當代藝術界最具影響力100人名單揭曉

【文／陳沛岑；圖／本刊資料室】

近日，國際藝術雜誌《Art Review》按照往年慣例，公布了今年其評選出的「影響力100」（Power 100），列名當代藝術界最具影響力的100人名單；雖然每年有許多人都把這名單內容當作八卦來談論，但這也無可諱言地，在某種程度上反映了藝術的趨勢與現今權力的操控者。在今公布的名單中赫然發現，前十名的最具影響力人士並沒有改變，國際拍賣公司佳士得的擁有人皮諾（François Pinault）連續兩年蟬連第一名寶座；Art Review 記者Mark Rappolt指出皮諾的影響力在今年他於威尼斯的葛拉西宮（Palazzo Grassi）開幕、並策畫展覽展示其收藏後，就再更上一層樓，在威尼斯雙年展期間，葛拉西宮舉辦的《Sequence 1》更成為大家討論的焦點，比起雙年展也毫不遜色，並且，許多他心儀的藝術家，如印度的庫普塔（Subodh Gupta）也成為今日的閃閃發量的藝壇新星，見其個人品味的影響力。

而高古軒畫廊（Gagosian Gallery）的主持人高古軒（Larry Gagosian）、倫敦泰德美術館（Tate Gallery）館長尼可賽洛塔（Nicholas Serota）、與紐約現代美術館（Museum of Modern Art）館長勞瑞（Glenn D Lowry）三人則與去年一般分別名列二至四名。而近日頻頻上報的英國藝術家赫斯特（Damine Hirst）則由去年的11竄升至第六；第七為英國藏家沙奇（Charles Saatchi）；畫廊負責人賈普林（Jay Jopling）從去年的第19上升至第八，名列第九的則是避險基金投資人暨當代藝術大藏家科辛（Steve A Cohen，去年為第32）。此外，在名單裡，名次躍升最大的為英國的Haunch of Venison 畫廊負責人Harry Blain & Graham Southern，由去年的第54上升至第16名；其他在藝術家的部分，繼赫斯特之後，在前20名之中，上榜的有孔斯（Jeff Koons，名列13），美國極限主義雕塑家塞拉（Richard Serra，由去年的73晉升至第19）。

而當許多人都在爭論到底紐約和倫敦哪裡才是當代藝術的重心時，此名單也許也透露了一些答案，《Art Review》的評審團顯然偏向紐約，名單中具影響力者，有30%來自美國，而18%來自英國；而佔第三多數的是16%的德國人，瑞士則緊接在後有 10%。此外，收藏家的數量在名單中比起去年增加了10%，而在名單中也見遠東地區人數顯著的成長，比如來自北京、韓國首爾（Seoul）、日本、孟買的藝術家在名單中的下半部分也頻頻上榜（如庫普塔(Subodh Gupta)名列第85）。而最引人矚目的新面孔，則為杜拜邦長穆罕默得（Sheikh Mohammed）。

【典藏今藝術2007年11月號。訂閱典藏今藝術電子版】

藝術家私人美術館，市場的超級殺手？！

【文／謝恩；圖／本刊資料室】　

如果朱銘不成立私人美術館，他在台灣藝術家當中最有條件成為國際級藝術家！

擁有美國哈佛大學藝術博士學位的黃文叡有感而發。因為藝術家有了自己的美術館，家屬的思維便以擁有作品為優先考量，其次才是在對外的展覽、宣傳等等。但如果沒有個人美術館卡住藝術家代表性作品，所有的好作品比較有機會在市場上流通，因為支撐市場熱度於不墜，必須要有一定的數量，同時，只有加入藝術家代表性的好作品才會衝高紀錄。尤其透過自由市場的操作機制，自然換手、自然流通，反而容易吸引國際重要經紀商的適時介入與經營。有了市場的利得為誘導，回頭爭取學術的機會，比較容易募得贊助款，以舉辦各項學術座談與討論會，對許多國際級大畫廊或機構，原本就有的柔軟手腕及豐富經驗，就發揮推廣上而言具事半功倍之效。

那麼朱銘的國際成就當不僅如此。

目前朱銘最高拍場成交紀錄不到150萬美元，遠遠落在中國同輩分的當代藝術家，更別說西方同級數的歐美藝術家。「朱鉻的創作語彙是國際珍惜與認同的，尤其中國的太極對西方來說非常具有說服力，但因為個人美術館的人為因素與考量，在行銷手法上綁手綁腳，作品也不夠數量進入市場，遲遲無法悠遊於西方的主流藝術世界！」朱銘是台灣國寶級的當代藝術家，兼具學術價值與市場賣相，對於這份阻隔，未能與國際大面向接軌，讓人為之扼腕。

台灣前輩畫家的幾個例子

同樣也因為藝術家私人美術館限制，讓藝術家的市場呈現「步履維艱」現象的，還包括楊英風。兩年前台灣美術史教授蕭瓊瑞受楊英風家屬委託，嘔心瀝血協助出版一系列的《楊英風研究論文集》，內容豐富、精裝的大部頭著作，十分引起注意。照理說，學術研究如此完整，當有助於藝術家在台灣美術史上的位階，市場必然乘勝追擊。但事實並不全然，學術著作似乎拉不動楊英風在收藏家心中的排序與選項地位，雖然楊英風作品上拍場的件數持續增加，交易金額也提高不少，但似乎呈現單幅作品的個別表現，一點都感染不到時代大師燎原的架勢。

細究楊英風的市場頹勢，除了藝術家天賦、與早期畫廊的代理模式有關外，過多「自慰式」的個人美術館操作與出版，反而讓國家的藝術家淪為家族藝術家或區域型藝術家。尤其家屬作出版與賣畫同時進行，更讓人誤以為出版的目的是為了賣作品，而損及創作者形象。這些出版品，倘若假手其他公立美術館或學術機構來做，其「客觀公正」、「名正言順」當會升高，擁有較多的公信力，才會吸引較多相信美術史觀的收藏家進場，因而活絡市場，墊高交易紀錄。

另外在台灣前輩藝術家當中，藝術家成立私人美術館，不約而同都淪為市場冷卻劑，甚至於成了絕緣體，從李石樵、李梅樹、楊三郎、李澤藩，無一倖免。

日前李澤藩在台北故宮舉辦個人遺作紀念展，開幕當天冠蓋雲集，諾貝爾獎得主的前中央研究院長李遠哲充分發揮他身為人子的孝心與良好社會關係，非常不容易地在故宮舉辦展覽，但再多的追緬，似乎改變不了李澤藩完全停擺的市場交易狀況與地位。理由很簡單，藝術家與風格的仁智互見外，藝術家生前作品完全被封鎖在個人美術館裡，除非特別預約，平常根本不對外開放，一般大眾或收藏家無緣接觸到李澤藩的作品，縱使早年的私人饋贈而回流進市場的少數作品，也在市場長期疏離與冷卻當中，引不起藏家追價意願。這回金仕發拍賣公司出現一幅李澤藩品相不差的靜物寫生作品，看看故宮展覽的加值，是否可以破除市場冷清的魔咒。

