“When the patron becomes a public intellectual: Gertrude Stein, Peggy Guggenheim and Leo Castelli”

The aim of this thesis is to explore whether art patrons could also be considered public intellectuals. I will focus on Gertrude Stein, Peggy Guggenheim and Leo Castelli. I will draw on scholars on public intellectuals (Julia Kristeva 1986, Hannah Arendt 1958, Susan Sontang 1964, Edward Said 2002, Antonio Gramsci 1971 and Lambros Fatsis 2021). Two of them, Peggy and Leo were gallery owners, while Gertude created in her home in Paris a salon that function for artist and art enthusiasts as a gallery. All three of them expatriates, they moved and build a life in a different nation, Peggy and Gertrude moved from the United States to Europe while Leo moved from Trieste to New York. They shared a closed and fruitful relationship with some artists in particular: Pollock for Peggy, Picasso for Gertude and Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg for Leo. The first chapter will be a framing one, I will revise what the scholars have to said about the public intellectuals and about art collectors and patrons, bringing up what I think it’s a blind spot when it comes to connecting these two subjects. This will be a way to put a general foundation and initiate a debate, which will be developed in the following chapters. The second chapter will be about Gertrude Stein, focusing on what scholars said about her role as a patron (Posman 2012 and Mellow 1982), about her writings, especially Tender Buttons, and on how criticism of her works has changed over time (DeKoven 2005 and Gambaudo 2021). I will enlist her in the figure that Julia Kristeva (The Kristeva Reader 1986) describes as “the dissident”. The third chapter will be on Peggy Guggenheim; I will also state that she could be considered a “dissident” (The Kristeva Reader 1986). My analysis will initially focus on her career as a gallery owner (Landau 2020, Berry 2005 and Barozzi 2011). I will also take on account the relationship she had with artists, writers and other important modernist personalities, basing my writings on her biographies (Prose 2015 and Weld 1986). The fourth chapter will be on Leo Castelli; I will enlist him as a contemporary version of what Antonio Gramsci (The prison notebook 1971) describes as the “organic intellectual”. I will examine his career as a gallery owner and patron in New York and the pivotal role he played in changing the contemporary American art market and in launching artists such as Jasper Jones and Robert Rauschenberg (Hulst 2007, Cohen-Solal 2010 and Jones 2007).