295THE BEST AND WORST PHOTOS OF THE WEEK.
Cont'd.
DO YOU CALL THIS UGLINESS AND DISGRACE, ART?
Rubbish
and Decadence of the Modern Art in England!!
Photo: Trace
by Jenny Saville (1993-94)
The Saatchi
gallery occupies 40,000 sq foot of space in London's Edwardian County Hall.
Its prime position on the South Bank is opposite the Palace of Westminster.
The building was designed in 1908.
No
one has done more to shape modern British art. But the so-called Super collector
has as many critics as admirers. In the most revealing portrait of the
21st-century Medici, Jonathan Jones goes in search of the real Charles Saatchi.
Charles
Saatchi stands on the steps of the Marriott Hotel inside London's County Hall,
looking down into the circular courtyard. In the middle of this hollow space is
a turfed ziggurat, bright green in the afternoon sun. He is telling me about
what lives below it: two and a half million rats. This appears to please him
hugely. Two and a half million rats under the building in which he is about to
open his new art gallery. It reminds me, oddly, of a previous conversation about
rats.
When I spoke to the curators of Tate Modern on the eve of its opening three
years ago, they told me with some embarrassment that the hordes of rats from
Bankside power station had fled to a nearby council estate. Perhaps all this
tells you is that if you live by the Thames, you'd better not be scared of rats.
But I can't help thinking that the two contrasting images - Saatchi gloating
about all his rats and Tate Modern vanquishing theirs - represent two versions
of art about to do battle beside the river: the Tate's high-minded vision of a
politicised and serious contemporary art, and the rather more ratty and gothic
version in the collection of Charles Saatchi, with its rotting cow head,
dead shark, child murderer and porn cuttings.
Photos,
far left: Bunny
by Sarah Lucas (1997), left: Great
Deeds Against The Dead by Jake and Dinos Chapman (1994)
Charles
Saatchi is a man who assiduously cultivates his own myth.
Removing himself from
the ordinary channels of communication, refusing interviews, absenting
from openings and parties is not so much normal shyness as a way of producing
narratives of power and influence.
In the past few years, as some in the London
art world have claimed he was losing his sure touch as a discoverer of young
art, he has taken steps to ensure that his reputation as the man who discovered
Damien Hirst is written into history. Now he is about to unveil a monument to
himself as patron of modern British art. When rumours first circulated that
Saatchi planned to close his London gallery in St John's Wood and open his own
museum in County Hall, a brisk walk upstream from the colossally successful Tate
Modern, the very idea seemed stupendous. Saatchi's new gallery is an open
defiance of Tate Modern and Tate director Nicholas Serota; it sounded
megalomaniacal even for him. But he meant it.
Now
the classics of British art in his collection are displayed in the wood-paneled
debating chambers and corridors once filled with the cigarette smoke of huddled
councillors. It looks good. Saatchi has the best collection in the world of
British art from the past 15 years - a period in which British artists, notably
Damien Hirst, Rachel Whiteread, Tracey Emin, Gary Hume, Sarah Lucas, Chris Ofili
and latterly Jake and Dinos Chapman, were at the forefront of international art
in a way not seen since the early 19th century. There is no question that
Saatchi beat public collections.-
By:
Fiachra Gibbons. Contributors: Alison Roberts, Louisa Buck, Ralph Knott,
Observer Arts Team, Guardian Arts Team. WACJ