Sunday, 20 April 2003
There were two key private views last Tuesday – or "pee-vees", as the liggerati have it – and the linkage was tantalising. One was the "Thatcher" exhibition at the Blue Gallery in Clerkenwell, central London. The other, two miles away on the South Bank, was the ticket-only fête for Thatcher's adman Charles Saatchi in County Hall, a building available only because of Maggie's abrupt axeing of the Greater London Council in 1986, and now host to "SaatchiWorld".
There were two key private views last Tuesday – or "pee-vees", as the liggerati have it – and the linkage was tantalising. One was the "Thatcher" exhibition at the Blue Gallery in Clerkenwell, central London. The other, two miles away on the South Bank, was the ticket-only fête for Thatcher's adman Charles Saatchi in County Hall, a building available only because of Maggie's abrupt axeing of the Greater London Council in 1986, and now host to "SaatchiWorld".
Actually, that is not the real name of the Saatchi Museum but a pejorative sobriquet coined by the art historian John A Walker, co-author with Rita Hatton of a book about Saatchi called Supercollector, so as to liken it to the "parallel reality found at DisneyWorld".
Ouch. But Walker's construction is tame compared to some of the other counterblasts. The Saatchi Museum has been ridiculed as a vulgar vanity project, and labelled "risible", "a curator's nightmare", an "extraordinary, historic flop", and most notably, a "mausoleum". The poverty of Ralph Knott's Edwardian municipal backdrop, and the questionable canonising of a moment in British art have also arisen. Perhaps the worst indictment comes from Damien Hirst, whose work heralds the museum, but who has dissociated himself from the project as "pointless" and "a waste of time".
The museum has crystallised the Saatchi backlash. It has been swelling for years, and there has long been art-world criticism about the way he buys and sells, but as the only major buyer in the UK, he has been begrudgingly accepted. Indeed, Saatchi's presence has disquieted, even confused the art world – the critic Matthew Collings has said that "nobody can ever quite sum up what the problem is".
Some have not forgiven him for the "Labour isn't working" campaign, notably the left-leaning arts bureaucrats whose budgets were cut by the Iron Lady. "Never forget that he scuppered the Labour Party," says an anonymous curator (many arts-world people will not go "on record" against "Charles"). Lots of culture-producers are ambivalent. "It's difficult to say anything that doesn't sound like sour grapes," says one high-profile artist. "He's a curate's egg: good in parts."
Although she has seen the backlash develop, the art critic and curator Sacha Craddock says that the art world has been utterly complicit. "I think back in the Eighties and Nineties people weren't critical enough," she says. "All you heard was, 'I'm going to be bought by Saatchi'. In the Eighties and Nineties, he suited the more brash times, and the establishment found him useful." Rich, intelligent and one of our few patrons, Saatchi was a big fish in the UK's provincial pool, and one could argue that he did a great marketing job for the UK art world.
"Now people are turning round and getting snobby about him," adds Craddock. "There's a desire to cut him adrift, and a notion that Saatchi is not working in the public interest. And why should he? It's his money, his show." It's the sheer brass neck of the man, she proposes. "I'm sure it's something to do with his infuriating populism. It was one thing when he was stuck at Boundary Road [his north London gallery]. It's another when he's in a prime tourist hotspot on the South Bank."
And another still when loads of art-world folk were not invited to the launch party, but opened their newspapers on Wednesday morning to find the likes of Sara Cox and the model Jemma Kidd in ahead of them. "It shows no sense of generosity to artists, and it is artists who have given him his opportunities," says a gallerist. "I hope people stay away in droves, and I personally have no intention of paying £8.50 for it."
Others now choose to downplay his influence, among them the gallery-owner Anthony Reynolds. "I do think his role is exaggerated," says Reynolds. "He was incredibly important in the early days, but the idea that young artists sit around thinking about him when they make work is tosh – as is this phoney war between the 'new Medici' and Tate Modern." Reynolds credits the museum for being "outrageous and bold" but admits that it "doesn't fill me with joy". One critic, The Independent's Tom Lubbock, described Saatchi's taste as adman's art – "bright and shiny, shitty and bloody, rude and jokey". Adrian Searle of The Guardian described the gallery as "a provincial gulag", confining the artists featured to their past.
The left has long been uncomfortable with Saatchi, ever since the conceptual artist Hans Haake made work that linked Saatchi's art collecting with an influence on state art institutions. This baton is now carried by John A Walker. "From the classic Marxist perspective, Saatchi exploits the labour power of his workers to make a fortune, and then exploits that fortune to manipulate culture," he says. "Then he can bequeath the work that doesn't increase in value so as to gain a veneer of altruism."
The myth of Saatchi, says Walker, is that of a "self-made man". "But remember that the artists have made the work he owns, and then he folds them into his whole apparatus and makes it all about him. Now SaatchiWorld is even going to have its own prize, so he can reward his own collection. Saatchi is constructing an all-encompassing, art world apparatus. I find it hilarious."
Some of the discomfort arises from the idea that his is a private-sector museum, doing the public sector's job. The critic Brian Sewell expected Saatchi to bequeath his collection of late-20th century British art to the Tate and believes he "has done the duty of the state" by holding the keys to Britart. Indeed, Saatchi's swashbuckling presence – and deep pockets – have arguably shown up bureaucratic sluggishness in the public sector.
