Guggenheim
Scoop Homes & Art #29, Winter 2011
Jessica Matthews | 30 Aug 2010
Picasso, Duchamp, Mondrian, Magritte, Ernst. The names read like a who’s who of contemporary art in the 20th century… and you’ll find them all in the Peggy Guggenheim Collection. Thirty-five of these works will travel from their home in Venice to the Art Gallery of Western Australia (AGWA), signalling not only a world first and a huge achievement for AGWA director Stefano Carboni – the man responsible for its arrival – but also the first in a series of exhibitions for the gallery titled Great Collections of the World.
It’s hard to emphasise just how much excitement the Guggenheim Collection will create in Western Australia. Suffice to say, it’s front-page news in the art world, generating the sort of hype and fanfare usually associated with, say, ‘Brangelina’. It is estimated more than 100,000 people will visit, attracting not only West Australians, but also art lovers from interstate and overseas. People are expected to travel from as far away as New Zealand and South-East Asia for this once-in-a-lifetime chance to view this many works outside of Italy.
One woman who already knows this collection intimately is Perth Institute of Contemporary Art (PICA) curator Leigh Robb. She spent four years working in the Peggy Guggenheim Collection Museum in Venice – as an intern, internship coordinator and education coordinator – and will take public tours of the exhibition during its stay in WA. Considered one of the State’s top authorities on the works, we get to know this newcomer to our scene, hear about her favourite works and speak to her on why the exhibition has the world’s arts elite agog.
Inside The Peggy Guggenheim Collection
first person Leigh Robb
Stefano has had a close association with the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, and being Venetian, it’s something that is close to his heart. His wife once worked there as an intern, as well. The exhibition would not be possible if he wasn’t leading the Art Gallery of WA and didn’t have those connections. So, it’s fantastic for Perth to have him here. He has phenomenal ideas about developing the cultural life of WA.
You just hope he gets enough support and that, collectively, all of us as institutions recognise that this exhibition presents a great opportunity. It’s about keeping the standard really high. And that’s important from an education perspective, too – art students would know there’s no replacement for seeing the texture of paint on canvas, or the shine of a polished bronze piece. It doesn’t compare to flicking through a book.
It’s important to remember that this isn’t just any collection – it’s one of the best modern art collections in the world. Peggy was advised by people like Herbert Read, the famous English art critic, so she was very savvy in who she asked for advice and as a result it’s an incredibly tight collection. It moves almost fluidly through abstraction, surrealism, then American abstract expressionism or action painting.
The fact that the collection spans two World Wars is also significant. What you see in a lot of the works, such as Alberto Giacometti’s Woman With Her Throat Cut, is that many artists were grappling with the realities of war and looking for other ways to represent a world which was in turmoil.
In terms of the works coming over, one of the earliest is Marcel Duchamp’s Nude (Study), Sad Young Man on a Train. That was a very early piece where Duchamp was studying movement, and it was around the same time that he painted Nude Descending a Staircase No 2. So, it tracks one of the most significant moments in time when artists – whether that’s Marcel Duchamp or Pablo Picasso or Georges Braque – were trying to do incredibly radical things with paint.
The collection tracks all these really significant moments from cubism through to very lateral ways of thinking in surrealism, like a cross-section of thinking across Europe. Then, during the Second World War, Peggy moved back to the States. That’s when she started collecting American abstract expressionism – she supported Jackson Pollock and bought works by Willem de Kooning and Mark Rothko. So, her collection straddles all of these styles. Today, the works are considered textbook masterpieces – it doesn’t get any better than that.
Doing an internship at the Guggenheim is like an entire art history course in itself. While working there, I felt very conscious of our role as protectors of the collection – not just the works, but of Peggy Guggenheim’s legacy, as well. Because there were so many interns from different countries, someone could give a public talk in almost any language – be it French, German, Spanish, Thai or Chinese. The talks would explain Peggy Guggenheim’s story and how the collection was built.
As an intern, you get to open and close the collection each day. One of my favourite stories is how every night we put the works to ‘bed’ – which meant we placed all of the works on paper in fireproof covers, which we called ‘pyjamas’. There was also a very rigorous procedure as to how and when the blinds were closed. In certain rooms, the very angle at which they were opened was controlled to protect the works. We were also responsible for cleaning the sculpture garden, so we’d walk around with cotton wool and distilled water, dabbing pigeon droppings off some of the most important contemporary sculptures in the world.
The Guggenheim is an incredible place – there are many VIP events and there is the Venice Biennale every summer, which alternates between contemporary artwork and architecture each year. Because it’s such an intense environment, you do burn out quite quickly. But it’s an incredibly dynamic place to be in that gives you exposure to many different people, curators and artworks from around the world. [In addition to the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, the museum also shows works on long-term loan from various private collections and foundations including the renowned Gianni Mattioli Collection.]
I think what was so amazing about my time there was being amid a group of people who were all similarly obsessed with art. Everyone learnt from one another. Interns would take turns giving an illustrated lecture each night about anything from the architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright through to Romanian sculpture. So, you acquired knowledge broader than the collection itself. Interestingly, a lot of my peers from the Guggenheim have gone on to do amazing things, working as curators and running various cultural institutions. [The Internship Program is celebrating its 30th year this year. Other notable graduates include: Aaron Moulton, director of Feinkost gallery, Berlin; Daria Joubert, curator of Palais de Tokyo, Paris; Oliver Barker, curator and projects director of the Albers Foundation, Connecticut.]
