Confessions of an Art Addict (14 page)

Encouraged by the Pollock exhibition, I got Dr Lorenzetti to lend me the Sala degli Specchi in the Palazzo Giustinian, the headquarters of the Biennale, for an exhibition I wanted to give Jean Helion, my son-in-law. Everything went wrong from beginning to end It was an ill-fated show. First of all, Christian Zervos who edits
Cahiers d'Art
, took ages to write the introduction to the catalogue. When it arrived, it was much too long and I had to cut it and have it translated, and then Helion was displeased by my cutting it. The pictures got stuck in the customs, as always happens in Italy, and we nearly had to call the show off. Finally, Vittorio Carrain overcame all these difficulties, only to find new ones creeping up. Two days before the show was to open, the brocade that covered the walls of the Sala degli Specchi was removed by the person who owned it, and we were forced to replace it with some sacking. Then, as though the gods
were against us, a terrible storm came and rain dripped from the crimson banner we had placed in the street to announce the show and ruined the dress of a girl passing beneath it. After that, the wind blew down the banner altogether. It really was a triumph that we held the exhibition at all.

Helion showed three periods of his work, his early naturalistic paintings, his abstract period, and his new period, which began in 1943, portraying men with umbrellas, nudes, men with newspapers, and
natures mortes
with bread. People were very much interested to see these various transitions and how he was getting around to complete realism, which he now does.

As a result of all our troubles in connection with this show, I decided never again to do anything with works from abroad, or ever again to ask the authorities for a gallery. My own troubles with the customs had not been solved, and Dr Sandberg, of the Stedelijk Museum, suggested taking my collection to Amsterdam for an exhibition, and then sending it on to the Brussels Palais des Beaux Arts and to the Zurich Kunsthaus, thus giving me a proper excuse to reintroduce it into Italy. This was done very successfully. After the three shows, the pictures were brought back from Zurich and finally I was allowed to pay the least possible amount of duty.

I was so happy to have my collection back again, and at last to be able to hang it in my palazzo; but the next problem was one of space. I got three architects in Milan,
Belgioioso, Peressutti and Rogers, to draw up plans to make a pent-house on my roof. They were very much under the influence of Le Corbusier, and thought of an arrangement that reminded one of him, namely a two-story gallery elevated from my roof on pillars twenty feet high. The front was to resemble the Doge's Palace, and in their minds they conceived something that they thought would be a link between the past and the present. I found it very ugly and I was certain the Belle Arti of Venice, the authority that controls all rebuilding in the city, would never have allowed it to be built. It would have cost sixty thousand dollars, only a bit less than I paid for the whole palazzo, and I could not afford it. In fact, I was only able to buy the palazzo because Bernard Reis broke one of my trusts for me. Peressutti was terribly disappointed, and asked me if I could not sell a picture in order to find the money. Had I liked the scheme, and had prices been what they are today, I could easily have parted with one painting to have built this museum.

Finally, in order to create space, I began turning all the downstairs rooms, where the servants lived and the laundry was done, into galleries. Some of these rooms had been used as studios, which I had lent to various artists. Matta helped me transform the enormous laundry into a beautiful gallery, and then one by one the other rooms followed suit, till finally the servants got pushed into smaller quarters and the laundry had to be done in a basin at the entrance to the waterfront.

Since 1952, I had been sponsoring a young Italian painter from Feltre, whom Bill Congdon had asked me to help. His name was Tancredi Parmeggiani, but he only used his Christian name, dropping the one that so much resembled the cheese. I promised him seventy-five dollars a month in exchange for two gouaches. His first ones were very geometrical and resembled van Doesburg's (which greatly pleased Nellie, his wife), but gradually he evoked a Pollock style, and then finally his own. He is what is called in Italy a Spazialista, a spatial artist. His gouaches soon filled my house. They were so delicate and airy, and were very easy to sell after the first year, when I had given them away as presents. As there was no room other than a guest-room to show and sell them in, they had to be piled up on a bed. When James Sweeney came to Venice and saw them, he at once said, ‘Get that boy canvas and paints and let him expand, he needs space.' I did as I was told, and then my spatial problem grew to such an extent that I no longer knew where to show the canvases. Tancredi had one of the studios in the cellar for several years, but it was a great relief when he finally left, as he used to drive the servants crazy by walking all over the house with his feet covered in paint of every conceivable colour. When at last he left, it took four days to remove this mess from the floor of his studio. This room has now become a Pollock museum, and Tancredi's paintings are sold in the room that used to be the laundry.

