Saatchi clashes with Serota over £200m 'gift' of artworks to Tate

By Matthew Beard
Monday, 29 November 2004

Tate Modern refused an offer by Charles Saatchi to donate his entire £200m collection of modern art, Britain's leading arts patron claimed yesterday.

Tate Modern refused an offer by Charles Saatchi to donate his entire £200m collection of modern art, Britain's leading arts patron claimed yesterday.

Mr Saatchi said the proposal, which would have turned the Tate into the world's foremost collection of contemporary art with his 2,500 works, was spurned by its director, Sir Nicholas Serota, last October because the museum "already had commitments".

Sir Nicholas insisted that the works were offered on loan only, but the disagreement has fuelled tensions between two of the most influential figures in British art.

Last November, Mr Saatchi described the Turner Prize, exhibited at the Tate, as "rehashed claptrap". He said he made his offer when he was having problems with the landlord at his County Hall gallery, close to the Tate Modern on London's Bankside, which opened in May 2003.

"I did offer my collection to Nicholas Serota last year," he said. "I was struggling with the alarming behaviour of the Japanese landlords and I remembered at the time the Tate Modern opened, Nick had told me there were extensions planned that would add half again
to the gallery capacity," Mr Saatchi told The Art Newspaper in a rare interview.

"By the time I offered the collection to Nick, the Tate already had commitments for the extension. So I lost my chance for a tastefully engraved plaque and a 21-gun salute. Now the mood has passed, and I'm happy not to have to visit Tate Modern, or its storage depot, to look at my art."

Asked to assess the Tate as a contemporary art museum, Mr Saatchi praised Sir Nicholas, who has been in the post since 1998, calling him "my hero, to have pulled it off so masterfully".

Mr Saatchi did attack the Tate, saying that its exhibition was disappointing and accusing curators of lacking ambition. He said the Tate, which receives £30m a year in government funding, missed crucial investment opportunities in the 1990s "when even the piddliest budget would have bought you a great many works".

Sir Nicholas told The Art Newspaper: "At no point was there any suggestion that the collection was being offered as a gift."

The works include Tracey Emin's My Bed, Marcus Harvey's portrait of Myra Hindley and Damien Hirst's shark in formaldehyde.

Last month, the Tate asked 23 artists including Lucian Freud, David Hockney and Hirst, to donate works which it said it could no longer afford. It has £56m in lottery funding and is seeking millions more to compete with museums such as New York's Museum of Modern Art.

Sir Nicholas was unavailable for comment yesterday.

THE COLLECTOR AND THE CURATOR

CHARLES SAATCHI

BORN Baghdad, Iraq in 1943, son of a merchant

EARLY DAYS Set up advertising agency with his brother Maurice in 1970. Became household name for 1979 election campaign

HIGHLIGHTS His 1997 Sensation exhibition, with its portrait of Myra Hindley

LOWLIGHTS A cast of the artist Marc Quinn's head, made from his own frozen blood, melted after builders pulled out the freezer's plug

WHAT HE SAYS "There's nothing complicated about me"

WHAT CRITICS SAY "A man of crushes ­ cars, clothes, artists" (former wife Kay Hartenstein)

SIR NICHOLAS SEROTA

BORN London, 1946

EARLY DAYS An exhibition organiser for the Arts Council in the early 1970s

HIGHLIGHTS His reign at the Tate Modern, winning credit for its success

LOWLIGHTS Abandoning plans for a Hirst retrospective at the Tate Modern after Saatchi decided not to co-operate

WHAT HE SAYS "We're putting on a mix of popular and academic shows. I don't think it's a choice between the two. It's essential to have both"

WHAT CRITICS SAY "Serota is dangerously narrow in tastes" (Brian Sewell, art critic)

It's your bed, lie in it, Tate tells Saatchi

From The Times

November 29, 2004
By David Lister

THE sound of elephant dung being thrown reverberated across the British art world yesterday as an indignant Charles Saatchi said that he had offered his £200 million collection as a gift to Tate Modern, but that the museum had turned him down.

A clearly wounded Mr Saatchi broke his usual silence to make a stinging attack on Sir Nicholas Serota, the Tate’s director, and to accuse the museum of being “disengaged” from the art community.

The controversial art collector, who is married to Nigella Lawson, the celebrity cook, said that Sir Nicholas had snubbed his offer to move his world- famous collection — including Chris Ofili’s Holy Virgin Mary made from elephant dung, Damien Hirst’s shark pickled in formaldehyde and Tracey Emin’s unmade bed — to the museum.

