The found-audio trend in documentaries continues on with Lisa Immordino Vreeland'sPeggy Guggenheim: Art Addict, though the discovery of the lost interview tapes with its subject only adds further to what was already a colorful life. Peggy Guggenehim had two marks against her: She wasn't as wealthy as her surname implied, and — as the film points out more than once — she wasn't especially pretty. But she didn't let being neither rich nor hot keep her from being a player in the notoriously image-obsessed art world, and her accomplishments included discovering Mark Rothko and Jackson Pollock. She also held the first exhibition entirely of work by female artists, all while also being branded a slut for sleeping with as many men (and the occasional woman) as she cared to, and in spite of not being considered traditionally fuckable. (Being cisgender does have its privileges.)Peggy Guggenheim: Art Addictis a portrait of a woman who just hung in there and did her thing, including not bothering to fix a botched nose job that gave her a W.C. Fields-like proboscis, though it doesn't shy away from her less positive tendencies, particularly how her devotion to her lifestyle resulted in her neglecting her children, particularly her troubled and ultimately suicidal daughter Pigeen. Every addiction has a price.
Tags: Film
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