Charles Saatchi Biography : British art collector and founder of Saatchi and Saatchi
Famous for : founding the popular Saatchi & Saatchi advertising agency and for supporting contemporary British artists like Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin.
I don't buy art in order to leave a mark or to be remembered; clutching at immortality is of zero interest to anyone sane.
Charles Saatchi - Art Collecting
The art critics on some of Britain's newspapers could as easily have been assigned gardening or travel, and been cheerfully employed for life.
Charles Saatchi - Criticism - Employee
There are no rules about investment. Sharks can be good. Artist's dung can be good. Oil on canvas can be good.
Charles Saatchi - Art Collecting - Investing
I liked working in advertising, but don't believe my taste in art, such as it is, was entirely formed by TV commercials. And I don't feel especially conflicted enjoying a Mantegna one day, a Carl Andre the next day and a brash student work the next.
Charles Saatchi - Art Collecting - Advertising
If you can't take a good kicking, you shouldn't parade how much luckier you are than other people.
Charles Saatchi - Criticism - Luck - People
Lots of ambitious work by young artists ends up in a dumpster after its warehouse debut. So an unknown artist's big glass vitrine holding a rotting cow's head covered by maggots and swarms of buzzing flies may be pretty unsellable. Until the artist becomes a star. Then he can sell anything he touches.
Charles Saatchi - Art Collecting - Ambition - Selling
I don't have a romantic attachment to what could have been. If I had kept all the work I had ever bought it would feel like Kane sitting in Xanadu surrounded by his loot. It's enough to know that I have owned and shown so many masterpieces of modern times.
Charles Saatchi - Art Collecting
Nobody can give you advice after you've been collecting for a while. If you don't enjoy making your own decisions, you're never going to be much of a collector anyway.
Charles Saatchi - Art Collecting - Investing - Decisions
On his reclusive nature:
If I continued to turn up, people would realise how ordinary I am.
On his hidden depths:
There's nothing complicated about me. There are no hidden depths. As Frank Stella said about minimalism, what you see is what you see.
On the charge that he is thin-skinned:
True.
On claims that he was the most powerful force in the rise of British art:
False.
On artistic judgment:
I don't have any ground rules for judging art. Sometimes you look and don't feel very comfortable with it - but that doesn't tell you very much. It doesn't necessarily reveal much about the quality of the work.
On art as an investment:
If I were interested in art as investment, I would just show Picasso and Matisse. But that's not what I do. I buy new art, and 90% of the art I buy will probably be worthless in 10 years' time to anyone except me.
On changing tastes:
I don't know how much of the art I like is significant. Who knows what will last? I try to keep my collection fresh. I don't want to end up like William Randolph Hearst in Xanadu, who just squirrelled art away. I do it for the pleasure of putting on shows. It's for my personal gratification.
On buying his first piece of art at the age of 16:
I thought I could afford it.
On claims that he is a dealer rather than a collector:
It would be entirely inappropriate for me to continue to endlessly buy and not try to keep the collection on some kind of cutting edge. I very much want it to be a living collection.
On selling his early collection:
I loved minimalism passionately, but when you realise there are other things in life besides Carl Andre and Robert Ryman, it is difficult to look at them and have the same love affair.
On the mother of Britart:
Margaret Thatcher created an environment in Britain in which people felt they could escape the roles they had been pushed into. They no longer had to be dropouts and failures. Students such as Damien Hirst felt they could do absolutely anything.
On the US:
I grew up in the cinema. I was in love with anything American. When I was 19, I went to New York City and saw a Jackson Pollock at the Museum of Modern Art: it was life-changing.
On Tracey Emin:
I was very slow to get the loopiness of Tracey's work. I'm a helpless fan now.
On Jake and Dinos Chapman:
That is what great art should be. Something that gives visual pleasure and makes you sit up and think, not the pseudo-controversial claptrap that Turner judges believe is cutting-edge.
On buying his first piece by Damien Hirst, A Thousand Years:
I thought of it as punked-over minimalism - Donald Judd gone mad.
On his new gallery:
Tate Modern is astonishing and I love the Hayward and the Serpentine. But I think that new British art is the most exciting and needs a dedicated showcase. I don't want the artists who I believe in having to wait until they are pensioners before the public sees their works in large-scale shows.
On Tate Modern:
It is daft to imagine that we are moving to County Hall to compete with the Tate... We are a small pimple showing off new bits of art. The Tate is the most fabulously successful museum in the world, thanks to Nick Serota.
On why he gave art worth £100,000 to the Tate:
Because they asked me.
On why he gave £1.25m worth of modern art to NHS hospitals:
Having paintings around creates a friendlier atmosphere. If the paintings are fun, so much the better.
On his success in advertising:
A fairy tale.
On advertising today:
I'm too old for advertising. I show my stuff to people and they laugh at me.
On his brother:
Maurice is the interesting one.
On tobacco advertising:
Silk Cut advertising was memorably striking. The tobacco industry provided a breath of fresh air.
On smoking:
I'll never quit.
On the gossip he heard about Charles Saatchi:
He'd been shot dead in Miami. But it turned out that was Versace.
Sources Guardian, Independent, Independent on Sunday, Sunday Telegraph, Sunday Times, New York Times, Observer.
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