楊三郎生前風光，交遊廣闊，每一次畫展，達官貴人到展場致意看畫買畫踴躍；過世時，是台灣前輩藝術家中唯一蓋國旗的藝術家，可說備極哀榮。但是藝術家本人與夫人陳玉燕太珍惜作品，堅持在故居改建私人美術館，前些年還固定開放供民眾參觀，但目前昂貴的管銷經費，加上硬體因使用年代久遠，公共安全問題每每成為市政廳所挑剔取締的焦點，陳玉燕年歲已高，更是力不從心。楊三郎的海景寫生曾經是1990年代被爭逐的焦點，但好作品通通被鎖在自家美術館倉庫裡，收藏家苦等不到楊三郎代表性的好作品出來，慢慢就琵琶別抱去了。目前偶爾有楊三郎作品在市場出現，但熱度大不如昔，去年香港佳士得找來楊三郎難得的50號大海景，原以為可以像陳澄波、廖繼春等同輩分藝術家挑戰高價，但畫價到300多萬港元就打住，也是讓人同感無奈。

李石樵早在日據時代，便以《市場口》、《田家樂》、《大合唱》、《大建設》等精采創作，奠定他在台灣前輩藝術家群中名列前茅的地位，尤其群像創作最被肯定。1992年台北傳家舉辦拍賣時，李石樵是目錄封面藝術家，《浴》在該場拍賣的成交紀錄高掛在新台幣1,320萬元之上，當時陳澄波、廖繼春都不過幾十萬元，頂多1、200萬元的交易紀錄，但這個紀錄卻成為空谷絕響。15年的時間過去了，他的同儕藝術家陳澄波登上新台幣1.4億元，廖繼春也有新台幣8千多萬元的紀錄，李石樵卻從沒出現過一幅新台幣上千萬元的交易作品。當然原因在於李石樵代表性作品，除了《田家樂》一作是李石樵生前賣給台北美術館收藏外，其他的好作品通通被鎖在李石樵美術館裡，這幾年位於台北阿波羅大廈的美術館年久失修，建築殘破，子女又散居各地，不便也不願插手美術館藏品，因此任其蒙塵、漏雨，讓人噓唏不已。

李梅樹生前也是門庭若市的藝術家，學界、廟務、政治，多才多藝，熱心公益又圓融熱情。當年發願成立個人美術館，多年過後的今天，子嗣既無美術館專業，也沒力支付龐大管銷開支的能力，落得私下變賣作品來補貼美術館開銷。但因長年疏於流通的市場交易，出現了「有行無市」的大落差，出手更加不容易，讓當年立意極佳的美術館運作，陷在苟延殘喘當中。

結語

藝術家的角色是創作，作品一旦完成，就要有割捨的心理準備，否則過度的掌控態度，反而事與願違。陳澄波、廖繼春是目前唯二尚未成立個人美術館的台灣前輩藝術明星，適度的作品流通，使官方美術館有好畫可收，他們才能放手作展覽，研究宣揚作品內涵，讓美術史留下精彩篇章。反觀私人藏家也是一樣，讓他們有作品可說，有差價可賺，藏家的資源與力量，更可補官方美術館的不足。成名藝術家已屬社會資產，畫作不一定要全部留在家屬手中。當藝術作品循正常市場管道進入公立美術館或私人藏家手中，好處更多，因為不管美術館或私人收藏家，當他們手握該藝術家許多作品，才會化喜愛、感念為行動！像常玉之於陳泰銘、趙無極之於馬維建、朱德群之於鄧傳馨……都是收藏家出錢出力推廣藝術家到海外作展覽的成功案例。

這又是「捨」與「得」的另一個讓人沉思咀嚼再三的課題。

【典藏今藝術2007年11月號。】

全球機場大躍進 台灣機場空前困境

【作者／江逸之】

擁有地利優勢，卻原地踏步 桃園機場拱手讓出亞太營運中心

經常坐飛機出國談生意的明基電通董事長李焜耀，最近發現到桃園國際機場（中正機場）的入境速度變得很快速，一下飛機，15分鐘內就可以搭上車。

他研究好久才發現，原來是「旅客太少，機場不用排隊。」

經常出國的台灣民眾也會發現，全球各大機場，從早到晚都非常繁忙，但是桃園機場卻經常冷冷清清，整個免稅商店區沒有多少店面可以逛，不少免稅店更是常常店員比客人多。

這樣的情景，看在遠雄自由貿易港區董事長葉鈞耀眼裡，實在感觸很深。

1979年2月正式啟用的桃園國際機場，開幕兩天內，吸引了全台50萬參觀人潮，風光一時，一度也是全亞洲最先進的機場。

當時服務於民航局的葉鈞耀每個月都要很自豪地接待來自香港、新加坡、泰國等亞洲國家的民航官員，到桃園機場考察。但不到30年內，「現在鄰國的每一個機場都超越台灣，桃園機場仍在原地踏步。」

在全球化的大浪潮下，跨國空運需求快速成長，「桃園機場沒有享受到全球化的果實，反而吞下了全球化的苦果，」開南管理學院空運管理學系暨研究所副教授李彌分析，亞洲各國的機場平均每年貨運量的成長都在5％以上，而桃園機場卻不增反衰退。

眼看著亞洲經濟快速崛起，帶動各國競?機場建設，過去自豪是東亞轉運站的桃園機場，卻安安靜靜的，沒有沾到成長的邊。最近三年，桃園機場貨物吞吐量甚至停滯不前。

地理位置優勢，不敵兩岸不通被邊緣化

2006年桃園機場的貨運吞吐量雖然仍保持在全球第13名，但實際上，已比前一年衰退0.4％，被新加坡成長4.2％與上海浦東機場成長16.3％、香港赤鱲角機場成長5％等，狠狠甩在後面。

曾經擔任過民航局長、現任成大管理學院院長張有恆說，去年桃園機場還退出國際機場協會（ACI）的機場服務品質調查計畫，「因為要交一大筆錢。」

事實上，長久以來，台灣發展空運一直被認為有極大利基，因為台灣擁有優異的地理位置。「台灣飛到亞洲八大都市機場的平均時間為2小時55分，是亞洲各國最短的，新加坡還要4小時55分，」前華航董事長、華經資訊董事李雲寧分析。

占據這麼好的地理位置，卻因為兩岸不通，讓桃園機場流失絕佳優勢，快速邊緣化。

目前全世界都要搶搭大陸成長的便車。例如位於東北亞的韓國仁川機場，這幾年趁著大陸飛機場建設不足的機會，快速壯大，正大量搶走歐美與大陸航運間的人流與物流，短短五年內不管是轉運人次與貨運量，均成長了35％到40％。

甚至遠在歐洲的荷蘭史基浦機場集團高層，近年來也頻頻進出大陸，希望爭取大陸貨物出口到歐洲市場時，最好都經過荷蘭。

10月初當《遠見》採訪團拜訪荷蘭史基浦機場管理公司時，貨運部門資深副總裁Enno D. Osinga興奮地向訪客介紹他剛剛取的一個中文名字：歐星家，並在訪客面前生澀的練習中文發音。

問他為什麼要取中文名字呢？他高興地說：「因為我馬上要去深圳與北京訪問大陸企業，為拉近關係，最好取一個中文名字。」

歐星家詳細地介紹了他即將出發的大陸行程，重點在介紹荷蘭的主要機場與港口設施，讓中國企業家知道，為何他們必須到荷蘭來投資與經商。

「我永遠都在尋找商機、生意。這正是荷蘭人的精神，」歐星家補充說 。

全球拼效率，台灣海關思惟還停在19世紀

全世界的海關都在拼效率，香港機場海關准許貨物先走，文件後補，貨物倉儲區也與遠雄一樣大，卻可以一年處理300萬噸的貨物，而遠雄只能規劃120噸貨運處理量。

「我們的設備還比香港機場更先進，但是人的觀念不夠先進，」葉鈞耀指出，每次遠雄自貿港要進行貨物的X光查驗時候，開了兩條X光檢查線，航警局居然要用兩位警察負責X光機，「若交給民間，可能只要一個人負責看兩台X光機就好，省掉一半的人力。」