I’m looking forward to giving public tours through the exhibition when it comes to Perth. What’s so great about the collection is that although it tracks very tempestuous periods in history, Peggy’s autobiography also runs parallel to that. So, with each piece comes the story of how she acquired it, her relationship to that artist or artwork and how it relates to art history. In the end, those double stories are what make the collection so compelling. I mean, we used to get visitors through the Guggenheim who would be outraged by Jackson Pollock or find it difficult to come to terms with the idea of the absolute or universal truths that, say, Mondrian or van Doesburg were trying to pursue. So, I think having Peggy as that link is a good way to bring those abstract ideas to life.
This exhibition will also show some of Peggy’s personal photographs and collectables. There will be a famous shot, taken by Berenice Abbott, of Peggy with one of her dogs. It’s interesting because, as well as being a collector of great art, Peggy had a remarkable collection of shitzu terriers – most of them are buried in her garden beside her! There will also be a photo of Peggy with Herbert Read – they’re sitting in front of an Yves Tanguy work that she later purchased.
It sounds a bit cheesy, but Peggy has really been quite a force in my life in terms of what she stood for, and that was collecting and supporting the artists of her time. Working at the collection confirmed for me that I also wanted to work with the artists of my time.
Part of her legacy is that idea of a broad-minded and visionary patron of the arts, not only in the way she collected art but also how she supported art institutions and the cultural life in the cities where she opened galleries. She set an incredible benchmark for how a single individual can really change the long-term artistic life and vibrancy of a city, so hopefully this exhibition will inspire some more Peggy Guggenheims here in Perth.”
Guggenheim will show October 9-January 31, 2011. Leigh’s first talk about the collection will be on October 10 from 2pm. At the time of print, details on further talks and future Great Collections exhibitions were still to be confirmed. Visit greatcollections.com.au.
Who is Leigh Robb?
After graduating in 1999 from the University of Queensland with a Bachelor of Arts in art history, Leigh Robb spent nine years working overseas at some of the world’s most revered art institutions.
It was a trip to see the Peggy Guggenheim Collection that really kick-started her career. “I remember going into the gates and being greeted by really young, keen international students,” she says. “Once I had a few conversations with them, I realised there was a massive internship program.”
Leigh applied for the program and was accepted for a three-month internship in 2000. She worked her way up to roles as the internship coordinator and education coordinator, before spending almost a decade working across Europe. She was appointed associate director at the prestigious Thomas Dane Gallery in London, and while overseas she found time to complete her Masters in art history (focusing on postmodernism and feminism) at the Courtauld Institute in London, an international centre of excellence for art history and conservation. All at just 30 years of age.
In 2009 she finally returned to Australia, taking the position as curator at PICA. Armed with her vast international experience, Leigh is continuing to push the high standard of exhibitions PICA is renowned for. “I like to be able to envisage our shows at the Institute of Contemporary Art in London or the Kunsthalle in Frankfurt,” she says. “And to know that they are really at the same level both critically and in terms of presentation.”
The Art Gallery of WA will use her knowledge from time at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice to present talks during the exhibition.
Attirement of the Bride by Max Ernst
(1940, oil on canvas)
“Max Ernst was an important figure in Peggy Guggenheim’s Collection, not only for his brilliant illusionistic surreal paintings and experimental use of techniques, like decalcomania (whereby diluted paint is pressed onto a surface with a pane of glass, making a textured and often suggestive pattern), but also because he was Peggy’s second husband. Many of his paintings contain autobiographical elements, and this painting is important as it depicts Loplop, Superior of the Birds and Ernst’s invented alter ego. However, the bride in this painting is said to depict the young English surrealist Leonora Carrington.” Leigh Robb.
The Studio by Pablo Picasso
(1928, oil and black crayon on canvas)
“This pared-back synthetic cubist painting of Picasso is a meditation on the artist in his studio. The geometric contours define a sculptured bust (with three eyes) on a pedestal on the left and a full-length figure study on the right. The two simple circular green shapes on a red background reference a pair of green apples on a table, suggesting a traditional still-life composition, in what was a most unconventional manner at that time. This abstract painting is usually one of the first that greets a visitor on a visit to the collection in Venice, hung in the central foyer of the Palazzo, flanked by a later Picasso, On the Beach (1937), from his forays into surrealism.” Leigh Robb
Nude (Study), Sad Young Man on Train by Marcel Duchamp
(1911-12, oil on cardboard)
“A self-portrait and an early attempt to represent movement on a two-dimensional canvas, this is a truly significant work of Duchamp’s as it precedes his controversial Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 of 1912 and is one of a handful of his forays into cubist painting. Relentlessly ambitious as usual, Duchamp wanted to depict the movement of a man lurching and smoking on a train, as well as the movement of the train itself, and did so through the repeated lines and semi-transparent figure – also illustrating his awareness of the invention of chronophotography and related ideas of the Italian futurists who wanted to depict speed, movement and mechanical power of the industrial age.” Leigh Robb
Peggy Guggenheim
by André Kertész (1945, gelatin-silver print)
“I love this picture because it illustrates Peggy sitting within her Art of this Century gallery in New York, which she opened in 1942 after she fled Nazi-occupied France. She enlisted Austrian-American architect Frederick Kiesler to create an architechtonic environment to remove barriers between the artwork and the viewer, and which sought to mimic the pictorial spaces associated with cubist and abstract painting, suspending the paintings on strings and removing the frames! In the surrealist gallery, the sounds of a train would roar through the gallery! Still now, I see this gallery was one of the most radical and innovative designed spaces for exhibiting art.” Leigh Robb