Summer of 1976 – house and cat sitting

In the summer of 1976, my parents went on vacation and left me at home to house sit and cat sit. I also had lots of time to write on the Triumph Gabriele. I'd sit on the sofa and type, and the cat would jump up and sleep behind me. Occasionally I'd also grab my father's Leica M3 and take pictures.

Im Sommer 1976 machten meine Eltern Ferien und überließen mir Haus und Katze. Ich hatte viel Zeit zum Schreiben auf der Triumph Gabriele. Ich setzte mich zum Tippen auf das Sofa. Oft sprang die Katze hoch und machte hinter meinem Rücken ein Nickerchen. Manchmal griff ich mir die Leica M3 meines Vaters und machte Fotos.

Peggy Guggenheim about Dorothea Tanning

Max Ernst and Dorothea Tanning (1948, photo by Robert Bruce Inverarity)

Based on what she writes in her memoir, Out of This Century (1979), Peggy Guggenheim did not appreciate Dorothea Tanning very much. This might be partially due to the fact that Tanning and Guggenheim’s husband at the time, German artist Max Ernst, were having an affair.

Guggenheim writes: “I made Max work hard for this show. He had to go around to all the women, choose their paintings and carry them in the car to the gallery. He adored this, as he loved women, and some of them were very attractive. He was always interested in women who painted. There was one called Dorothea Tanning, a pretty girl from the Middle West. She was pretentious, boring, stupid, vulgar and dressed in the worst possible taste, but was quite talented and imitated Max’s painting, which flattered him immensely. She was so much on the make and pushed so hard that it was embarrassing.”

Guggenheim and Ernst eventually divorced, and he and Tanning got married in 1946 in a double ceremony with Man Ray and Juliet Browner.

The above quote is from page 233f. of Out of this Century (Anchor Books, 1980).