Artist takes offence and buys back most of his work from the collector who made his name
CHARLES SAATCHI, Britain’s best-known collector of modern art, has sold almost his entire collection of work by Damien Hirst back to the artist and his dealer.
In an extraordinary secret deal, Britain’s most successful conceptual artist and Jay Jopling, his dealer, have bought back the bulk of the collection — although Mr Saatchi has kept hold of the artist’s best-known work, the shark pickled in formaldehyde that he commissioned in 1991.
The sale follows a mounting feud between the two men over how the works were displayed in the Saatchi Gallery.
Mr Saatchi began collecting Hirst long before anyone else was interested in him, buying up most of the artist’s oeuvre, from the trademark medicine cabinets to “spot” paintings among dozens of works. Now he has sold back the bulk of the collection, with the rotting cow’s head and flies in a pool of blood and a pickled sliced pig among the most famous pieces.
Both men are likely to have made a considerable profit from the deal. The rotting head alone could be worth up to $2 million (£1.4 million). The collector is thought to have acquired it for less than £50,000 while it would have cost Hirst a few hundred pounds to make.
Hirst can easily afford those prices now. Last September, within 15 days of opening his latest exhibition, Romance in the Age of Uncertainty, he personally made £11 million.
Such is the demand for his work that the top-price exhibit — Charity, a 22ft-high replica of a 1960s Spastics Society collection doll — was selling for £1.5 million. Last week, his display case filled with animal and bird skeletons sold for a record auction price of almost £700,000 in New York.
Mr Saatchi, Hirst and Mr Jopling were unavailable for comment yesterday and a spokesman for the gallery said: “We can’t go into any detail.”
The story emerged from New York after a dealer in contemporary art, Josh Baer, published a line about the “rumoured” story in a newsletter, The Baer Facts. He told The Times yesterday: “Jay did confirm that this deal had happened, that it was virtually the entire collection that had been sold.”
Several observers said that the sale comes after a rift between the two men over the display of Hirst’s work at the gallery at County Hall. One said: “There was a big falling-out between Hirst and Saatchi over the presentation at the gallery. Hirst felt the way the works were interspersed with other artists did him no justification.”
Relations between the two had soured after Hirst described his patron as a “childish” businessman who “only recognises art with his wallet”.
The artist turned down Mr Saatchi’s invitation to become involved in his gallery, which opened this year, while the collector’s lack of interest in buying anything from Hirst’s latest show was noticed.
Mr Saatchi’s monopoly of the work of Hirst and other young British artists has led to a huge gap in the Tate’s collection. Public funds could not match the prices he could pay.
When the Tate announced plans for a Hirst retrospective, Mr Saatchi threw them into disarray by letting it be known that he planned a full-scale exhibition of his Hirsts, including the pickled shark and Hymn, the enormous anatomical toy that he reputedly bought for £1 million. The Tate scrapped its plans, but Mr Saatchi never staged his show.
In securing a deal that avoids the works being sold on the open market, Hirst has regained control of his work. The artist is seen as so powerful that he no longer needs Mr Saatchi’s patronage.
This is not the first time that Mr Saatchi has fallen out with an artist he has nurtured. His collecting activities are widely regarded as a barometer of the art market. There have been bitter attacks from artists who have felt betrayed by him. In 1989, he was denounced by Sean Scully for selling nine of his paintings, although interest from his one-time patron had promoted the artist’s name and prices.
Recently Mr Saatchi has been turning his attention to other artists, particularly British and European painters.
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