International Exhibition of New Theater Techniques), Vienna, Austria. Frederick Kiesler. 1924. In ARTstor [University of California, San Diego]. [accessed 3 April 2012]. Available from ARTstor, Inc., New York, New York.

Figure 9: City in Space, Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industries Modernes, Paris, France. Frederick Kiesler. 1925. In ARTstor [University of California, San Diego]. [accessed 3 April 2012]. Available from ARTstor, Inc., New York, New York. 53

Figure 10: Museum of Non-Objective Painting, 24th East 54th Street, New York. Karole Vail. The Museum of Non-Objective Painting: Hilla Rebay and the Origins of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (New York: Guggenheim Museum Publications, 2009), 63.

54

Figure 11: “Brief Note on Designing the Gallery, page 1.” Frederick Kiesler. October 20, 1942. Frederick Kiesler: Art of This Century (Germany: Hatje Cantz, 2002), 34.

55

Figure 11: “Brief Note on Designing the Gallery, page 2.” Frederick Kiesler. October 20, 1942. Frederick Kiesler: Art of This Century (Germany: Hatje Cantz, 2002), 35.

56

Figure 12: “Note on Designing the Gallery, page 1.” Frederick Kiesler. October 20, 1942. Peggy Guggenheim and Frederick Kiesler: The Art of This Century (New York: Guggenheim Museum Publications, 2004), 174. 57

Figure 12: “Note on Designing the Gallery, page 2.” Frederick Kiesler. 1942. Peggy Guggenheim and Frederick Kiesler: The Art of This Century (New York: Guggenheim Museum Publications, 2004), 175.

58

Figure 13: Recreated floor plan of Art of This Century. Frederick Kiesler. 1942. Peggy Guggenheim and Frederick Kiesler: The Art of This Century (New York: Guggenheim Museum Publications, 2004), 183. 59

Figure 14: Hanging schemes for Art of This Century. Frederick Kiesler. 1942. Frederick Kiesler: Art of This Century (Germany: Hatje Cantz, 2002), 55.

Figure 15: Abstract Gallery, Art of This Century. Frederick Kiesler, 1942. Photograph taken by Berenice Abbott. Peggy Guggenheim Archives, Box 100588, Folder 34, Solomon Guggenheim Foundation Archives, New York. 60

Figure 16: Abstract Gallery at Art of This Century. Frederick Kiesler. 1942. Peggy Guggenheim and Frederick Kiesler: The Art of This Century (New York: Guggenheim Museum Publications, 2004), 190.

61

Figure 17: Hanging schemes for Art of This Century. Frederick Kiesler. 1942. Frederick Kiesler: Art of This Century (Germany: Hatje Cantz, 2002), 63.

Figure 18: Surrealist Gallery at Art of This Century. Frederick Kiesler. 1942. Peggy Guggenheim and Frederick Kiesler: The Art of This Century (New York: Guggenheim Museum Publications, 2004), 192-193.

62

Figure 19: Cutaway schematic representation of the viewing mechanism for Duchamp’s Boîte-en-valise. Frederick Kiesler. 1942. Peggy Guggenheim and Frederick Kiesler: The Story of Art of This Century (New York: Guggenheim Museum Publication, 2004), 251.

63

Figure 20: Palazzo Venier dei Leoni, Garden, Regione del Veneto Archivo, BN000185.

Figure 21: Peggy Guggenheim at the Greek Pavilion, XIVth Venice Biennale. Regione del Veneto Archivo, BN000277.

64

Figure 22: Palazzo Venier dei Leoni, Venice, Italy. Lorenzo Boschetti. 1748-1749. In ARTstor [Architecture of Venice (Sarah Quill)]. [accessed 3 April 2012]. Available from ARTstor, Inc., New York, New York.

65

Figure 23: Dining Room (Cubist Room), Palazzo Venier dei Leoni, Venice, Italy. Lorenzo Boschetti. 1748-49. Laurence Tacou-Rumney, Peggy Guggenheim: A Collector’s Album (Paris: Flammarion, 1996), 164-165.

Figure 24: Peggy Guggenheim in the Surrealist room, Palazzo Venier dei Leoni, Venice, Italy. Laurence Tacou-Rumney, Peggy Guggenheim: A Collector’s Album (Paris: Flammarion, 1996), 155. 66

Figure 25: Perspective view of reconstructed 3D model of Art of This Century. Frederick Kiesler. 1942 (2004). Peggy Guggenheim and Frederick Kiesler: The Story of Art of This Century (New York: Guggenheim Museum Publications, 2004), 202.

67 Bibliography

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70 Vita

Priyanka Sen was born in Denver, Colorado. After completing her work at Kent Denver

School, in Englewood, Colorado, Priyanka entered Boston University in 2005. She received the degree of Bachelor of Arts with distinction, with a double major in

Architectural Studies and Art History, and a minor in Women’s Studies. From 2007-

2009, Priyanka worked at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. In August 2010, Priyanka entered the Graduate School at the University of Texas at Austin. She worked as a teaching and research assistant in the School of Architecture from 2011-2012. Priyanka was awarded the Mebane International Travel Fellowship to conduct research for this project.

Permanent Contact: [email protected]

This thesis was typed by the author.

71