海關的驗貨員也規定出口與進口，分別由不同的人來驗貨，「企業一個人的績效，等於政府要用三、四個人。」

更讓葉鈞耀氣結的是，台灣海關的思惟似乎還停留在19世紀。為了怕走私，政府規定進、出口倉庫必須要用圍牆做為阻隔，為此遠雄自貿港還特地蓋了10公尺低矮的鐵絲網圍牆。

「這是100多年前的落伍觀念，」現在都是用電腦化管理，所有的貨物都貼有條碼或是RFID（無線射頻辨識），貨一進來就掌握住狀況，根本不需要有形的圍牆。

在電腦等電子產業大舉西進大陸之後，如果「台灣再原地踏步下去，關鍵零組件業者在陸續外移，就是把台灣經濟連根拔走了，」趙藤雄憂心，台灣有機會超越韓國，關鍵在政策要大開放。

眼看著2000年後開幕的二航廈與自由貿易港區，仍然有許多閒置空間，桃園機場要搭上全球化列車，勢必要加快腳步，否則機會就在自己手中流失了。

【本文摘自遠見雜誌11月號】

史基浦比宏碁更會賺錢 稱冠全球機場行銷學 (下)

【作者／江逸之】

引進新科技：條碼行李牌、機器人卸貨櫃

企業化經營的史基浦機場，一直以創新聞名。

「我可以向你保證，每次當提到最新的科技技術、最快的通關流程，每次你都一定可以看到史基浦機場的名字，」史基浦機場物流部副總裁歐星家（Enno D. Osinga）說。

前華航董事長、華經資訊董事李雲寧觀察，20多年前，史基浦機場就是全球第一座機場率先引進條碼行李牌，也是世界第一座使用機器人裝卸行李貨櫃的機場。

十年前，史基浦機場全球首創使用無線PDA管理逾時停車問題，由停車管理員巡邏輸入車號，透過無線傳輸到管制中心，八分鐘一到拖吊車就已經停在臨停汽車邊，十分鐘一到馬上拖車。

六年前，史基浦機場也是全世界第一個使用虹膜辨識通關的機場。去年史基浦斥資3300萬歐元（約新台幣15.4億元）把RFID導入旅客行李處理系統。最近，機場更在行李提領大廳，裝了數個大型電視，告知旅客行李幾分鐘後可以領取的訊息。

全球第一：設自動劃位台，啟用人體掃描機

最讓李文德驚豔的是，兩年前，史基浦機場與荷蘭皇家航空（KLM）合作，設置了全世界第一個自動劃位報到機台，一下子就裝了60部，藍色的小機器頓時把整個出境櫃檯染成一片藍海。

「過去人工櫃檯辦理登機手續至少要提前一個半小時到機場，現在用自動登機設備，只要提前半小時到機場就綽綽有餘了，」李文德表示。

在美國911恐怖攻擊事件後，各國莫不加強機場的安檢，史基浦機場去年在機場安全投資了2200萬歐元（約新台幣10.3億元），在2006年更啟用了全球第一座的人體掃瞄器，減少安檢人員的搜身程序。

「每年去荷蘭，愈來愈喜歡史基浦機場，」20多年來，每年至少到史基浦機場一次的台灣國際物流協會理事長楊庶平指出，史基浦機場隨時都在進步，在911之後，各國機場都可以看到荷槍實彈的警察穿梭在機場內，但是史基浦機場卻是增加高科技的監視器與偵測設備，彌補安全的漏洞，隨時監控機場內的所有人的一舉一動，卻又不會造成旅客的不舒服感覺。

服務最頂級：27年拿23座歐洲最佳機場首獎

「史基浦機場進步得很快，一直走在航空公司的前面，」每週有七班客機、四班貨機飛阿姆斯特丹的華航，派駐荷蘭分公司總經理余劍博就表示，身為史基浦機場客戶，他經常感覺航空公司沒有想到的事情，史基浦機場都已經事先規劃好了。

創新之外，把服務做到最頂級，也是史基浦機場成功的關鍵。1980年以來，史基浦機場一直是歐洲最受歡迎的機場，到過史基浦機場的人鮮少聽到有不好的體驗。

根據史基浦機場年度旅客滿意度調查顯示，2006年93％的入出境旅客相當滿意史基浦機場的服務品質，較前年還提升了一個百分點。

在27年內，史基浦機場獲得英國機場評比機構Business Traveller 23座的歐洲最佳機場首獎。

史基浦機場最讓人讚賞的是公共運輸系統很便捷，連全球最權威的航空評比機構SKYTRAX也給了史基浦機場在公共運輸系統五顆星的評價。

早在1978年，史基浦機場內的火車站就開始營運，反觀，隔年才蓋好的桃園國際機場，到現在還沒有機場捷運，必須遲遲等到2012年底才完工。

企業化經營，創新、服務與行銷，讓荷蘭小國可以有大機場，讓老機場不會在全球?機場的潮流下退流行。

史基浦機場給台灣的最大啟示，小國只要有願景與企圖心，絕對有機會小蝦米對抗大鯨魚。

【本文摘自遠見雜誌11月號】

史基浦比宏碁更會賺錢 稱冠全球機場行銷學 (上)

【作者／江逸之】

近年來各國機場經營者喜歡到荷蘭史基浦機場考察。

因為儘管荷蘭有個鹿特丹港稱霸歐洲，但那是因為鹿特丹港得天獨厚，串穿歐洲大陸的幾條大河如萊茵河都到這裡出海，給了他成為集港口與河運的最大集散地。

但是空運上，就如主管航空事業的荷蘭交通部次長貝克所言，「荷蘭完全沒有空運的先天優勢可言。」這個內需市場只有1600萬人口的國家，不像德國有8200萬、法國6200萬人口，又地處歐洲邊緣，如何做到歐洲第四大客運、第三大貨運機場？

不只小國大機場，過去27年內，史基浦機場還拿下全球130座世界與歐洲最佳機場的國際大獎，光是去年就被七個評等機構評選為最佳機場，今年更得到國際機場協會（ACI）歐洲最佳機場殊榮。

在2006年，史基浦機場集團營運創下歷史新高，2300位員工創造營收10.37億歐元（約新台幣484億元），成長9.4％，稅前獲利大賺2.91億歐元（新台幣136億元），毛利率高達31％，還比世界第三大電腦業者宏碁（2006年稅前獲利102億元）更會賺錢。

但是史基浦機場並不以此成績自滿，反而不斷追求突破，今年初提出2025年發展計畫，用機場帶動周遭的都市開發，預計在機場周邊建立貨運都市（Cargo City）與物流園區，希望擴充客運量到8000～8500萬人次、貨運350萬噸。

企業化管理：注入民間活力和經營彈性

分析邊緣小國的史基浦機場為何有今天成就，有幾個成功訣竅。

首先是，當台灣的機場都還在民航局官方管理時，史基浦機場早在50年前就已經企業化。「我們的運作其實完全像一家民間公司，」史基浦機場投資關係部經理馬丁（Martijn L.D. Schuttevaer）說。

