An artless life that made art available for all

She worshiped talent, and as part of her shrine to those who seemed destined to achieve recognition, she supported them financially and often seemed to court their physical abuse. The most egregious offender was her first husband, Laurence Vail, who mistreated her both in public and private – and whom Peggy knowingly egged on. Yet even after she divorced him, long before having concluded that his laziness would deny him the rewards warranted by his abilities, she continued to pay him a monthly stipend.

Part generosity, part control, such "allowances" tethered dozens of people to Guggenheim throughout her life, including characters as diverse as Djuna Barnes, Max Ernst, Jackson Pollock, and Samuel Beckett.

Dependent upon "experts" for the vetting of her artistic taste, Guggenheim went on to purchase, for what now appear stunningly low prices, countless fine paintings and sculptures dating primarily from post World War I through the end of the 1940s. Though endowed with a handsome income by her father's estate, Peggy was not destined to be one of the truly "rich" Guggenheims, because Ben had invested poorly. She was, however, so determined to spend her fortune on art that she put herself on a strict budget that sanctioned her purchase, for instance, of only one dress a year.

Not everyone appreciated her sacrifice: Her father's brother, Solomon, complained about what he deemed her frivolous patronage. In spite of such family objections, throughout two major but relatively short periods of collecting, from 1938-1940 in England and from 1941-1946 in the United States, Guggenheim managed to assemble a major representation of what would become the canonical art of the mid-Modern period.

Even as her activities on behalf of the modern art world accelerated (and Gill provides an excellent template of this important achievement), Guggenheim spent at least as much energy chasing men. In fact, her version of sexual fulfillment became boringly repetitive, akin to the stereotypical male adolescent conquest.

As for real maternity, Guggenheim shamefully neglected her children, either by default – leaving them with friends, extended family, or nannies – or through incorporating them into an invariably confusing, bizarre ménage where their need for parental intimacy was relegated to visiting with their mother in the presence of others. And when we hear that Vail, the father of Guggenheim's two children, developed a "habit" of taking baths with his various prepubescent daughters, the bitterness and the sense of loss that later enveloped Pegeen and her brother Sindbad seems sadly predictable.

Perhaps it is too harsh to consign Peggy Guggenheim to that special arena of scorn for those who fail to live the examined life. But it's hard not to lament that she stopped short of tapping into her demons. What private belief system propped up her persistent habit of living the rigors of intellectual thought and of aesthetic judgments only through mediators (almost always male)? What made her so resistant to the pull of everyday intimacies?

Her lack of self-knowledge dooms her personal story to be compelling only as it intersects with the history of modern art. No mean achievement, but not the stuff of vivid biography.

The world owes Peggy Guggenheim a real debt for aiding European modernism as it sought a stronghold outside the Continent (she bought up works that the Nazis' "Degenerate Art" show would probably have burned), as well as for promoting painters such as Jackson Pollock and Clyfford Still. But any biographer, including Gill, is bound to find himself wishing that Guggenheim's wrenching vulnerability had surfaced more frequently, often enough to remind us of the real person suffering under the extravagant show she sustained until her inevitably lonely end.

Among the last words Peggy Guggenheim spoke before she died on Dec. 23, 1979, was the immediate, three syllable request directed to her long-suffering son, Sindbad, summoned from Paris. As he walked through the hospital door in Padua to attend his mother on her deathbed, Peggy for once dispensed with her typical bag of tricks and said, simply, "Please kiss me."

• Laura Claridge is the author of "Norman Rockwell: A Life" (Random House).

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