The advertising magnate used a rare interview to accuse the Tate of hosting “disappointing” exhibitions and said that it lacked “ambition”.

In a lofty discussion about “immortality”, Mr Saatchi said: “I did offer my collection to Nicholas Serota at the Tate last year. This was about the time I was struggling with the problems at County Hall — both the alarming behaviour of the Japanese landlords and my failure to get a grip on how to use the space well.

“I remembered that at the time Tate Modern opened, Nick had told me that there were new extensions planned that would add half again to the gallery capacity. But by the time I offered the collection to Nick, the Tate already had commitments for the extension.

“So I lost my chance for a tastefully engraved plaque and a 21-gun salute. And now the mood has passed and I’m happy not to have to visit Tate Modern, or its storage depot, to look at my art.” Mr Saatchi’s comments, in an interview with The Art Newspaper, are just the latest chapter in a long-running feud between the art collector and Sir Nicholas, the two most influential figures of “Brit Art”.

Last year Mr Saatchi dismissed the Turner Prize, exhibited at the Tate, as “pseudo-controversial rehashed claptrap”.

The Tate strongly denied last night that Mr Saatchi had offered his collection as a gift. Commentators in the art world said that the multimillionaire may have decided to stir up a high-profile row to increase interest in his new exhibition of contemporary painters, which opens in January. The Saatchi Gallery has failed to attract the number of visitors its owner had expected since it moved to the oak-panelled rooms of the former Greater London Council headquarters on the South Bank. Its most recent exhibitions have been mauled by critics.

Even before the opening of the County Hall gallery in April last year, many believed that Mr Saatchi had chosen an exhibition space as close as possible to Tate Modern, which is just a 15-minute walk along the Thames.

The Tate yesterday said in a statement: “Last year Charles Saatchi, then having difficulties with his landlord at County Hall, approached Nicholas Serota with the suggestion that he would like to move displays of his collection from County Hall to the derelict ‘oil tank’ spaces at Tate Modern. Nicholas Serota explained that these spaces could not be used without major expenditure.

“At no point was there any suggestion that the collection was being offered as a gift to Tate.

“Of course the offer of a gift of major works from Charles Saatchi’s collection would be a most generous gesture and would be much welcomed by Tate’s trustees. They have always made it clear that they would be very pleased to acquire, by gift or purchase, major works from the Saatchi collection.”

Referring sarcastically to Sir Nicholas as “my hero”, Mr Saatchi, who has been dismissed by Hirst as “childish”, said of the Tate: “The curators should get out more and see more studios and grassroots shows. They evidently lack an adventurous curatorial ambition . . . The Tate seems sadly disengaged from the young British art community. It ought to have reflected the energy and diversity of British art over the past 15 years in both its exhibitions and collecting policy. Puzzlingly, museums in Europe and the US are far more interested in examining Britain’s recent artistic achievements.”

Saatchi turns a cold eye on Britart legacy

From The Sunday Times

November 28, 2004

Richard Brooks, Arts Editor THE LEGACY of Britart is under threat. Charles Saatchi, the country’s most influential art collector, believes most of the art movement’s controversial figures will be “nothing but footnotes” in art history.

Saatchi is the most famous buyer of modern conceptual artworks in Britain, ranging from Damien Hirst’s tiger shark pickled in a tank of formaldehyde to Tracey Emin’s unmade bed.

But the advertising magnate is understood to admit that in a decade or so the vast majority of Britart’s artists are unlikely to be considered of any lasting significance. It is a withering critique that may reflect a decision by Saatchi to give greater consideration to more traditional artistic forms.

Saatchi believes that art books produced in about 10 years’ time will identify only Hirst among the Britart movement as someone of lasting influence. He believes other modern artists likely to stand the test of time are the Americans Andy Warhol, Jackson Pollock and Donald Judd.

Those outside such a pantheon include Emin, the Chapman brothers (Jake and Dinos), whose artworks include mannequins adorned with adult genitalia in place of their mouths and eyes, and Ron Mueck, who produced a 3ft representation of his father’s corpse entitled Dead Dad. “Charles is entitled to his view,” said Emin yesterday. “Anyway, I’m sure he hasn’t said this to insult me.”

Saatchi bought Emin’s infamous unmade bed in 2000 for £150,000. It has since been displayed in his gallery on London’s South Bank, which opened in April 2003.