1958年由荷蘭政府、阿姆斯特丹與鹿特丹市政府成立了史基浦機場管理公司，儘管股權仍在政府手上，但把經營權委託給專業團隊，政府只負責航空政策的制定。

荷蘭政府敞開心胸，將手中的機場、海港，能委外企業化經營的，都盡量外包，「讓民間的活力注入到機場內，」外交部常務次長張小月觀察。

史基浦機場既然公司化，除了嚴守和國家安全有關的法令責任外，整個經營相當富彈性，史基浦機場是非常獲利導向的。一位台商便表示，他曾經計畫在史基浦機場內申請設立推廣台灣觀光的攤位，結果機場評估這一個攤位很難獲利就婉拒申請。

「只要有賺錢的機會，史基浦機場都不會放過，」荷蘭觀光局台灣代表蔡季說，每三個月史基浦機場都會進行機場設施的更新，隨時提升客戶的滿意度。

最近十年，史基浦機場受到鄰近法蘭克福與希斯洛機場的威脅，也更積極提升服務，「進出史基浦機場九年，航站就動工提升設備了四次，機場一直讓你有很亮麗的感覺，」曾派駐荷蘭九年、明基電通總經理李文德觀察，像是去年，進出史基浦機場的日本商務旅客愈來愈多，機場管理單位就立刻在日本旅客必經的路線上，增設了日本壽司吧。

例如，大部分機場的出境旅客都是在通過海關的查驗證照之候，就立刻檢查隨身行李，造成在X光機前面大排長龍，但是半年前，史基浦開始實施在登機的候機室前才檢查隨身行李，讓旅客有更多的時間，放鬆心情在免稅店購物。

輸出機場經驗：獲利逾30億，占總營收6％

「這樣的改革在桃園機場可能要公文往返好幾年，還不見得可以做得到，」桃園縣長朱立倫表示。

挾著亮麗的經營績效，史基浦管理集團更把經營的觸角延伸到全球，幫其他國家管理機場。

史基浦機場接連買下荷蘭境內的Lelystad機場、鹿特丹機場與Eindhoven機場，並參與瑞典斯德哥爾摩機場的投資、經營義大利米蘭機場及香港機場貿易港區的不動產業務等，愈來愈積極。

「我們比別人更懂得從人性角度經營機場，絕不放棄任何一個機會，」史基浦機場行銷總監威爾可（Wilco J.M. Sweijen）半開玩笑地說，「交給我們經營，桃園機場一定會很不一樣。」

截至去年，策略聯盟與參與國外機場的委外經營的業務，已為史基浦機場帶來6600萬歐元（約新台幣30.8億元）的營收，占集團營收6％。

下一步，史基浦集團將爭取向政府爭取股票上市，希望獲得更大的自由資金來布局全球。

其實史基浦管理集團已經向政府提出過股票上市計畫，因為政府怕上市後，機場經營會忽略區域發展需求，而完全獲利導向，已被政府打回票。馬丁苦笑地說，還必須繼續溝通。

【本文摘自遠見雜誌11月號】

1972 – the birth of the show business

From The Times

November 15, 2007

London’s last Tutankhamun exhibition blazed a trail for the blockbuster events that we now take for granted

John Russell Taylor

Whatever else it may or may not have been, the 1972 Tutankhamun Exhibition in London was undeniably the first of the international blockbusters. We have become so used since to those lumbering monsters of exhibitions that permit people to tick Goya or Renoir or Vermeer off their list of must-sees – been there, done that, got the T-shirt to prove it – that we forget that there was ever a time when exhibitions were likely to be small and parochial, and unlikely to travel the world with a lot of attendant hoopla.

But before Tutankhamun that was very much the case. If an exhibition appeared at, say, the British Museum, as Tutankhamun did, it almost certainly originated there; and, however fascinating its contents to the public at large, its presentation was likely to be pretty academic, as of a scholar speaking to other scholars.

Tutankhamun changed all that. It was an international creation and began its triumphantly successful progress in Paris, whence it came to London, then crossed the Atlantic on a course to be followed by many subsequent blockbusters. The very word “blockbuster” implies something else: the art exhibition had started to become, for the first time, part of show business. The idea that major travelling exhibitions could represent big money for the presenters, and that ticketing could be controlled by a timing system of staggered admissions, was quite new. Indeed, the idea only gradually took hold: initially the appearance of queues around the block for an exhibition, of all things, took the world by surprise.

It was not, of course, totally new: wiseacres answering doubts about how the unexpected hordes who turned out for Tutankhamun could be managed insisted that anyone who remembered the great Chinese Exhibition at the Royal Academy in 1936 would be aware how such things worked – or, for some of the gloomier rememberers, didn’t.

Either way, the enormous numbers of would-be visitors posed a lot of new problems: first of all, how to manage those who did come, and second, how to go on attracting similar numbers once the pattern of such shows had been set.

This second consideration is where show business know-how came in.

What, exactly, had it been about the first Tutankhamun exhibition that brought in the crowds? Probably not its skills in display, for the layout was quite straightforward and, well, scholarly. But all that gold and brilliant colour, and much publicised computations of the sheer monetary value of the things on show, brought in – to much head-shaking in museum circles – a different kind of visitor with little or no academic interest in the subject, just to gawp at so much treasure in one place at one time.

“Treasure”, needless to say, was the operative word. It came to be regarded as a talisman: work it somehow into your title and you were set to receive the multitudes. In reality things were not so simple.

As the later British Museum blockbuster devoted to the Vikings proved, it was not enough to put on display half a ton of gold if it was not interestingly and even, dare one say, artistically employed.

And while the Vikings show may have gained on sex and violence, it disappointingly set out to make the point that seeing the Vikings as universal rapists and spoilers was far from the whole truth, and was quite possibly not even true at all. Who wanted to be told that?

The great success of the first Tutankhamun exhibition resided in the sheer beauty and splendour of its contents, which triumphed over rather lacklustre presentation. That was a hard lesson to learn. Not all possible subjects would be so immediately beguiling. More could, however, be done on the side of presentation.

Dramatic display techniques were rather despised in this country, being regarded at first as a dubious American device for luring in the ignorant. But eventually they achieved legitimacy, mainly through the intervention of a new generation of exhibition directors with less academic ideas. I remember remarking once to Norman Rosenthal, the Royal Academy’s exhibition supremo, that their big Murillo show looked infinitely better at the Academy than it had at the Prado. He replied: “That’s simple. We are in the business of making great exhibitions; they are just in the business of being the Prado.”

These days, when all claims that the blockbuster was a thing of the past (too expensive, too risky to expect great works to travel) have proved premature, and the British Museum itself, the National Gallery and the V&A have understood that effective design is a vital part of performing their proper functions, we can safely expect every blockbuster exhibition that comes here to be efficiently organised and tellingly shown (witness the current Chinese exhibition at the BM). We can also safely say that without the first Tutankhamun show it would never have happened.

Exhibitions that shook the art world

PostImpressionist exhibition (1910)

Roger Fry has been the pride and the bugbear of British art appreciation for almost a century, thanks to the first PostImpressionist exhibition that he organised at the Grafton Galleries, London. Virginia Woolf was so carried away by it that she claimed a change had come about in human nature “in or about December 1910”. Well, she would, wouldn’t she, situated as she was in the heart of Bloomsbury alongside Fry himself.

But there is no doubting that this exhibition not only introduced PostImpressionists such as Van Gogh, Gauguin, Matisse, Bonnard and Vuillard to the British public, but even invented the concept and the term itself. Fry’s propaganda on these artists’ behalf was certainly effective, and meant that, despite the determined opposition of many contemporary grandees such as Robert Ross and William Blake Richmond, they were rapidly accepted by even such arch-conservatives as Arnold Bennett and passed easily into the British canon.

