Confessions of an Art Addict (7 page)

My ex-husband, Laurence Vail, and my children, all wanted me to marry Tanguy, but I felt I needed a father, not a son.

During one of my visits to Paris, which were still frequent (because of Beckett and Tanguy), Tanguy disappeared for forty-eight hours, and as neither he nor I had a phone, it was impossible to reach him. Finally he came back and told me what had occurred. There had been a row at a Surrealist party and it had ended up with poor Brauner losing an eye. He had had nothing to do with the row, in
fact, he was an innocent onlooker who had tried to separate the belligerents. Dominguez, a Surrealist painter, an awful brute of a man, had seized a bottle and hurled it at someone else and it had broken and rebounded in Brauner's eye, which fell out. Tanguy took him to the hospital, where an operation was performed to replace his eye and remove the pieces of glass.

We were all very upset about Brauner's accident. Later the poor thing had to have a second operation on his eye, as the doctor had not removed all the glass. After that we bought him a glass eye. He had enormous pride and courage and, once he was readjusted to life, began to paint very well. I went to see him with Tanguy and bought one of his paintings. He showed me a self-portrait he had done the year before, with one eye falling out of its socket. He seemed to have prophesied this catastrophe, and after it occurred his paintings made great progress, as though he had been freed from some impending evil.

If Brauner had a mystic sense, I also proved to have one. Tanguy had taken me to a book shop where he wished to find a volume called
Huon de Bordeaux
by Gaston Paris, illustrated by Orazi. This was a book Tanguy had received as a prize in his school days. I paid little attention to what he was doing in the shop; in fact, I didn't even know what he was searching for. I went next door to look at a Larousse dictionary which I wanted to give him. When I came back, I walked absent-mindedly up to the bookshelves and the first book I pulled out was the one
Tanguy had been un-successfully seeking for half an hour. I think this pleased him more than anything else I ever did for him.

At this time there was a terrible feud among the Surrealists, and they were split into two camps. Paul Eluard had taken away half or more of Breton's followers. They were both too strong to be leaders of the same party, and as one or other had to give in, but neither would do so, the party split into two. Breton must have given orders to his disciples not to speak to any of the rebels, because Tanguy would not permit himself to remain in the same room with any of the other faction. The whole thing was ridiculous and Tanguy would not go anywhere with me, he was so afraid of meeting the rebels.

André Breton was a handsome man of about forty, with a head like a lion and a big shock of hair. He had a kingly appearance, but his manners were so formal and so perfect that it was difficult to get used to being treated so courteously. He was very pompous, with no sense of humour. He had a blonde, artificial looking Surrealist wife called Jacqueline who was also a painter (she had formerly been an underwater dancer) and a child called Aube. They both followed him everywhere and the child was a pest in cafés. Tanguy adored the whole Breton family.

Breton himself seemed more like an actor or a preacher than a poet. He was a marvellous talker and used to sit in a café surrounded by his disciples, sometimes as many as
forty of them. When the war was declared it was strange to see him in the uniform of a military doctor (in the First World War he had served in the army as a psychiatrist) and he went around with medical books in his pockets.

I finally got over my passion for Beckett. I remember saying to him one day, ‘Oh dear, I forgot that I was no longer in love with you.' I think it was the result of having consulted a fortune teller. She seemed to think it was the moment to marry him or give him up. She said he was an awful autocrat. When I told this to Beckett, he said, ‘Have you decided not to marry me?' I was relieved to feel able to say, ‘Yes.' After eighteen months of frustration it was high time.

In 1939, after a year and a half of Guggenheim Jeune, it seemed stupid to lose so much money for nothing, and I decided to open a museum of modern art instead. The gallery was suffering a loss of about six thousand dollars a year, although it appeared to be successful. I felt that if I were losing that much money, I might as well spend a lot more and do something worthwhile. So I approached Herbert (now Sir Herbert) Read, whom I knew through his often coming to the gallery, and who was trying very hard to promote modern art in England. I liked him and felt we could work well together. I persuaded him to give up his position as editor of the stuffy
Burlington Magazine,
and in exchange gave him a five year contract as director of the new museum, which was to open in the autumn. Wyn Henderson chose the title of ‘registrar' for
herself. God knows what my position was to be. Herbert Read offered to help me for six months without any salary until we could get started, my arrangement with him having made it possible for him to buy a partnership in Routledge's publishing firm.

