Friday, 28 May 2004
Damien Hirst's bronze sculpture Charity - based on the old Spastic Society collection box - survived the fire which destroyed an estimated £50m worth of modern British art.
Damien Hirst's bronze sculpture Charity based on the old Spastic Society collection box survived the fire which destroyed an estimated £50m worth of modern British art.
The 22ft bronze was discovered leaning against a "precarious wall" in the warehouse yard yesterday.
A spokeswoman for Hirst's Science Ltd said: "A bronze is about the only thing that would survive the fire." She said that she expected the work to be salvaged assuming there was no more damage from falling masonry.
Meanwhile Momart, the owners of the art warehouse at Leyton in east London, denied that negligence led to Monday's blaze. The company is facing at least two legal actions over its stewardship of items belonging to the author Shirley Conran, and Gillian Ayres, the artist who lost a number of personal pieces dating back to the 1950s. At least one other major collecting family is consideringaction.
More details emerged of the losses yesterday. It was confirmed that more than 50 works by the late British abstract painter Patrick Heron, including his final two paintings, were destroyed. The works belonged to Mr Heron's two daughters.
Charles Saatchi lost more than 100 pieces including two Tracey Emin pieces, Hell by the Chapman brothers and works by Gary Hume and Sarah Lucas. Damien Hirst lost 16 paintings that were not part of the Saatchi collection.
Also lost were 20 pieces from the Crafts Council, including Floorpad, a 1972 work by Ann Sutton, Britain's leading textile artist. Many more pieces had a lucky escape, she said, because much of her stored work was recently removed to be shown as a part of a national retrospective tour.
Ms Sutton told The Independent yesterday: "What I would love to see is the salvaged work. An exhibition of burnt art would be fascinating, because it's not something we ever do to our pieces."
Louise Taylor, the director of the Crafts Council, which has a collection of 1,300 pieces, said: "This is a significant loss for all the craftspeople involved and for the British public ... They are in most cases one-off pieces, which cannot be replaced. The losses will leave a gap in the history of craft."
Also destroyed was work by the furniture maker Michael Anastassiades, who lost four single-edition tables, a reversible bench by Shin and Tomoko Azumi, the cutting-edge designers whose furniture featured in the last series of the reality television series Big Brother, and work by Ron Arad and El Ultimo Grito.
Two bowls made by Alison Britton, one of Britain's leading potters, were also lost.
Eugene Boyle, the managing director of Momart, said initial indications were that the blaze had started in an adjacent unit but that the cause was still unknown. It could be up to three days before forensic fire investigators complete their task of sifting through the wreckage.
Momart's clients include the National Gallery, Tate Modern, Tate Britain and Buckingham Palace. The destroyed warehouse represents between five and 10 per cent of the company's storage capacity.
Mr Boyle declined to reveal further details of which works had been destroyed.
He said: "Our insurers are completely satisfied that we took all the necessary steps to ensure the safekeeping of the works of art in our possession. We take security and safety very seriously and have enjoyed a blemish-free record since we were founded in 1971."
Raz Mireskandari, a solicitor who is representing Ms Ayres and Mrs Conran, said both women were "enraged" by their loss. He said: "The key question is, to what extent should Momart have been concerned at what was being stored at the other premises?" More than 20 works by Ms Ayres, belonging to both women, were destroyed in the fire.
With estimates putting the eventual total loss at upwards of £50m, the insurance industry was putting on a brave face.
Richard Northcott, the executive director of Heath Lambert, confirmed his company insured Momart.
"It is too early to say what impact, if any, this loss will have on insurance rates and capacity in the specialist art market," he said.
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