This month marks the release of Lisa Immordino Vreeland’s Peggy Guggenheim: Art Addict, an exacting portrait of a patron of the arts who transformed a modest fortune into one of the most influential collections of modern art. Here, Immordino Vreeland opens up about being drawn to characters who reinvented themselves, and how an autodidact brought twentieth-century art to the public. 

Peggy Guggenheim had no formal training but became one of the most important figures in modern art. How did she do it? 
Lisa Immordino Vreeland: When Peggy Guggenheim entered the art world, during the formative years of the modern art movement, it was so different to what it is today. The group of artists who she associated with—Alexander Calder, Mark Rothko, Vasily Kandinsky, Piet Mondrian—were unknown and unproven. She believed in them and was in a unique position to support them early on at a time when a sense of patronage did not really exist. Amongst this group of artists were many who became advisers to her, most notably Marcel Duchamp, who taught her everything she knew about modern art. 

You’ve said certain people, then and now, would rather gloss over Peggy Guggenheim’s sex life. What made you decide to include details about this? 
LiV: Peggy Guggenheim’s autobiography, Out of This Century, published in 1946, was a tell-all book about her life: tragedies, great loves, failures and successes. It would have been an oversight on our part if we didn’t include this material. It took great courage for her to talk about her love stories as this was not done during her time. 

You’ve done a film about your grandmother-in-law, Diana Vreeland, and Cecil Beaton is your next subject. What can we expect?
LiV: Cecil Beaton is another character that totally reinvents himself and that is the story that ultimately interests me. Creativity is going to be a big part of the story as Cecil was an artist who practiced in so many fields and the question remains to be seen if he himself is a by product of this transformation.