I did not have nearly enough money for this venture, as I had commitments of about ten thousand dollars a year to various friends and artists whom I had been supporting for years. I could not suddenly let them down for the museum, much as I wanted to. I tried to think of ways to cut down my own personal expenses. In fact, I decided to live a monastic life in order to be able to produce the necessary funds. I intended not to buy any more clothes, and sold my Delage car and bought a little Talbot instead. As we had no money to buy paintings, we decided to borrow them, or to try to get people to give them to us. I went to my aunt, Mrs Solomon Guggenheim, and asked her if she thought I could get my uncle to give me something, but all she said was that the Baroness Rebay would have to be consulted, and then maybe I would get a Bauer (the very last thing in the world I wanted). Herbert Read did better. He got lots of promises from people to lend pictures, even to give them.

Herbert Read was a very distinguished looking man. He resembled a prime minister and seemed to be very well bred, though he boasted of being the son of a Yorkshire farmer. He had grey hair and blue eyes and was reserved, dignified and quiet. He was very learned and the author of
many books on art and literature, a lot of which I had in my library, though I never read half of them, as they were too difficult for me. He soon became a sort of father in my life, and behind his back I called him ‘Papa'. He treated me very much in the same fashion as I imagine Disraeli treated Queen Victoria. I think I must have been rather in love with him, spiritually. We planned a wonderful future for ourselves. How innocent we were! But then I suppose some of the best things in the world are the ones that never come off. We intended to go to New York after our museum opened, in order to raise money and to study the workings of the Museum of Modern Art.

At the beginning, Herbert Read had been a little nervous about staking his future on me. He wanted some kind of a reference, and as I could not give him one, he went to T. S. Eliot, his best friend, and asked him what to do. Mr Eliot, whom I had never met, reassured him by saying, ‘I have never heard Mrs Guggenheim spoken of in any but the highest terms.' That must have settled it for Herbert Read. He could hardly believe his good fortune. He must have thought that I had fallen from heaven. He had previously been at the Victoria and Albert Museum, but all his life he had dreamt of making an ideal modern museum, and he showed me an article he had written on the subject.

His first idea was to dedicate our opening show to the whole field of art that we were to cover. The paintings
were to have been borrowed from Paris. He made a list (which was later revised by Marcel Duchamp and Nellie van Doesburg and myself, because it had so many mistakes) which became the basis of my present collection.

Herbert Read wanted the museum to start with the first abstract and Cubist paintings from 1910, but every now and then he would lapse into Cézanne, Matisse and Rousseau and other painters whom I thought we should omit as they did not fit in.

We spent weeks trying to find a suitable place to house the new museum, but did not succeed until the summer, when one day Herbert phoned to tell me he had found the perfect place. It was Sir Kenneth Clark's house in Portland Place. Lady Clark took me through it. It really was ideal for our purpose, even though it was Regency instead of being modern. Lady Clark, who had been a gym teacher, was particularly pleased with an air-raid shelter she had made in the basement. She told me she was going to live in the country to please her children. I was so naïve that I did not realize how fast the war was approaching and I thought I was very fortunate to get the house. The only trouble with it was that it was too large, so I conceived the idea of living on one of the upper floors. But to my dismay Mrs Read conceived the idea of living on another. We soon began to argue about which floor we would occupy.

In August, I went to Paris to find the pictures we were to
borrow, but the war broke out and put an end to the argument and to the whole museum project, as we could not expose borrowed pictures to the London bombings, even though Herbert Read thought London was an ideal spot for the museum, in spite of the war. I felt morally obliged to give him half of his salary for five years, which I did at once, feeling rather pleased that at least I had got him out of the stuffy
Burlington Magazine
and into Routledge's.

