Saatchi says goodbye to Hymn . . . . . and hello to her

From The Times

October 2, 2004

By Jack Malvern, Arts Reporter THE unmade bed has been laid to rest, the shark has swum, and Hymn isn’t singing anymore. Charles Saatchi, the millionaire collector whose manipulation of the art market in the 1990s made the reputations and fortunes of the Young British Artists has dumped his most famous installations in favour of paintings.

Mr Saatchi has announced that he will clear his gallery of Tracey Emin’s My Bed and Damien Hirst’s shark in formaldehyde for a new exhibition of highly-regarded painters. Hirst’s 20ft bronze reproduction of an anatomical model, Hymn, will also be dismantled.

Works that were initially shocking when they were unveiled for Sensation, Saatchi’s 1997 show at the Royal Academy, will be sent on tour next year and then will be mothballed until 2007, when they will return to the Saatchi Gallery on the South Bank.

The Art Newspaper reported that Young British Artists, who are now approaching middle age, would be replaced by internationally renowned artists including Martin Kippenberger, Peter Doig, Marlene Dumas, Luc Tuymans, Jorg Immendorff and Hermann Nitsch. Luc Tuymans, one of Belgium’s most celebrated contemporary painters, is currently on show at Tate Modern, and Martin Kippenberger is will be exhibited shortly at the Reina Sofia in Madrid.

The five painters will replace the headline-grabbing British artists of the 1990s including Jake and Dinos Chapman, Sarah Lucas, Marc Quinn and Gavin Turk. Hirst’s pickled sheep, Away from the Flock, and Chris Ofili’s elephant dung painting, The Holy Virgin Mary, will also be cleared out.

Marc Quinn’s Self, made from nine pints of the artist’s blood, will be kept in cold storage outside of the gallery.

Mr Saatchi said that it was time for contemporary painters to be recognised. “For the last ten years only five of the 40 Turner Prize artists have been pure painters,” he said. “We think it is time for a painting survey looking at established international artists and later in the year, new young painters.”

The move represents a significant shift for the collector who usually invests in relatively unknown artists by buying their work en masse. Sensation was seen as a success, but a recent exhibition, New Blood, was mauled by art critics. Mr Saatchi will hold a second exhibition of paintings, by younger artists including Daniel Richter and Cecily Brown, later in 2005. They will be succeeded by another exhibition of paintings by “emerging” artists, whose names have not yet been announced.

The works of Sensation will be touring the country but no venues have been arranged.

The move comes after reports of cooling relations between Mr Saatchi and the YBAs. In 2003, Damien Hirst described his patron an “arrogant” and a “childish” businessman who “only recognises art with his wallet”. Hirst declined to be involved in the Saatchi Gallery when it opened the same year.

Mr Saatchi’s newfound love of painting was not greeted with universal acclaim, however. Charles Thomson, who founded a movement called Stuckism to oppose Mr Saatchi’s patronage of installation art, said that the collector was copying his idea.

“It is amazing that he dares to do it,” he said.

A large chunk of Mr Saatchi’s Britart will not be available for touring. Several high profile items, including Tracey Emin’s tent and the Chapman Brothers’ Hell, were destroyed in a the fire in the Momart art warehouse May.