The problem is that, because of Fry, the British have been inclined ever since to believe that anything in art that did not happen in France did not happen at all.

Sensation (1997)

If any one thing started wide public interest in contemporary British art, it was Sensation at the Royal Academy. As a result of it names such as Damien Hirst, Tracey Emin and Jake and Dinos Chapman became celebrities in their own right, as immediately recognisable by the popular press and its readers as rock stars or Hollywood favourites.

This was largely because of the finely honed publicity skills of the works’ owner, Charles Saatchi. The title of the show was Saatchi’s idea, and so was the urging of the public to feel that the exhibits themselves lived up to it.

How could they not, when the Royal Academy posted a disclaimer at the entrance asserting: “There will be works of art on display in the Sensation exhibition which some people may find distasteful. Parents should exercise their judgment in bringing their children to the exhibition. One gallery will not be open to those under the age of 18.”

It was also Saatchi’s idea to suggest in advance that a portrait of the Moors murderer Myra Hindley made up of children’s handprints could be regarded as viciously insensitive, when without this warning people might have seen it as tragically compassionate. Still, scandal worked, and it is undeniable that the show created a turning point in British attitudes to advanced art.

An Olympian victory

From The Sunday Times

November 11, 2007

Beijing has set the scene for next year’s games with monumental buildings and noone can compete with their audacity

Hugh Pearman

Although Beijing is as big as you expect – a dauntingly gridlocked, teeming, dust-laden bigness – it is only the third-largest city in China, behind Guangzhou and Shanghai. Yet, as the capital most likely to take over from Washing-ton, DC, as the world’s centre of supreme power, it has a hell of a swagger. When you see what Beijing is doing for the 2008 Olympics, you wonder why London is bothering.

Just as well we started Heathrow’s Terminal Five in good time, because, when Richard Rogers’s building opens next March, it will have taken nearly 20 years from initial concept to reality. In contrast, China decided it needed a vast new air terminal in 2003 and asked Norman Foster to design it. Then it brought in an army of 50,000 workers to build it, along with an extra runway. And it is finished, bar the final testing, which means it will open at the same time as Terminal Five. In front of the new air terminal is a large glass bubble, which turns out to be the railway station that will connect the airport to the city centre. “Do you know,” says Foster casually when I bump into him later, “you could fit Terminal Five inside that station alone?” As one-upmanship goes, that takes a whole barrel of biscuits.

Foster was in town, along with the sculptor Anish Kapoor, the former French prime minister Dominique de Villepin and a million art dealers and collectors and curators and auctioneers, for the opening of the Ullens Centre for Contemporary Art (UCCA). This is a rather fine converted factory at the centre of Beijing’s thriving art-production district. The first big modern-art gallery in China, it is a response to the way the country’s art has become very, very funky over the past 20 years. Wealthy entrepreneurs Guy and Myriam Ullens have been buying this art for a lot of that time, and have now gone a lot further by hiring the French architect Jean-Michel Wilmotte to turn a Mao-era armaments factory, built by comradely East German engineers at the top of their game, into something potentially very good. The opening show is a bit pedestrian, though. There are rumours of big fallings-out among the curators in consequence.

Prices for good Chinese contemporary art are now at western levels, which is to say absurd, if not quite Damien Hirst. Artists here drive around in swanky cars and cut fat-cat deals, often directly. Charles Saatchi has bought into it, and western artists such as Kapoor are rushing to exhibit in the edge-of-town art district – he has a show on in one of the bigger commercial galleries there – because it’s an important market. It’s like anything else made in China: efficiently produced, often clever, wonderfully exportable. The world’s museums are taking note. Next year, in Britain, exhibitions on Chinese art, architecture and design will blossom everywhere, from the Serpentine Gallery to the V&A. So you get that sense of being at a new centre culturally, as well as commercially and politically.

For their public buildings and spaces, the Chinese always take the grandly symmetrical approach. The Olympic park, in the northern sector of the city, is arranged on just such a rigidly disciplinarian axis, with various big lumps of sports buildings lined up like army cadets on parade. Not that many people are going to mind, because they will all be gazing at something so wildly improbable, it steals the show completely: the main Olympic stadium by the Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron. Nobody could claim this crazy steel bird’s nest is remotely functionalist. It does the job of containing a stadium, but stadiums as a rule are dull. Designed in concert with the British engineers Arup, it is a seemingly random but, in fact, precisely calculated basket of steel noodles. As with the Foster airport, the closer you get, the more extraordinary it becomes. Can this thing possibly exist, right in front of your nose? In China, it can. The stadium is the world’s biggest scribble, drawn in free space.

Artists in the city are already adopting it somewhat literally, in one gallery showing it perched in a giant tree. No doubt, in the edge-of-city avant-garde community, someone else will have thought to show it with a giant egg laid inside it. In which case, the egg in question will be the city’s new National Grand Theatre, by the French architect Paul Andreu, best known for airports, notably Paris Charles de Gaulle. The theatre is an object so relentlessly, geometrically pure, it almost hurts. One block west of Tiananmen Square, it is not so much an egg as a giant soap bubble, but made of titanium and glass, and costing £180m. In the West, it would cost at least three times as much. Inside are three auditoriums – opera house, concert hall, theatre – that together seat 5,500 people. Surrounded by a square moat, disappointingly drained dry when I dropped by, it clearly sets itself up in comparison with the nearby moated Forbidden City. This is a dangerous game to play, and Andreu’s slippery dome loses the contest. There is nothing that says what it is or what it does. It could be the Communist party HQ, a nuclear reactor, anything. It is a wonder, all right – a thin scattering of people line up to be photographed in front of it – but as photo opportunities go, it doesn’t compare with that portrait of Mao looking out over Tiananmen Square.

Arup’s Cecil Balmond, master of the informal, complex structure, pops up again helping the Dutch superstar Rem Koolhaas build the knotted skyscraper of the CCTV building in the northeast of the city. It might sound like a security camera, but this is China’s state broadcaster. Koolhaas does not do polite architecture; he rejoices in the perversely difficult. This makes CCTV interesting, though I suspect it is more dramatic right now, half built, than it will be when finished. Its two angled legs are rising into the air, getting ever closer. They are starting to grope for each other like blindfolded party guests. There they stand, implausibly poised in the Beijing smog. In the end, though, it’s just another object-building by another superstar European architect.

Everyone wants to build in China, and these state-sponsored projects are as plum as such jobs come. At least the Ullens gallery is, at about £5m, a relatively low-budget conversion of an existing building in the middle of the artistic community it serves and feeds. Had this been left to the state, you imagine it would have cleared a slum and plonked down a monumental container amid hectares of empty space. As it is, the arrival of UCCA effectively saved the hugger-mugger arts district of former factories from being cleared to house yet more rampant commercial sprawl. Let’s be thankful to the Ullenses for suggesting, ever so subtly, that there is another, more incremental way to develop a world city.

Yellow fever

From The Times

November 10, 2007

It’s the colour of light and warmth, bananas and cowardice. Now yellow has a show all of its own

Joanna Pitman

Yellow is a colour with diverse and often contradictory meanings. It is often associated with warmth and happiness, but in English, “yellow” can be used as slang for cowardice. In Chinese culture, yellow represents royalty (commoners were forbidden from wearing yellow until modern times), while in Arab culture it can mean insincerity. In South Korea it is associated with jealousy, in Christianity with greed and in 19th-century Europe with mental illness.

