Solved: the baffling case of the bloody head, the artist and his live-in TV cook

By Robert Mendick
Sunday, 7 July 2002

There may not be blood on the carpet after all. Reports of the demise of a £1m bust made from nine pints of the artist Marc Quinn's frozen blood may well have been greatly exaggerated.

There may not be blood on the carpet after all. Reports of the demise of a £1m bust made from nine pints of the artist Marc Quinn's frozen blood may well have been greatly exaggerated.

An Independent on Sunday investigation that Sherlock Holmes would have been proud of indicates Mr Quinn's bust called Self did not leak all over the floor of millionaire Charles Saatchi's home when builders accidentally disconnected its refrigeration unit. The chances are the builders never even pulled the plug.

This newspaper has tracked down sources close to the artist and also the designer employed to refurbish Mr Saatchi's kitchen. When Mr Quinn visits Mr Saatchi's apartment in Eaton Square, central London, tomorrow to view the damage for himself he may well find ... no damage.

According to news stories last week, the accidental defrosting had caused the statue to "gradually ebb away into ... a pool of blood".

But a source close to Mr Quinn has told The Independent on Sunday the artist is not unduly worried about what he will find at Mr Saatchi's home.

"If the bust has melted it would be a terrible tragedy. But Mr Quinn thinks that is very unlikely. It has a back-up power supply and the artist is not particularly worried about it. He would be if it has gone completely. Read into that what you like."

Mr Saatchi had ordered major improvements to the flat he now shares with Nigella Lawson, the television cook, so that the kitchen came up to her specifications.

Yesterday, the kitchen designer involved in last February's refit, when the refrigerated plinth that houses the bust was allegedly unplugged, said reports that he was to blame were "highly defamatory".

"This is absolutely nothing to do with me," said Laurence Pidgeon, who runs Alternative Plans design company. "You spend a long time building up your name – years and years and years – and it doesn't take very much to rock that."

Reports that the statue had melted first began to circulate in the Peterborough column of the Daily Telegraph. The story was seized upon by the rest of the media. Mr Saatchi's refusal to comment – he is a notoriously private man – helped to fuel speculation.

The fact that the paper mistakenly printed a photograph of Mr Saatchi's brother Maurice to accompany the story – it published an apology the next day – failed to quell enthusiasm for the rumour.

Mr Pidgeon is not convinced any damage was done to the bust, which sits on a plinth in a corridor between Mr Saatchi's new kitchen and dining room. Mr Pidgeon said rumours had spread of some accidental damage to the bust at the time the work was being carried out, but he was baffled why they should have re-emerged months later.

Mr Quinn's visit to the Saatchi household tomorrow should help to solve the mystery and quash the fervent speculation. As the source said: "If you owned a scuplture like that worth a £1m, would you leave it plugged in with builders around? I don't think Charles Saatchi is an idiot."

Bloody hell: a headache for Saatchi as prize artwork defrosts

By Chris Gray
Thursday, 4 July 2002

There will, one imagines, be blood on the carpet. Self, a sculpture of the artist Marc Quinn's head, cast in his own blood, has apparently been destroyed by builders inadvertently turning off a freezer belonging to the multimillionaire art collector Charles Saatchi.

There will, one imagines, be blood on the carpet. Self, a sculpture of the artist Marc Quinn's head, cast in his own blood, has apparently been destroyed by builders inadvertently turning off a freezer belonging to the multimillionaire art collector Charles Saatchi.

Quinn took nine pints of his own blood over five months to make the piece, which sat alongside dismembered limbs and pickled animals in 1997's controversial Sensation exhibition at the Royal Academy.

But according to reports yesterday, it took just hours for the iconic contemporary British artwork to seep away after building work began in Mr Saatchi's London home.

Britain's leading contemporary art collector was storing Self at the home he shares with the television chef Nigella Lawson in Eaton Square, Belgravia, where he also keeps Tracey Emin's famous unmade bed. Mr Saatchi is said to enjoy showing visitors the room where he keeps Emin's £150,000 work My Bed, telling them he has told his nanny to clear it up, and Self was to have become the second highlight of the tour.

The freezer unit was apparently switched off as builders moved furniture around the flat for renovations.

Mr Saatchi paid a reputed £13,000 for the blood-filled head, which was made by Quinn in 1991. Mr Saatchi was not commenting yesterday on the fate of his prized possession, possibly because he was too furious to speak.

The Saatchi gallery did not return calls yesterday, and a spokeswoman from the White Cube gallery, whose owner, Jay Jopling, represents Quinn, said the artist did not want to make any comment.

But one report quoted an unnamed source, describing the unscheduled meltdown as a catastrophe for contemporary art. "It all went wrong when the builders started to take the old kitchen to pieces," said the source. "They turned the freezer off and moved it away from the wall. A pool of what looked suspiciously like blood appeared around the freezer. The builders looked inside and saw, to their horror, that one of Saatchi's pieces of modern art had melted."

Quinn, 38, has been at the cutting edge of British contemporary art since Self first brought him to public attention and caused people to faint when it was exhibited. Born in London, he graduated from Cambridge University in 1985 and has shown works widely in Europe and the United States. Last year he won the Woollaston Award for the "most distinguished work" at the Royal Academy's summer exhibition for his marble sculpture Catherine Long, part of a series depicting nude men and women who had lost one or more limbs.

Since 1991 he has remade Self twice, to reflect changes in his face as he grows older. The original was a unique, irreplaceable work.

Last night Sir Peter Blake, the pop artist who was behind last year's Royal Academy summer exhibition, said it would be a dramatic loss if the original Self had been destroyed. "If it has happened in these circumstances it seems crazy and very irresponsible. It was always a fragile study, as there was always a possibility that it would melt if there was a power cut. [Quinn] could do it again, but he is more than 10 years older now so it will not be exactly the same," he said.

Another source familiar with contemporary art collectors said that if Self had been ruined, it could not have been as simple as builders turning off a standard freezer.

"Charles Saatchi is a serious collector and looks after his artwork. I would be very surprised if he was keeping it in a kitchen freezer," they said.