My second protégé was Edmondo Bacci, a very lyrical
painter in his mid-forties, whose work was inspired by Kandinsky. He had a very organized way of life and with him everything went calmly and successfully. Tancredi, on the other hand, who was in his early thirties, was madly temperamental and perpetually made rows. Often he removed all his paintings, only to bring them back in a few days. As I gave him the money (keeping no commission other than the pictures he gave me, which in turn I gave to museums) he threw it all away, only to come back for more. When I tried to give him a weekly allowance he went around Venice saying he would sue me for having ruined his career. Bacci and Tancredi are the two painters in Italy whose works give me most pleasure, and I have my private apartments filled with them. I also admire Vedova's work and own three of his paintings.

Apart from this, and opening my house to the public three afternoons a week, I have not done much in Italy. Santomaso was madly disappointed, as he thought I was about to become a new dynamic and cultural centre for Italian art. But I was so uninspired by what I found in Italy that little by little I lost interest. The painting in the Biennale gets worse every year. Everybody just copies the people who did interesting things twenty years ago, and so it goes on down the line, getting more and more stereotyped and more and more boring. I have continued buying whenever possible, but infinitely prefer contemporary sculpture to painting.

Since my collection has been opened to the public, people come from all over the world to see it, and as I also hold a salon for intellectuals, a great confusion arises. Anyone is welcome to visit the gallery on public days, but some people, not understanding this, think that I should be included as a sight. I get phone calls from many persons whom I do not know, who begin by saying, ‘You don't know me, but I once met your sister Hazel in California,' or, ‘Your friend Paul Bowles told me to phone you,' or, ‘We have just arrived in Venice and have a letter of introduction to you, and would like to invite you to lunch or dinner or a drink.' On one occasion a young American, in Italy on a Guggenheim musical fellowship, even wrote and asked if I had a piano, as he would like to come and practise on it. I was happy to be able to say I hadn't got one. I would never dare phone a stranger on such flimsy pretences. If I had a letter of introduction, I would send it round and wait to be invited. People don't know how to behave any more. Oh, for the good old days, when they still had manners!

My salon is most informal, provided you have been invited, but my museum days are strictly for art lovers. All my personal guests are requested to write in my guest-book, and if they are poets or artists they may add a poem or a drawing, which is more than welcome.

When Mrs Clare Boothe Luce, whom I had met occasionally at Consular parties, was our Ambassador in Italy, I invited her to come and see my collection, which
she did very late one night, followed by a train of people. I felt that none of them were much interested in art, but Mrs Luce, as usual, was very polite and charming, and of course marvellously dressed, looking younger and more glamorous than ever. She seemed to like best my daughter, Pegeen's, paintings, though when I made the observation that the people in Pegeen's paintings, strangely enough, never seem to be engaged in any conversation with each other, all going their own ways, Mrs Luce replied, ‘Maybe they have nothing to say.' When Mrs Luce went into my dining-room she encountered three young Italian painters, Dova, Tancredi and Crippa. In her true ambassadorial manner, she asked them whom they considered the best painter in Italy. Each of the three at once answered, ‘I'.

Mrs Luce complained that my corridors were not sufficiently lit to view the paintings properly. I must admit she was quite right, and I afterwards installed strong fluorescent lights for which idea I am very grateful to Mrs Luce. This suggestion gave me occasion to make a good Italian pun, as ‘la Luce' (as Mrs Luce was called in Italy) thus brought
‘la luce'
to my house,
‘luce'
in Italian meaning light.

Count Zorzi, who ran the Biennale review, and who now, to my sorrow, is dead, was one of the few remaining grand seigneurs of Venice. He was, quite fittingly, the descendent of a doge, and one of the few people in Venice with elegant manners and a sense of humour. The
Biennale always consulted him about protocol. But that wasn't the only thing he knew about. He ran their bi-monthly review extremely well, and always encouraged me to write for it. He wanted an article on Pollock, but I never felt up to it. But I did write one, which he also asked for, about how I became a collector. Then I wrote one on my painter-daughter, Pegeen, and one on Bill Congdon. In this article I claimed that he was the first painter since Turner who had understood the soul of Venice, and in the article on Pegeen I expounded Herbert Read's theory that she has remained as fresh and pure in her painting, and still brings the same magical, innocent touch to her work, as she did at the age of eleven.

