My Name is Charles Saatchi and I am an Artoholic. New Extended Edition

Charles Saatchi

• Publisher: Booth-Clibborn Editions
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9781861543332
• eBook ISBN: 9781861543493
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: Artist Biographies

One of the most influential art collectors of our time and founder of the global advertising agency, Charles Saatchi reveals his opinions on collecting, artists, dealers, advertising and investing in art with unflinching honesty. Famously reclusive, he has answered questions asked to him by journalists, critics and the general public about the art world and his personal life.

MY NAME IS
CHARLES SAATCHI
AND I AM
AN ARTOHOLIC

ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS FROM
JOURNALISTS AND READERS

You have been
described both as a
‘supercollector’ and
as ‘the most
successful art dealer
of our times’.
Looking back on the
past 20 years, how
would you
characterise your
activities?

You have been described both as a ‘supercollector’ and as ‘the most successful art dealer of our times’. Looking back on the past 20 years, how would you characterise your activities?

Who cares what I’m described as? Art collectors are pretty insignificant in the scheme of things. What matters and survives is the art. I buy art that I like. I buy it to show it off in exhibitions. Then, if I feel like it, I sell it and buy more art.

As I have been doing this for 30 years, I think most people in the art world get the idea by now. It doesn’t mean I’ve changed my mind about the art that I end up selling.

It just means that I don’t want to hoard everything forever.

Your practice of buying emerging artists’ work has proved highly contagious and is arguably the single greatest influence on the current market because so many others, both veteran collectors and new investors, are following your lead, vying to snap up the work of young relatively unknown artists. Do you accept that you are responsible for much of the speculative nature of the contemporary art market?

I hope so. Artists need a lot of collectors, all kinds
of collectors, buying their art.

8

Nature or nurture?

Do you mean what would happen to a 2 week old
baby, mother a crack whore, father unknown, if it was
adopted by a caring, wealthy couple from New York’s
Upper East Side, and grew up in a magnificent
condo, went to top kindergartens and schools, and
was offered a place at Harvard, Yale and M.I.T?

Or what would happen in a parallel universe when a wealthy New York couple forgot their baby at a diner while driving through rural Tennessee to admire the local toothless rednecks sitting out on their porches. The baby was seen as a gift from the Almighty by a fervently religious, but slightly retarded local woman, and grew up in her home in a run-down estate, where petty crime and brutality were an everyday occurrence. Little schooling, and working behind the counter in the local hardware store at 15. No offers from Harvard, Yale or M.I.T.

Now you may well be thinking that Environment is a greater influence on how life turns out, than Genetics. And that the crack baby ending up at Harvard proves the point. The well-heeled baby ending up selling claw hammers reinforces the point further.

I wish I could offer a satisfactory resolution to this verbose bit of whimsy, but as always, nobody knows anything much – certainly not about the interaction of genes and environment, or how their variables play out.

Answers on a Post-It please.

9

Do you feel a sense of personal responsibility towards the artists whose work you collect? Artists who benefited from your patronage in the late 1970s and early 1980s, such as Sean Scully and Sandro Chia, felt an acute sense of betrayal when you offloaded their work in bulk onto the market. In the case of Chia, you have been accused of having destroyed his career. Do you regret how you handled these artists’ works?

I don’t buy art to ingratiate myself with artists, or as an entrée to a social circle. Of course, some artists get upset if you sell their work. But it doesn’t help them whimpering about it, and telling anyone who
will listen.

Sandro Chia, for example, is most famous for being dumped. At last count I read that I had flooded the market with 23 of his paintings. In fact, I only ever owned seven paintings by Chia. One morning I offered three of them back to Angela Westwater, his New York dealer, where I had originally bought them, and four back to Bruno Bischofberger, his European dealer, where, again, I had bought those. Chia’s work was tremendously desirable at the time and all seven went to big-shot collectors or museums by close of day.

If Sandro Chia hadn’t had a psychological need to
be rejected in public, this issue would never have
been considered of much interest. If an artist is

10

producing good work, someone selling a group of strong ones does an artist no harm at all, and in fact can stimulate their market.

As for Sean Scully, I did own about five of his works but as his paint...

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