The Elephant House

It would be wrong of me not to include a post about the Elephant House.

We first came here for the same reason that everyone comes here, because it is 'the birthplace of Harry Potter.' We continue to go here, every day for at least 3 hours in my case, for the same reason that Ian Rankin, JK Rowling, and Alexander McCall Smith came here: it magically makes you productive. We don't know whether it's the lighting or the view of the castle.

Maybe it's the huge thick tables or the big windows. Or the sundry stunning teas.

Maybe I don't actually care, so long as they let me nurse my one cup of tea for six hours (which they don't - I occasionally have to resort to a Sprite, the cheapest thing on the menu, to buy more time).

I should explain, because I'm not really this decadent. I am in Scotland where my sister is on a working visa, working. So between accompanying her to job interviews and preparing for Halloween, I have to somehow find time to study for the Guggenheim. The list of book isn't long, but they are good books so it takes me roughly a year to finish each one. Or it would, if it weren't for the Elephant House.

Monday

Tuesday

Wednesday

Thursday

Friday

Saturday

Sunday (new book!)

Thanks, Elephant House. Love your work.

"Out of Her Mind"

I read about this book before I read this book. Guggenheim's nephew, in a foreword to another Guggenheim tome, sympathised with our poor Peggy when the other more stuffy Guggenheims gave this name (Out Of Her Mind) to her autobiography. I sympathised, too. Darned stuffy Guggenheims, I thought, in not so many thought words. Turns out... they were right.

Not about everything, of course. And perhaps I was misled. Misled by the misleading title - Confessions of an Art Addict. I thought some of it may have been about art. And some of it was about art. Just not enough.

The second chapter, entitled 'Virginity', contains the first mention of 'sex.' I innocently thought it was a bit brave. All I knew of Peggy Guggenheim was that she had moved to Europe and become a bohemian, and was subsequently scorned by her affluent relations. Despite a substantially lesser income, she managed to amass an art collection that surpassed in many ways that of her uncle Solomon and his Baroness. Jackson Pollock emerged fully-formed from her head (read: gallery). She gave one-man shows to anyone she thought deserved them. Heroic. Insightful. Courageous. Independent. As long as she knew how to love she knew she'd stay alive. By the last line of the last chapter, however, I was furious.

How could such an important woman write a text simultaneously so extravagant and banal? Page after page I waited for the "enough about my numerous affairs and schoolgirl crushes, let's talk about the paintings," that would, I eventually found, never come. She had enough bad press (I know, because it's on the reading list) which she complains about. So why, Peggy? Why did you squander your memoirs?

I read on with the same energy that I have powering through gossip magazines at the dentist's because I could never justify buying them. Except this was dirty, dirty gossip about Samuel Beckett. Tanguy.

I was still ranting when I went to a friend's house to watch Walk The Line. There's that scene where that old woman confronts Reese Witherspoon as she's buying fishing tackle and tells her she's a disgrace for getting divorced. I realised I felt a bit like that old woman. It's not that I expected Guggenheim to talk about her faithful relationship to her husband(s). And I wasn't shocked by her 'impropriety' (maybe a bit - the sheer numbers are impressive). But I was surprised by the ratio of art-talk to sex-talk. And I guess that's my fault. In Confessions of an Art Addict I glossed the 'confessions.' Guggenheim was an art addict and she's got some things to confess. There are some parts that are genuinely off-putting (quotes forthcoming). I wanted a treatise on modern art theory, and what I got was the whole rest of this art collector's admittedly thrilling life.

So fair play, Peggy.

I suppose I can just look at the paintings myself, can't I?

Benvenuti

e benvenuto, benvenuto! - a mio umile blog.

That I am still using Google Translate for this sort of thing is a bad sign considering the topic of this blog. The long and short of it? My name is Amy Stewart, and for two months this year I will be working as an intern at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice, Italy. Here's the long:

I started at the University of Auckland in 2006 intending to study English and Spanish as my sister (Sarah, a.k.a. Sars) had done before me. Fearing inevitable academic humiliation in comparison to this leviathan of wit and insight, I realised I had better pick a different second major. Art of the Twentieth Century in the US and Britain winked at me from the course catalogue and, being a first year and bound to mess a few things up considerably, I gave it a go. And the rest is history!

... Art History, that is. And it's not really, which is why I have to type it all out. Dr. Ed Hanfling took this class, and I can't say whether it was his stunning choice of Fiona Apple's 'Paper Bag' as an opener to the Found Object lecture or the finely orchestrated Dada spectacle involving Dr. Hanfling's own cello prowess and a giant foam kiwi head, but this course managed to separate itself from Cultural Anthropology and the rest of the first-year doldrums (said sister had forbade me from thinking about taking Linguistics). And when Mark Rothko was introduced, well - that changed everything.

It just all made sense. It still does. It never stopped making sense. So I painfully decided I just couldn't give up English and dropped Spanish for Art History. Three years later, Art History juuuuust beat out English for the honour, nay, the privilege, of my BA(Hons) dissertation. That completed, it was time for the OE.

For those of you unfamiliar with the Overseas Experience, permit me to refer you to the Oracle (Wikipedia):

A New Zealand and Australia term for an extended overseas working holiday. Sometimes referred to as "The big OE" in reference to the extended duration of the travel - typically at least one year, and often extending far longer. It is believed to have been coined by New Zealand cartoonist and columnist Tom Scott. [...] This period of overseas travel plays an important part in the lives of many by broadening their experience in life - especially important for relatively isolated countries such as New Zealand and Australia.

This is precisely what I have been up to during 2010, and brings us pretty well up to date. For more witty and insightful detail on this spiritual post-degree journey, I refer you to the sister blog of this one which is written primarily by my... sister. I managed alright this year despite the difficulties of handling money and suitcases, not to mention driving, with my fingers crossed wishin' and a-hopin' and a-thinkin' about the elusive Guggenheim internship.

I was eventually put out of my misery (in the best possible way) and am now in Edinburgh, where I am living for the time being, preparing.


I must say, it's a pretty rad place to prepare for anything, really.