“I’m with him on Warhol and Pollock,” said the art critic Brian Sewell. “Maybe Judd, too, though perhaps I might have gone for Serra instead.” Richard Serra is the highly regarded American sculptor. “But I’m not at all sure about Hirst,” said Sewell. “I once took him seriously. That seriousness might simply have been in the eye of the beholder. I now think he will end up just as a joker. He’s become a playboy.”

In an interview in December’s The Art Newspaper, Saatchi also reopens the wound between himself and Sir Nicholas Serota, director of the Tate galleries, because he suggests that he offered his collection to Tate Modern towards the end of last year.

Saatchi was at the time having difficulties with his landlord, a Japanese property firm, at the former London county hall building.

He apparently suggested his works could be moved to an undeveloped area, known as the old tank space, beside Tate Modern.

It never happened and in the interview it is understood Saatchi attacks Tate Modern for lacking ambition and adventure and, in particular, for failing to represent the young English artists of the past 15 years.

Yesterday, however, Serota disputed the Saatchi offer. “I had one conversation with him,” he said.

“I pointed out it would cost millions to develop the space and that we anyway were planning to use it for ourselves later on.”

Serota also claimed Saatchi had hardly shown any enthusiasm to donate or sell his works to the Tate over the past 15 years — and denied his galleries lacked ambition.

Another Round for Saatchi vs. Tate

By CAROL VOGEL

Published: November 27, 2004


Jonathan Player for The New York Times "Hymn," by Damien Hirst, at Charles Saatchi's gallery, a short walk from the Tate.

ONDON, Nov. 26 - The longstanding rivalry between Charles Saatchi, the British advertising magnate and art collector, and Sir Nicholas Serota, director of the Tate here, is heating up again. Mr. Saatchi says Sir Nicholas turned down his offer to give the Tate his entire collection, while Sir Nicholas says no such offer was made.

In April 2003, Mr. Saatchi, one of Britain's biggest contemporary-art collectors, opened a 40,000-square-foot exhibition space in County Hall, once home to London's local government, on the South Bank next to the London Eye, the slow-motion Ferris wheel overlooking the Thames. The gallery is just a 15-minute walk from the four-year-old Tate Modern.

When the space opened, contemporary-art experts said Mr. Saatchi had purposely chosen a space near the Tate Modern to compete with it. He has given little to the Tate. In 1992, he donated works by many young British artists, a gift estimated then to be worth about $170,000.

Unlike the Tate, which is free, the Saatchi Gallery charges $16.50 for admission. It has not attracted the large number of visitors Mr. Saatchi had hoped, experts said. They also said Mr. Saatchi was looking at spaces in central London, where he would like to move the gallery in an effort to draw more of the art world, rather than the tourist crowd that goes to the London Eye.

Since the space at County Hall opened, it has attracted 800,000 visitors, said Ben Rawlingson Plant, a spokesman for Mr. Saatchi. Mr. Saatchi declined to be interviewed for this article, but in a question-and-answer piece scheduled to appear in The Daily Telegraph tomorrow and in The Art Newspaper next week, Mr. Saatchi says that Sir Nicholas rejected a recent offer of his collection of hundreds of contemporary artworks, largely by young British artists like Damien Hirst, Tracey Emin, the Chapman brothers, Rachel Whiteread, Marc Quinn, Peter Doig and Chris Ofili. Sir Nicholas denies such an offer was made.

"Last year Charles Saatchi, then having difficulties with his landlord at County Hall, approached me about moving his exhibition program from County Hall to the derelict oil tank spaces at the Tate Modern," Sir Nicholas said in a telephone interview Friday, referring to raw space off Turbine Hall in the museum, a converted power station. "I explained that it would cost tens of millions of pounds to make the space usable, and in the long term the Tate wanted to use that space for its permanent collection. At no point did he offer to give his collection to the Tate."

Mr. Saatchi's collection is well known to American museumgoers. The exhibition "Sensation: Young British Artists From the Saatchi Collection" opened at the Royal Academy here in 1997 and then traveled to the Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin and finally to the Brooklyn Museum of Art, where Rudolph W. Giuliani, mayor of New York City at the time, called the exhibition "sick stuff" and threatened to cut off city subsidies because Mr. Ofili's painting of the Virgin Mary included clumps of elephant dung.

Over the years Mr. Saatchi has gained an international reputation for going on wild shopping sprees, spending millions of dollars on the works of contemporary artists and then selling them in bulk, sending the prices for some of these artists on a roller-coaster ride. He bought dozens of works by the Italian artist Sandro Chia, then turned around and sold them, thus depressing Mr. Chia's market.

