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In 1945–1946, Guggenheim worked on editing and publishing the first of two books of her memoirs. Even though Krasner was not on good terms with Guggenheim, Peggy did ask Lee to read it before the final manuscript was submitted.

As in John Updike’s highly imaginative account of many events in Pollock’s life, Guggenheim’s memoirs Out of This Century, often made up names concealing real people, though only slightly. The subtitle, Confessions of an Art Addict, did not appear on the front jacket of the Dial Press edition in 1946.

Number 12A, 1948. Enamel on gesso on paper, 57.2 × 77.8 cm, Collection Mr. and Mrs. Stanley R. Gumberg, Pittsburgh.

Untitled (Composition with pouring I), 1943. Oil on canvas, 90.8 × 113.6 cm, Private Collection.

Red and Blue, c.1943–1946. Gouache, tempera and ink on fiberboard, 48.6 × 61 cm, Collection Charles H. Carpenter.

Night Sounds, c.1944. Oil and pastel on canvas, 109.2 × 116.8 cm, Private Collection.

To say the first autobiography was not well received by critics is a polite understatement. However, the work is noteworthy here because Pollock designed the book’s jacket, with front cover art by Peggy’s companion, Max Ernst. The back was by Pollock. Several Pollock biographies, including the 1967 MoMA publication, Jackson Pollock[69], mention that Pollock designed the cover for her autobiography, but do not make clear the front cover art is by Ernst[70]. Some others incorrectly indicate that the cover art was by Pollock as well.

Later, after writing a second autobiography, Guggenheim admitted, “I seem to have written the first book as an uninhibited woman and the second as a lady who was trying to establish her place in the history of modern art.”[71] Throughout her life, Guggenheim was the doyenne of modern art, or ‘the mistress of modernism,’ the title used by her biographer, Mary V. Dearborn.