My next project (which also never came to anything), was a scheme to form an artists' colony for the duration of the war, and to invite as guests all the artists who wanted to come. They would receive a small allowance and in return would have to give me paintings for the future museum. Nellie van Doesburg, my newest friend, was to be secretary of this colony. She was the widow of van Doesburg, of the de Stijl movement, and I called her the ‘de Stijl baby'. She was much younger than van Doesburg. She was also terrifically energetic, young in spirit and knew a great deal about art and was friendly with all the artists. She later was a great help to me in forming my collection and taught me a lot. Her passion was abstract art, about which she was quite fanatical.

Soon after the war began, Nellie and I began driving all over the South of France to look for suitable accommodation for the colony. We looked at hotels, châteaux and houses. This gave me a pleasant excuse for travelling, and as I really believed in the project, it
became a sort of mission. Had I known more about artists at that time, I never would have dreamt of anything so mad as trying to live with them in any kind of harmony or peace. Nellie really should have known better. As soon as I got back once more to Paris and met a few of the people we had thought of inviting, I realized what a hell life would have been. They not only did not wish to live together, but even refused to dine with each other. There were so many petty feuds and jealousies it was unbelievable. So I had to relinquish the project.

I decided now to buy paintings by all the painters who were on Herbert Read's list. Having plenty of time, and all the museum funds at my disposal, I put myself on a regime to buy a picture a day. With the help of Nellie and Howard Putzel I set to work. Putzel first became known to me in the winter of 1938, when he wrote me from Hollywood, where he had a gallery, to wish me good luck upon the opening of mine and to announce the closing of his. At that time he sent me some Tanguy paintings that
he had exhibited out there and that were to be included in my Tanguy show. I met him a few months later in Paris and was surprised to find him exactly the opposite, physically, to what I had imagined he would be. I had expected to meet a little black hunchback. Instead of this, he turned out to be a big fat blond of my own age.

At first he was nearly incoherent, but little by little I realized the great passion for modern art and classical music that lurked behind his incomprehensible conversation and behaviour. He immediately took me in hand and escorted me, or rather forced me to accompany him, to all the artists' studios in Paris. He also made me buy innumerable things that I didn't want, but he found me many paintings that I did need, and usually ones of the highest quality. He used to arrive in the morning with several things under his arm for my approval, and was hurt when I did not buy them. If I found or bought paintings ‘behind his back', as he must surely have considered any independent action on my part, he was even more offended.

He and Nellie disliked each other as only rivals of extreme passion can. Of course, everyone in Paris knew that I was in the market, and, I suppose because of the war, were more than ever anxious to sell paintings. I was chased unmercifully. My phone rang all day, and people even brought paintings to my bedside in the morning before I rose.

I found three wonderful paintings by Max Ernst at a
dealer's on the Left Bank, and bought them at once. One of these was ‘The Kiss', a painting that was later exhibited in the Museum of Modern Art as a twentieth-century masterpiece. The year before, Putzel had taken me to Ernst's studio to buy a painting, but there had been no sale at that time. Ernst had a terrific reputation for his beauty, his charm and his success with women, besides being so well known for his Surrealist paintings and
collages.
He was very good looking, though nearly fifty. He had white hair and big blue eyes and a handsome beak-like nose resembling a bird's. He was exquisitely made. He talked very little, so I was forced to carry on a continuous chatter. At the feet of Ernst sat his beautiful lady love and pupil, Leonora Carrington. They looked like Nell and her grandfather in
The Old Curiosity Shop.

I tried to buy a painting of Ernst's, but the one I wanted belonged to Leonora, and another one, for some unknown reason, was declared by Putzel to be too cheap. I ended up instead by buying one of Leonora's. She was unknown at that time, but full of imagination in the best Surrealist manner and always painted animals and birds. This canvas, which was called ‘The Horses of Lord Candlestick', portrayed four horses of four different colours in a tree. Everyone was delighted by this purchase.