Early Life: Inheritance, Involvement in The Art/writing Community
Peggy's father was of Swiss-German Jewish origin, and her mother of German and Dutch-Jewish ancestry. When she turned 21 in 1919, Peggy Guggenheim inherited US$2.5 million, roughly US$20 million in today's currency. Guggenheim's father, Benjamin Guggenheim, died in the sinking of the RMS Titanic and he had not amassed the fortune of his siblings; therefore her inheritance was far less than the vast wealth of her cousins.
She first worked as a clerk in an avant-garde bookstore, the Sunwise Turn, where she became enamored with the members of the bohemian artistic community. In 1920 she went to live in Paris, France. Once there, she became friendly with avant-garde writers and artists, many of whom were living in poverty in the Montparnasse quarter of the city. Man Ray photographed her, and was, along with Constantin Brâncuşi and Marcel Duchamp, a friend whose art she was eventually to promote.
She became close friends with writer Natalie Barney and artist Romaine Brooks, and was a regular at Barney's stylish salon. She met Djuna Barnes during this time, and in time became her friend and patron. Barnes wrote her best-known novel, Nightwood, while staying at the Devonshire country manor, 'Hayford Hall', that Guggenheim had rented for two summers.
Read more about this topic: Peggy Guggenheim
Famous quotes containing the words early, involvement, art, writing and/or community:
“With boys you always know where you stand. Right in the path of a hurricane. It’s all there. The fruit flies hovering over their waste can, the hamster trying to escape to cleaner air, the bedrooms decorated in Early Bus Station Restroom.”
—Erma Bombeck (20th century)
“Many people now believe that if fathers are more involved in raising children than they were, children and sons in particular will learn that men can be warm and supportive of others as well as be high achievers. Thus, fathers’ involvement may be beneficial not because it will help support traditional male roles, but because it will help break them down.”
—Joseph H. Pleck (20th century)
“Art is identical with a state of capacity to make, involving a true course of reasoning. All art is concerned with coming into being ... for art is concerned neither with things that are, or come into being, by necessity, nor with things that do so in accordance with nature.”
—Aristotle (384–323 B.C.)
“The Twist was a guided missile, launched from the ghetto into the very heart of suburbia. The Twist succeeded, as politics, religion, and law could never do, in writing in the heart and soul what the Supreme Court could only write on the books.”
—Eldridge Cleaver (b. 1935)
“Fortunately art is a community effort—a small but select community living in a spiritualized world endeavoring to interpret the wars and the solitudes of the flesh.”
—Allen Ginsberg (b. 1926)