Van Gogh frequently used yellow in his paintings, which some believe was a result of his suffering from xanthopsia, a condition that causes the sufferer to see everything as if through a yellow filter. Xanthopsia was a side effect of digitalis, which was used to treat epilepsy. Gauguin also used a great deal of yellow in his paintings, particularly in Tahiti, which perhaps reflected the heat. Graham Sutherland was another artist notably fond of the colour. Yellow, specifically pantone colour 137c, is also the colour of the label on the Veuve Clicquot bottle. The colour was registered in Rheims 130 years ago and, to mark this anniversary, the champagne-maker has asked Jules Wright, the director of the East London art space the Wapping Project, to put together an exhibition linked to this colour. It’s another example of the way that corporate brands are bandwagoning the arts. It would make John Berger wince, but in this case the somewhat corporate intent has produced genuinely interesting results.

Wright has commissioned several artists – a sculptor, an art student, a film-maker, an architect and a choreographer – to create something in response to the yellow. The delight of the show comes not only from the zest of the idea, but from the energy and intellectual curiosity of Wright. Driving the concept is her itch to see how these diverse artists will work together.

“It’s going to be a delicious mél-ange,” Wright says. “The ideas are very simple. I’ve left it to each artist to come up with anything at all that inspires them from the colour. Sam Spenser, for example, is a rising star from Goldsmiths College in London, and he is working on an installation on the tree outside the building. The choreographer Maresa Von Stockert is doing some lovely work with dancers, and we have a great piece of work by Shed 54, which will go outside. All the artists have responded in their own ways, and the results will be fun and stimulating.”

Last week, I watched the deep, absorbed pleasure of Spenser installing his take on the yellow colour in a beautiful plane tree – open yellow umbrellas hang from the ends of the branches like flowers.

Spenser was also working on fine-tuning the sound installation that will play beneath the tree. “Colour has frequency, and so I used the 137c colour to inspire a piece of music, too,” he says.

Spenser’s dramatic, large-scale work will dominate the entrance, but visitors will see more yellow placed by Shed 54, the architects who converted the Wapping Hydraulic Power Station into the art space. They have put Stairways and Reflections, a structural piece using neon light strips, inside the accumulator tower. Bars of yellow light leading upwards inside the tower are reflected into a pool of water, giving 137 steps above and below the ground.

The third outdoor work will be Martin Scanlan’s short film, In Search of 137c. His award-winning work has been seen at international film festivals and he has made a number of works for the Wapping Project . In Search of 137c is a five-minute thriller that will be projected on a screen outside the building.

“Yellow is a colour you don’t often notice during the day,” Scanlan says. “It’s supposed to inspire positive and happy feelings, but at night in urban areas I think it has more sinister overtones, to do with the yellows of lights, street signage, yellow lines, that sort of thing. I wouldn’t normally write a script with a colour as the starting point, but the brief was so broad that I found it very liberating.”

As they step into the building, visitors will be given a piece of a jigsaw puzzle, in plain 137c yellow, and labelled only with a number on the back. This is another of Spenser’s ideas. Inside the building the puzzle will take shape, with only the numbers to help, forcing a fresh mélange of people, interacting with each other to find their puzzle neighbours. On leaving, everyone will be given a piece of another jigsaw puzzle, and a mystery event involving this puzzle will follow in February.

Anarchy keeps breaking out in this show, which is, I suspect, just as Wright and Maison Wapping were hoping. One can only wonder how the top brass at Maison Clicquot will respond.

The sculptor Richard Wilson will make a small intervention in the Engine Room. Wilson first gained public recognition for his installation 20:50, a sea of reflective sump oil, which is now part of the Saatchi Collection. Four years ago, he created his iconic Butterfly in the Boiler House of the Wapping Project, a time-lapse film showing a battered light plane being unfurled and patched up to resemble something of its former self. This time, he will dismantle one part of the heavy machinery still in the Engine Room, a hunk of obsolete metal, and hoist it slowly and repeatedly up to the ceiling and down to the ground. Somewhere on this contraption will be an element in the champagne yellow – a dab of paint, a dyed piece of rope, nobody yet knows.

Von Stockert, who was named Choreographer of the Year 2006 for her Wapping Project commission Grimm Desires, uncovers the windows of the Boiler House to make one of her gravity-defying works with four dancers. This will be performed regularly throughout the show. At the opening event “Bottle Man”, a very tall male dancer, will perform, tumbling and leaping around the turbine hall, bottle in hand.

Wright herself has come up with a yellow piece, too, named Forest. A small grove of silver birch trees will sit amid a dense drift of yellow autumn leaves. In among the trees will be placed a traditional British telephone box painted in 137c yellow. From time to time the telephone will ring. “If someone answers it, there will be a message,” says Wright. “The messages will be fairly polite on the first night, but they may stray a little as the show progresses.”

It all sounds a bit mad. But it is also highly inventive and playful. Wright and her artists are clearly having fun with this project and, because every work is simple, the combined result could be fabulous: a haze of champagne yielding gently to art.

Yellow Since 1877, Wapping Project, London E1 (www.thewappingproject.com020-7680 2080), from Wed

Hirst's pickled dove leaves Manhattan art world drooling

• Ed Pilkington in New York
• guardian.co.uk,
• Friday November 9 2007
• Article history

Hirst at the Gagosian Gallery. Photograph: David Levene

Dennis Hopper certainly seemed to like it. "This is his best piece of work I think I have ever seen," he extolled.

"This to me covers surrealism, the history of art, the hanging of meat ... the whole thing is great."

The film star was salivating today over the centrepiece of Damien Hirst's latest art installation-cum-marketing stunt: a 12 ft-high tank that contains 10,000 litres of formaldehyde.

Inside the fluid a diminutive white dove is suspended, its wings outstretched in a metal cage. Flanking it are two brutal halves of a sliced cow, a long string of fat Italian sausages, a well-worn leather armchair and, with a nod to Magritte, an open black umbrella.

The work stands at the front of a Hirst installation that takes over the lobby of Lever House in Park Avenue, Manhattan. Hirst always likes to think big, but School: The Archaeology Of Lost Desires, Comprehending Infinity And The Search For Knowledge, is on a grand scale even by his standards.

He uses the theme of a school of anatomy to draw together many of the strands that have run through his work in the past 15 years.

"I've always wanted to do an anatomy school - it has a lot of threads that come together for me, all in the one idea that you can learn something from art," he says.

The glass-walled lobby is lined not with bookshelves but with medicine cabinets bearing pill boxes and bottles - a familiar Hirst motif - each one topped with a clock that runs backwards at a different speed.

The cow-flanked dove stands at the front of the room, representing the teacher, and in front of it there are three neat rows of "pupils" - 29 pickled sheep, their heads severed from their skinless bodies; and a single shark that looks bemused and ready for mischief at the back of the class. Each "pupil" is illuminated by fluorescent strip lighting - another allusion, this time to Dan Flavin.

"The shark represents individuality," Hirst says as he puts the final touches to the installation before tomorrow night's rock'n'roll opening in front of 2,000 of the New York cultural elite. "The sheep represent uniformity. Through uniform education, people end up as dead sheep; alive, but not much alive."

All the elements, including the sheep, shark, dove, cow, sausages and formaldehyde, have been shipped to New York from his Gloucestershire base in the past three months.

