Page 19 - Studio International - January 1965

The Peggy Guggenheim Collection

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theories, ways of expression, recognized fames. Critical
revisions, in the light of new philosophical demands,
damaged or destroyed many historical schemes that
seemed established and lasting. The maieutic art
practised by Peggy to discover new pictorical talents
among the young, and which reached its highest point
with Pollock's success, was no longer suitable to the
rhythm of the time, to the rising and falling, in the course
of a short season, of the most resounding fames.
Peggy's avant-garde collection became thus, in the
twinkling of an eye, an 'historical' collection.
And in this perspective it will be viewed at the Tate
Gallery, comprehended in a space of time which goes
from Braque's and Picasso's analytic cubism to
Pollock's 'action painting.'
It comprehends therefore a period of modern art that,
without a moment's hesitation, I declare heroic,
although with no intention of making a myth of it by
snatching it away from the field of history.
Peggy Guggenheim's collection, begun in London,
goes back to London at the right moment for a critical
review of avant-garde art, it will give the opportunity
of writing a history beyond the present scheme, founded
on the values recognized by a critical research deep­
laid from a methodological and interpretative point of
view. ■

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