Misstropolis

Monday, March 10, 2008

The Controversial Collector: Charles Saatchi’s Latest Moves

by Robin Hauck

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Charles Saatchi is to the contemporary art world what Madonna is (or was) to the music industry: a fearless provocateur with an intuitive sense of what the public wants and a public reputation always teetering between God and fraud.

Once famous for founding what became the world’s largest advertising agency - Saatchi & Saatchi, with his brother Maurice - Charles Saatchi is now considered one of the most influential people in the art world. His notoriety soared in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s when he championed a revolutionary group of artists who came to be known collectively as the YBAs (Young British Artists.) When he first started collecting the work of artists such as Tracey Emin, Sean Scully, Cornelia Parker and Damien Hirst, many were art students and all were unknown. Thanks to his patronage, some YBAs became wildly famous and rich. Damien Hirst in fact, became the world’s highest paid artist. His shark, entitled “The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living,” for example, sold for $8 million in 2005.

The Saatchi Gallery was located in County Hall, near its foremost competitor, the Tate Modern until a much publicized landlord dispute in 2005 forced Saatchi to move. The new location, the Duke of York’s HQ in London’s Chelsea neighborhood, is currently undergoing massive renovations. When completed (it is scheduled to open this spring), it will be one of the largest contemporary art museums in the world.

True to form, Saatchi saw the temporary closure of his gallery’s physical space as an opportunity to develop a virtual space in which to display art - and, his brand. Entitled, among other things, “The World’s Interactive Art Gallery,” the Saatchi Gallery Online is a psychedelic candy store for artists and art lovers. So full of delicious visuals, tools and opportunity, it’s hard to know where to begin, what to pursue and when to stop.

Your Gallery is an open exhibition space for artists to display their work: all artists… that is, any artist. With a few clicks, you too can register as a Saatchi online artist, upload your work and even critique others’. So much for the art world’s insistence on insular secrecy and exclusivity; Charles Saatchi’s web 2.0 approach is as much a statement about the state of contemporary art as Tracey Emin’s beds. The site now contains the work of more than 60,000 artists and receives over 50 million hits on most days.

The Saatchi Online Saleroom bypasses galleries, geographic distances, even commissions by placing the online work up for sale directly. But if eager buyers don’t see anything they like, there are Gallery Guides for everywhere from the US to Spain to Switzerland; as well as museum and art fair guides, all linkable through the homepage.

The site is so egalitarian it doesn’t stop at dismantling barriers based on experience, education, talent and ideology; it even eschews youth as a factor. In the Artroom kids 17 and under can make and display art. “Artists of the Month” are recognized in age groups ranging from six to 17. Imagine, “Bob” is being seen by more than 50 million people from all corners of the globe.

Stuart is an open venue for students, and Showdown lets artists go head-to-head for visitors’ votes.

Now the online phenomenon is bleeding into the touch-and-feel world of live exhibition. Twenty Saatchi Online artists chosen through Saatchi’s online magazine, Critic’s Choice, will be presented at the Pulse Art Fair in New York City this month. PULSE New York will take place at the 69th Regiment Armory March 27th-30th 2008 and will coincide with The Armory Show at Pier 94.

“… the snobbery of those who think an interest in art is the province of gentle souls of rarefied sensibility never fails to amuse,” Saatchi writes in reply to a question submitted to him by a site visitor. With his new gallery soon to open, his site swarming with visitors and his name all over the Pulse Art Fair at the end of this month, Charles Saatchi is a province all to himself. See for yourself if you find it rarefied, gentle, or refreshingly, necessarily modern.

Title Image: “Chinese Portrait, P Series 2006 No. 02,” 2006. By Feng Zhengjie. Part of the exhibit of Chinese art which will be on display when the new Saatchi Gallery opens this spring.