Peggy Guggenheim, Francine Prose
Peggy Guggenheim, Francine Prose
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Peggy Guggenheim
The Shock of the Modern

Author: Francine Prose

Narrator: Carrington MacDuffie

Unabridged: 6 hr 7 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 04/26/2016


Synopsis

A spirited portrait of the colorful, irrepressible, and iconoclastic American collector who fearlessly advanced the cause of modern art.One of twentieth-century America’s most influential patrons of the arts, Peggy Guggenheim (1898–1979) brought to wide public attention the work of such modern masters as Jackson Pollock and Man Ray. In her time, there was no stronger advocate for the groundbreaking and the avant-garde. Her midtown gallery was the acknowledged center of the postwar New York art scene, and her museum on the Grand Canal in Venice remains one of the world’s great collections of modern art. Yet as renowned as she was for the art and artists she so tirelessly championed, Guggenheim was equally famous for her unconventional personal life and for her ironic, playful desire to shock. Acclaimed bestselling author Francine Prose offers a singular reading of Guggenheim’s life that will enthrall enthusiasts of twentieth-century art, as well as anyone interested in American and European culture and the interrelationships between them. The lively and insightful narrative follows Guggenheim through virtually every aspect of her extraordinary life, from her unique collecting habits and paradigm-changing discoveries to her celebrity friendships, failed marriages, and scandalous affairs. Prose delivers a colorful portrait of a defiantly uncompromising woman who maintained a powerful upper hand in a male-dominated world. She also explores the ways in which Guggenheim’s image was filtered through the lens of insidious anti-Semitism.

About Francine Prose

Francine Prose is the author of numerous highly acclaimed works of fiction, including Household Saints, Primitive People, and Blue Angel. Her work has appeared in the New Yorker, the Atlantic Monthly, GQ, and the Paris Review. She is a contributing editor at Harper’s, and she writes regularly on art for the Wall Street Journal. She lives in New York City.

About Carrington MacDuffie

Carrington MacDuffie is a singer and recording artist, who first began reading audiobooks featuring poetry.  The recipient of multiple Earphones Awards and six Audi nominations, she has read novels by Jackie Collins, Sun Tzu's The Art of War, Anna Quindlen’s Still Life with Bread Crumbs, and Christopher Buckley’s Florence of Arabia.  She also co-narrated Transgressions: Death's Betrayal by Macmillan Audio.  MacDuffe has published her own audiobook, Many Things Invisible, featuring poetry integrated with music and sound.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Fredrik on April 06, 2021

God, what a gem. What an absolute gem. You don't have to be intrinsically interested in Peggy Guggenheim to get a ton out of this brief, tightly constructed, effortlessly readable biography. The modern art scene of the 20th century American midcentury was as wild as you'd imagine, with so many incre......more

Goodreads review by Derek on March 01, 2025

A smart biography about a fascinating woman that taught me a few new things about modern art.......more

Goodreads review by Kriste on October 19, 2021

"I am not art colector, I am a museum", Peggy Guggeheim. After visiting her palazzo in Venise and adorning the surrealist paintings, she has collected through the years, I was interested to read more about herself. What I have learned is that inspite of her money, most men abused her as was like " nor......more

Goodreads review by La Central on January 02, 2021

"Rica, poderosa y extravagante. Su vida personal, salpicada de innumerables escándalos que ella misma relató, en un acto de exhibicionimo, en su autobiografía Confesiones de una adicta al arte, ha dado mucho que hablar. Pero mas allá de todo eso, Peggy Guggenheim es, principalmente, una de las colec......more

Goodreads review by Andie on February 18, 2021

This is a biography of Peggy Guggenheim who promoted avant-guarde artists like Man Ray and Jackson Pollock in her gallery in Midtown Manhattan and later in the museum she established in her Venetian palazzo. Never an easy person to deal with, she embraced modern art with both hands and didn't care w......more


Quotes

“This vibrant biography shows that her cultural influence went far beyond mere philanthropy.” New Yorker

“Excellent…Prose is a subtle and attentive chronicler.” Guardian (London)

“Prose does justice to this great modern Maecenas.” Daily Telegraph (London)

“Prose…is determined not to miss either the strangeness or the marvelousness of her subject. Guggenheim…will no longer be quite so easily dismissed after Prose’s incisive book.” New York Review of Books

“Prose situates Guggenheim right in the middle of the Modernist, as a new kind of woman who is hard to define, and in that she is a perfect product and reflection of her age, never less than fascinating.” Independent on Sunday (London)

“Guggenheim…emerges as the embodiment of the age in Prose’s judicious biography.” Publishers Weekly

“Skillfully blends the events of Guggenheim’s experience with details about the twentieth-century art scene, all in a vivid setting of time and place.” Library Journal

“An adroit and lively portrait.” Kirkus Reviews

“With fresh insights and illuminating details, Prose vividly tells…[Guggenheim’s] poignant and remarkable story.” Booklist

“Narrator Carrington MacDuffie takes just the right professional tone…[A] stylish narration.” AudioFile