But suspicions have also been raised at Saatchi's relationship with the public museums. Whenever he has got into bed with them, notably the Tate and Whitechapel galleries, critics reckoned he was using museum prestige to drive up prices. The late Bryan Robertson, who worked for the Whitechapel Art Gallery, called him a "cold speculator". There has also been sniping at the way he co-opted critics such as Time Out's Sarah Kent into writing partisan catalogue introductions: a process brought up-to-date by the forthcoming TV profile of Saatchi by his Scrabble pal, Alan Yentob. More recently, there has been internal dissent at The Guardian and The Observer about special Saatchi supplements.
Fuelling it all are the Citizen Kane-type rumours about Saatchi: for instance, does he really keep a permanent room at the Berkeley Hotel just to use the rooftop pool? "It's very hard to get hard facts about him," says John A Walker. "He's very worried about betrayal."
One could try to write off the critics as out-of-time lefties. But conservatives are also exercised by the Saatchi effect. George Walden, the ex-minister, arts commentator and author of The New Elites, is highly critical of the museum. "It's so backward, with its sad little Mini [Hirst's spotty car] and its sad nude demonstration [the Spencer Tunick nude photocall on the forecourt]. It's a sad, backward show, sold to the public as something new by a typical member of the new élite." So does he believe, like the ICA's director Philip Dodd, that it is "a Nineties museum, dedicated to the recent past"? "No, it's not old in the sense of being 'so last year, darling'," says Walden. "It's more like 100 years old, aping the Modernist avant-garde. It is backward, provincial and sad. In our puritanical country, nudes will go into the newspapers and that's Saatchi's role: an adman, whose interest is in marketing. There's more merit in one episode of The Simpsons than in his gallery."
Such a wide target is the Saatchi Museum that even well-known antagonists like David Lee of Jackdaw magazine have resisted the media lure: "I didn't want to get involved," says Lee, who is nonetheless devoting the next Jackdaw to the "malign influence" of Saatchi. "There is this idea that he is pitted against the Tate, but he's been involved with the Turner Prize before. His interests and the contemporary arts establishment's interests have completely coincided. As for the idea that he's a recluse, that's wrong. He is addicted to publicity. I think his interests are purely selfish. He's completely used all the artists."
Part of the blame lies with the media, thinks the contemporary arts curator Paul Bonaventura of the Ruskin School of Art in Oxford. "The media have done themselves no favours by generating such a deluge on Saatchi," he says. "The opening of the new Saatchi gallery is newsworthy but the coverage is out of all proportion to its significance and presents a twisted picture of contemporary art. Their relentless promotion of Saatchi does little for the serious artists in Saatchi's collection – and indeed, little for Saatchi as a responsible patron." Now that the press can get a power-couple story about Saatchi and Nigella Lawson, he has crossed from the world of art into that of celebrity tittle-tattle.
"I"m sure the museum will be a success; not as an art phenomenon but as a tourist attraction," says Patricia Bickers, editor of Art Monthly, adding that she found it "tediously predictable" and the Spencer Tunick nude stunt "rather wearying". As to the rumour that Tunick allegedly sold his image to Saatchi before it had been taken – well, so the world turns. "In the Nineties people still saw him as a collector, but the point is he was always a dealer." It's obvious now, she reckons.
More importantly, Bickers believes that Saatchi has broken several of the caveats of exhibiting art. "He's entitled to buy and sell work. But he's remade, re-presented and recontextualised work," she says. "Some artists have been appalled by what he's done. It's an unequal power struggle. In the end, it's all about Saatchi – hence 'The Saatchi Decade', as the title of the aggrandising book goes. It's not good for the artists' careers." It's a theme echoed by Anthony Reynolds: "What [the museum] doesn't do is develop the artists' careers. It's not a long-term plan for posterity. Some of the more celebrity artists will not persist." Indeed, some artists don't sell to Saatchi because of his fickleness and the negative association. "He's genuinely passionate," says Reynolds. "He picks things up quickly, but drops them quickly too."
Julian Spalding, author of The Eclipse of Art (Prestel) and in the past a controversial director of Glasgow's museums, defends Saatchi's right to open a gallery. "Nobody asked him to do it," he says. "It's a public statement by someone who's got the money." But he finds it low in cultural significance. "It's not serious. It's not a competitor to the Tate. It's nothing to do with being a 'modern Medici'. For someone who's supposed to be showing the avant-garde, one is impressed by how it looks backwards. It's more like a funfair or freak-show, with an odd impermanence to it."
The problem is that it is dead on arrival, thinks Ingrid Swenson of the curatorial agency and art think-tank Peer. "He's serving up the stuff he's collected, and the art world is already familiar with most of it," she says. "It's not bad, but there's a sense of serving the stuff in aspic, with no risk-taking. Why isn't he supporting more new people? It's seems like a bit of a party for Nigella and Jamie, or whoever; a bit pathetic really."
Put it this way: if the museum does not receive its hoped-for 750,000 visitors a year, there are a lot of people waiting to remake the Saatchi brothers' infamous 1979 slogan – Saatchi isn't working.
There's more merit in one episode of 'The Simpsons' than there is in the Saatchi Museum
George Walden, author and ex-minister
As for the idea that he's a recluse, I think that's wrong. He's addicted to publicity.
David Lee, editor of 'Jackdaw'
Saatchi art – bright and shiny, shitty and bloody, rude and jokey – is an adman's art
Tom Lubbock, art critic of 'The Independent'
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