A year ago Mr. Saatchi sold about a dozen works by Mr. Hirst back to the artist and his dealer, Jay Jopling, in a deal that people familiar with the negotiations said was worth around $15 million. Over the years Mr. Saatchi has also sold dozens of artworks at a time at Sotheby's and Christie's in auctions in New York and London.

Sir Nicholas pointed out that if Mr. Saatchi was so eager to give his collection to the Tate, he could have offered to donate "Ghost," a seminal sculpture by Ms. Whiteread that art lovers say should stay in Britain. Instead, last month, the National Gallery of Art in Washington announced that Mitchell P. Rales, a Washington collector, had bought "Ghost," a 1990 plaster cast of a living room modeled after the one from Ms. Whiteread's childhood home in North London, for the gallery. "Ghost," in which window frames, light sockets, a fireplace and grooves left by doors are etched in plaster, had been on view at the Gagosian Gallery in London. Contemporary-art experts said it was worth about $2 million. "I saw it at Gagosian," Sir Nicholas said, "and was told it was not for sale."

A childish spat: Stuckists tear into Britart's finest

By Guy Adams
Thursday, 4 November 2004

* In this Turner Prize season, some of the biggest names in British art are to be subjected to a first rate character assassination.

* In this Turner Prize season, some of the biggest names in British art are to be subjected to a first rate character assassination.

The Stuckists, a group of contemporary artists opposed to conceptual art, are about to publish their first book. It's called Punk Victorian, and contains some hard-hitting stuff.

Damien Hirst is dismissed as a "Harry Enfield-type character", and "a ridiculous yob artist". The Tate director Sir Nicholas Serota, is a "hypocrite", and Charles Saatchi a "copycat", responsible for a "dysfunctional decade of art".

But it is Tracey Emin who cops the most stick. Before achieving fame, Emin had an affair with the Stuckist, Billy Childish. The book picks over this, and credits Childish with "discovering" her. It also alleges that Emin has erased him from her CV.

"Tracey Emin has hidden a significant part of her life from the world, which, for a confessional artist, is interesting to note," remarks the book's author, Stuckist co-founder Charles Thomson.

Pertinently, the book is published by the National Museum of Liverpool, whose trustees such pillars of the establishment as Sir Neil Cossons and Loyd Grossman.

"The museum was a bit paranoid about libel, but if Saatchi or Tracey sue, we'll have a field day," adds Thomson.

* A bohemian moment at the party for the new Vanity Fair film - written by society superstar Julian Fellowes - on Monday.

In the wee hours, Pandora spotted the film's bubbly, award-winning director Mira Nair, above, chuffing away on what looked (and smelt) like a "jazz cigarette".

"I've no idea what I'm smoking," she smiled, when I asked if illegal substances were being consumed. "Somebody just gave it to me."

There our conversation ended. I'd love to take the matter further, but Nair's agent says she's spent much of the past couple of days in bed, with "a bug', so can't chat.

* Trevor McDonald has made peace with Jonathan Sayeed, the Tory MP who accused him of "having benefited from positive discrimination".

Sayeed has written to Sir Trevor apologising and saying the accusation - in an e-mail to this column - was the result of a typing error.

Sir Trevor has now written back: "I'm glad you explained how it all came about," he says. "I never thought that you would seriously make such a comment. I fully accept what you say, in which case no apology is necessary." Now let that be the end of it!

* How much longer will Naim Attallah stay silent about the memoir of his former employee Jennie Erdal?

Mrs Erdal's book Ghosting claims - as reported by Pandora - that she acted as Attallah's ghostwriter during the 1980s and 1990s. The colourful publisher may well disagree, but has yet to make his feelings public.

Erdal's final chapter might tempt him to, though. "All story-tellers are liars, not to be trusted," it says. "They have an excessive need to make sense of experience, and so things get twisted and shaped to suit."

Says a literary source: "This passage raises questions about how much of her memoir we can actually trust."

* The photographer Bob Carlos Clarke - heir apparent to Helmut Newton - has sold an erotic snap to one of London's top suits.

David Ross, the co-founder of Carphone Warehouse, sneaked into Clarke's latest exhibition on Tuesday, and bought a black and white study of a naked blonde for £3,000.

"We'd no idea who he was till the credit card came out," says a source at the gallery. "It's rather ironic: the model's sitting next to a giant mobile phone, with a keypad that has sexual positions instead of numbers." The work, by the way, is called "Nookia".