Thirty-foot glass panels had to be removed to get the installation into the lobby, and the floor was reinforced to bear the 15-tonne dove tank.

The idea of an anatomy school emerged after Hirst was invited by the New York property developer, Aby Rosen, to create a work big enough to fill the lobby of his Lever House.

The millionaire already owns several pieces by the artist, including The Virgin Mother, a 34ft bronze statue of a semi-skinned pregnant woman, which has stood in front of the building since 2005.

With a partner, Mr Rosen has paid Hirst $10m (£4.7m) for School, which sounds a lot until you set it against the $100m that was paid last summer for the platinum cast of a human skull that Hirst encrusted with 8,601 diamonds.

As if to underline the point, the artist was wearing a T-shirt today with a sparkling skull printed on it.

It is the kind of silly money that rules out most would-be collectors - even stars such as Dennis Hopper. He got to know Hirst 15 years ago when he saw his celebrated pickled shark at the Saatchi gallery in London, and has been a fan ever since. Does he own any of Hirst's works? "No I don't. But that's only because he got out of hand."

The secrets of successful art collectors

What makes a great collector? Having lots of money helps but it isn’t essential. Our correspondent discovers a world of eccentricity and private riches

From The Times

November 6, 2007

Rachel Campbell-Johnston

The role of the art collector came into sharp focus last week. It was announced that Simon Sainsbury, a scion of the supermarket family and a magnanimous philanthropist, had left an artistic bequest worth some £100 million to the nation. Important paintings by Monet and Bonnard, Balthus, Bacon and Freud will soon be joining the Tate and National Gallery collections. We will come to visit them. We will come to know and admire them as friends. But how much can we ever know about the man who amassed them? How much do we appreciate the collector’s art?

Sainsbury was famously private by inclination. He may not have been the spooky misfit of the lurid imagination. He may not have sat gloating in some gloomy back room over his great hoard of treasures. But he certainly seemed to have come from a tradition in which collecting was treated as a private hobby: an intellectual and emotional pleasure that served the additional function of decorating one’s private home.

Since the Second World War, however, a rather different strain of collectors has grown up. Their pastime has acquired a much more public dimension. They pursue their own passions — but with a growing awareness of wider responsibility. Their hoards are a matter of public record. Their finest pieces become globetrotting loans.

This is one of the significant changes that James Stourton, the chairman of Sotheby’s UK, notes in an intriguing new book that is published this week. In Great Collectors of Our Time, Stourton looks at art collecting in Europe and North America (with a glance at the Far East) in the postwar era. He invites us to explore the homes and the minds, the methods and museums, the fascinations and foundations, the skills and the legacies of some of the art world’s most extraordinary characters.

From the impenetrably taciturn Emil Bührle, through the immaculately educated Sir Denis Mahon, to the tattooed boffin Ted Power or the notoriously stingy Arthur Gilbert in his yellow tennis shorts, they make an exotic gallimaufry. There are as many types of collector as there are collections, we learn, as we tiptoe with the author through their Aladdin’s caves of priceless goodies, peeping and gazing, admiring and examining — and perhaps most importantly, gossiping — as we go.

So what makes a great collector?Money obviously helps. The world of collecting is dominated by a roll-call of grand dynastic names. It is a playground of tycoons. But cash alone, in this game, is far from sufficient. J. Paul Getty missed dozens of opportunities because he was mean, whereas the Menils, even though they were wealthy, were prepared to go into debt for something they really desired. And a handful of great collectors have started out with extraordinarily little. There are the Vogels, for instance, a childless couple who, meeting their living expenses with her librarian’s salary, spent his entire income as a post-office clerk amassing a spectacular collection of Minimalist pieces.

There is a strong tradition of dealers — Ernst Beyler, for example, or Eugene Thaw — who, like poachers turned gamekeepers, spend their trader’s profits on amassing a private hoard of treasures. And it certainly helps if, like Roland Penrose, you happen to have generous friends who are also artistic geniuses. He always called his collection “the collection that collected itself”.

To the discerning collector, knowledge is far more important than money. Mahon did not just have a banker father: he had a formidable art-historical education to boot. He knew more about Guercino, quipped Ben Nicholson, than anybody since Guercino. Expertise is definitely more important than cash when you are rifling for treasures in a Parisian fleamarket or rummaging around in some old curiosity shop. Besides “whether you buy a postage stamp or a Van Gogh, the pleasure to a collector is just the same,” declared Henri Schiller, who over the years has amassed one of the most magnificent libraries in the world. “I am by profession a collector,” he says. It is only his “hobby” to be an industrialist.

But knowledge is not everything either. “One can know too much and feel too little,” says George Ortiz, who claims to be entirely intuitive in his purchases. Certainly collecting involves passions and emotions. It speaks of instincts and obsessions. It may be an addiction harboured since childhood amid a world of marbles or fossils, stuffed birds or Superman comics.

It may be an interest acquired only with age: Michael Steinhardt had retired before he even started. It may be spawned by a single art work: Roger Thérond fell in love with a daguerreotype in a Paris shop window and from there went on to amass one of the finest photographic collections. Or it may be the offspring of a decorating project: Norton Simon, the formidable collector of Old Master paintings, was not even interested in art until he moved into a new home.

But slowly and surely the great collections take on a life of their own. Sometimes they have been shaped around a precise idea. Schiller’s, for instance, was themed around the whimsical fantasy that one day at the end of the 16th century Homer would return to this earth and want to learn about everything that had been happening and read all about it in the most perfect manuscripts. Other collectors are almost indiscriminate in their preferences. “I have no taste,” says Daniel Katz, “because I am interested in everything.”

Kenneth Clark once asked himself why men collect and decided that it was like asking why we fall in love — the reasons were as random and individual and various. But, at the heart of the great collection, there perhaps lies a hole: an absence which the process of collecting can work to fill. Was collecting a sex-substitute for Peggy Gugenheim? Did paintings stand in for friends for the deeply unpopular Simon? Walter Annenberg’s trophy acquisitions were like a family. They were his children, he said, and he wanted to see them every day. While for Nelson Rockefeller collecting was quite simply “the greatest recreation ever devised”.

Through their possessions these people appear to have discovered some fundamental sense of meaning. They seem to have found some way to express their individuality or satisfy their secret needs. Theirs were not collections to be treated merely like stock-market speculations or like fashions, acquired and discarded according to passing trends. They were pursued with the same sort of passion and energy, courage and dedication, discernment and sensitivity that the artists themselves put into their works.

This fundamental authenticity lies at the core of the art of collecting. Like the creator’s moment of vision, it can transform a mass of objects into something far more than the mere sum of its parts.

And, as the products of these many and various visions become increasingly public in our postwar era; when, for a start, thousands of art works are too big for display in our houses; and when even the biggest homes cannot house so much stuff, the collector starts to play an increasingly prominent role. He can give shape to our history. George Costakis, for instance, flying in the face of a thousand complexities to construct an unparalleled collection of Russian avant-garde works, pretty much defined the subject for those who now look back.

The collector can control the present, as in the case of Charles Saatchi, who created a market and an entire movement to fill it. And he can hold our greatest treasures in careful custodianship for our future.

A great collection, it seems, is in more than one sense, a gift.

— Great Collectors of Our Time: Art Collecting Since 1945 by James Stourton is published by Scala

The UK’s most important collectors

David Roberts
Millionaire property developer. Opened his space OneOneOne in Central London last month. Vast collection of more than 2,000 works, including pieces by Damien Hirst and Marc Quinn. Next year he launches the David Roberts Arts Foundation to benefit young curators and artists.