In the article on how I started to be a collector, I related a story about a woman who went around an art show grumbling bitterly all the time. I approached her and asked why she bothered to come and look at painting that seemed so much to displease her. She replied that she wished to learn what modern art was all about. I warned her how dangerous it was to do so, as she might become an addict.

After my show at the Biennale, they were perpetually asking me to lend them pictures for their successive exhibitions. In the beginning I complied with their requests, but later there were so many demands from everyone that when my house was opened to the public it became impossible to lend any more. Pallucchini took offence at this and wrote me a very unpleasant letter,
scolding me and telling me how ungrateful I was for all the Biennale had done for me. I wrote back and said, on the contrary, they should be grateful to me for having lent them my collection, which turned out to be the most popular show in the Biennale of 1948, and that therefore we were quits. He was so infuriated by this that he had my name withdrawn from the list of people who were invited to the opening of the Biennale, and in 1952 I had to accept Santomaso's kind offer of his invitation in order to get into the opening.

When Count Zorzi died, Pallucchini wrote him a beautiful obituary in the Biennale magazine. I was so moved by this that I felt it incumbent upon me to write to Pallucchini telling him so, and thanking him. This brought about our reconciliation, and now my name has been put back on the invitation list.

At one time I considered buying the United States pavilion at the Biennale, which belonged to the Grand Central Art Galleries, who wished to part with it for about twenty thousand dollars. But I felt it would have been an awful responsibility, and also one that I could not afford. It would have meant going to New York every two years to choose the shows, and then incurring all the expense of transport and insurance. It obviously was a museum's job, if not a government one. All the other foreign pavilions of the Biennale are under the auspices of organizations sponsored or supported by their governments. But we in the United States had no government subsidy for the
Biennale. Luckily, in 1954, the Museum of Modern Art bought the pavilion, which was more fitting.

In 1950, Alfred Frankfurter, editor of
Art News
, arranged an American show in this pavilion, in which Pollock was represented by three paintings. By far the best in the whole Biennale was one of his called
'N I
1948', owned by the Museum of Modern Art. This magnificent painting, which several years later was one of the few to suffer in the Museum fire, stood out beyond everything in the whole Biennale, even though there were shows of the Douanier Rousseau, Matisse and Kandinsky. I remember at the time my infinite surprise at having been convinced of this fact, because it was always difficult for me to accept Pollock's greatness.

In 1950 also, the Biennale made a very small mixed sculpture exhibition in a ridiculously inadequate space, not in the main hall of the Italian pavilion, where it should have been held, but in an outside one. The exhibitors were Arp, Zadkin and Laurens. Giacometti refused to exhibit because Laurens had such a bad salle. Arp had been warned that he was very badly shown, and when he arrived in the central hall, where there was a Viani show, he said with joy, ‘Oh, I haven't such a bad place at all.'

In 1954 Arp had a beautiful show at the Biennale. So did Max Ernst. They each received the most important prize. On this occasion Max came to my home and wrote in my guest-book: ‘An old friend is come back forever and ever and ever', and so finally peace was made.

The prizes given at the Biennale always cause great excitement. A lot of politics are involved and no one is ever pleased. The four most important prizes, two for painting and two for sculpture, are given by the Presidenza del Consiglio dei Ministri, which gives two for two million lire each, and by the Commune of Venice, which gives two for one million five hundred thousand lire each. Innumerable other small prizes are given by all sorts of people and business firms, not only in Venice but all over Italy. Amongst these there is one given by the Angelo restaurant, which belongs to my ex-secretary, Vittorio. The Angelo is much frequented by artists and the walls are covered with contemporary paintings, an idea started by Vittorio's brother, Renato, who died in a car accident two years ago. He also catered for rugby players as well as artists, and it was very odd to see these two completely different elements equally at home in this restaurant, which serves delicious food and where I ate daily for years before I found my palazzo.