Anita Zabludowicz
Newcastle- born, buys a lot of work by young, unestablished artists. Recently opened a gallery, 176, in Chalk Farm, North London. Her collection is currently the focus of an exhibition at Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art in Gateshead.

Frank Cohen
The Manchester businessman’s collection comprises more than 1,500 contemporary works. He is said to have bought Tracey Emin’s work You Forgot To Kiss My Soul over the phone while having a curry.

Damien Hirst
Last year the Serpentine Gallery hosted an exhibition of works from the artist’s fine collection that included pieces by Banksy, Francis Bacon and Andy Warhol.

Charles Saatchi
Still one of our most important collectors, despite a certain amount of art world snobbery suggesting the contrary.

James Stourton's top five art collectors

From Times Online

November 5, 2007

The chairman of Sotheby’s UK chooses his favourite art collectors of our time

Kenneth Clark, Baron Clark by Yousuf Karsh, 1965 (with thanks to the National Portrait Gallery) Copyright: estate of Yousuf Karsh/National Portrait Gallery, London

1. Kenneth Clark (1903-1983)

Kenneth Clark was the grandest of grandees in the art world. During the war and after, his presence was everywhere on committees serving the arts. As with his hero John Ruskin there was always a social and moral dimension to his belief in the importance of bringing art to the widest audience. His landmark series Civilization was his greatest triumph – the last great synthesis of art, music, literature and thought – and the most influential art book and series of its time.

Shortly after he died in 1983, Sotheby’s held a sale of a part of his collection, and with Japanese, Chinese and African elements it was suitably eclectic. It was strong on medieval works of art and illuminated pages as well as Renaissance medals and maiolica. What separates it from all the other Art Historian collections was his passionate concern about the artists of his generation, and the sale contained works by the many artists who became his close friends: Victor Pasmore, Graham Sutherland, Mary Potter, Sydney Nolan, John Piper and above all Henry Moore. He bought from Moore’s first exhibition in 1928 and was an early supporter of all these artists and set up a special trust fund to support them. When he became director of the National Gallery in 1934 at the age of thirty-one, it was considered odd that the director should champion living artists, but in the end one must admit that Clark’s collection represented a largely neo-romantic view of British Contemporary art.

2. Douglas Cooper (1911-84)

The only English rival to Roland Penrose for the affections of Picasso was Douglas Cooper. It was fine as long as Penrose was living in France but post-war he was back in England and Cooper was in the South of France close to the artist, who took great pleasure in playing the two of them off against each other. Cooper, who had a well developed gift for making enemies, was scathing about Penrose and his collection, calling it “ready-made”.

A brilliant art historian and linguist, he became the world authority on cubism and his collection was correspondingly important. It was amassed largely in six years between 1933-39 from a shadowy German collector living in Switzerland named G. F. Reber, who had lost his money in the 1929 crash. Cooper concentrated on four artists: Picasso, Braque, Léger and Gris, but he also had works by Klee and Miro. The collection was housed in Egerton Terrace in London until 1949, when Cooper and his companion, John Richardson, stumbled across the Château de Castille in the Gard district of the south of France, a sleeping beauty which they transformed into what L’Oeil dubbed le Château des Cubistes.

Cooper’s cubist collection was mostly of pre-war composition but it attained classic status and set the standard for all subsequent Picasso collections. Outrageous, extrovert, touchy and utterly confident in his views, Douglas Cooper wouldn’t suffer fools and developed a strong Anglophobia based on intense disdain for the Tate Gallery and the philistinism of a fox- hunting elite.

3. Robert (1906-2000) and Lisa Sainsbury

In the mid 1970s Denys Sutton, editor of Apollo magazine, lamented the decline of English collecting but pointed to the one big shining exception, Bob and Lisa Sainsbury. Their collection represents a rather continental fusion of ancient civilisations and modern masters that Jacob Epstein had pioneered in England. The Sainsburys brought this taste up to date with Henry Moore and Francis Bacon with a glance back to Picasso and Giacometti.

Of all the achievements of Bob and Lisa as collectors, surely the most remarkable is their early and unstinting support for Francis Bacon. They acquired at least a dozen of his works before anybody else and he became a close friend. Bob guaranteed his overdraft and it is said that the only time that the artist ever behaved well was when he was with the Sainsburys.

Their taste rapidly developed towards what was called, in those days, the primitive. Through John Hewett they were able to buy three New Guinea pieces from Pierre Loeb’s collection. The Pacific section was never as large as the African section but contains important pieces such as the Cook Island male figure or “Fisherman’s God”. The African works include the Yoruba shrine figure from Nigeria and a Benin bronze head as well as striking lesser pieces such as the “Derain” Gabon Fang Mask.

Today the collection can be seen at the Sainsbury Centre at the University of East Anglia in Norwich.

4. Alistair McAlpine

One of the oddest, most voracious and perplexing of collectors is Alistair McAlpine, whom Mrs Thatcher ennobled in 1983 as Lord McAlpine of West Green. Born into a Scots building dynasty settled in the Thames Valley, McAlpine has abundant curiosity and restless energy, qualities that he believes to be essential in collectors. Possession is the least important part of collecting for him: “I collect I suppose to learn, for I have never collected to possess. When a collection passes from my hands it goes in total – nothing remains”. I gave up counting the number of collections that Alistair McAlpine has formed but it is well in excess of forty, on each of which for a time he concentrated to the point of compulsion. He has shed them even faster. Today he lives with relatively little, apart from vast accumulations of books and textiles, and instead writes about collecting.

McAlpine’s collecting ranged across everything from Hockney prints, photography, arts and crafts, Islamic, guns, armour, American rag dolls, porcelain, police truncheons, shells, minerals, Soviet manifestos, 19th-century French literary manuscripts, first editions, beads, old fashioned roses (420 varieties), farm implements, rare chickens (75 different breeds), to snowdrops. He would often form several collections at the same time and when his interest shifted he would either give them away or - as he was increasingly inclined - sell the collection en bloc.

5. Charles Saatchi

Saatchi has always said that “I primarily buy art to show it off” and the acquisition in 1983 of gallery space at Boundary Road was the greatest stimulation. London had seen nothing like it before: huge, neutral and dedicated entirely to contemporary art, it became the focus of the London avant garde.

He opened with American art in 1985 with Donald Judd, Brice Marden, Cy Twombly and Andy Warhol. This was followed up the next year with Carl Andre, Sol LeWitt, Robert Ryman, Frank Stella and Dan Flavin. The third year showed no let-up with Kiefer and Serra, followed by an exhibition of New York Art Now including Koons and Gober. The American artists he chose were, for the most part, already well known in New York but there is a pleasing circularity because the young British artists who saw these exhibitions, including Damien Hirst, Sarah Lucas, Jenny Saville and Rachel Whiteread, were to feed the next generation of Saatchi exhibitions and elevate the collection to world status. Collectors are usually rewarded with the credit they receive for their choice of art works but Charles Saatchi is one of a tiny handful of collectors who can also be said to have influenced a generation of artists.

Extracted from Great Collectors of Our Time, published by Scala, November 1, 2007

Win tickets

James Stourton will discuss his book with the Times art critic Rachel Campbell-Johnston at the National Portrait Gallery, in London, on December 13. We have 10 pairs of tickets to give away.

Email competitions@the-times.co.uk

Readers can buy tickets in person from the gallery, by calling 020 7306 0055, or by booking online at www.npg.org.uk