Perfectly timed for ArtBasel Miami Beach, Charles Saatchi has a put down for everyone in the art world . . . especially himself:

Not so long ago, I believed that anything that helped broaden interest in current art was to be welcomed; that only an elitist snob would want art to be confined to a worthy group of aficionados. But even a self-serving narcissistic showoff like me finds this new art world too toe-curling for comfort. In the fervour of peacock excess, it’s not even considered necessary to waste one’s time looking at the works on display. At the world’s mega-art blowouts, it’s only the pictures that end up as wallflowers.

Charles Saatchi: The Hideousness of the Art World (Guardian)

It’s hard to miss this assessment of Charles Saatchi’s legacy as a collector–it’s the lead in Jackie Wullschlager’s Financial Times review–but it would be a shame not to isolate such a succinct and impressive re-statement

Charles Saatchi has for some years presented himself as the apostle of contemporary painting but it was always his brilliant eye for sculpture that made him a collector of genius. He inaugurated his Boundary Road gallery with Donald Judd, knocked down the flat next door to make space for Richard Serra, was the pioneering UK supporter of Jeff Koons, and launched Damien Hirst’s career by commissioning “The Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living”, the shark in formaldehyde. Anyone interested in sculpture must look wherever he goes.

Let’s Get Physical (Financial Times)

Adam Lindemann has the most insightful unpacking of the Charles Saatchi myth in this week’s New York Observer. As Lindemann points out, Saatchi has owned everything but held on to nearly nothing. In his restless pursuit for what’s next, he’s always sold too soon and found himself out of the money. But is that a meaningful mark against him as a collector?

I recently purchased The Saatchi Collection, a book in four parts that catalogs all the great works he owned in the ’80s, and yes, it was amazing, the best Warhol Marilyns and disaster paintings, the best of Donald Judd, Carl Andre, Cy Twombly, Anselm Kiefer and so many more. There are a few market duds in there, and, no, he didn’t have a good Gerhard Richter or Roy Lichtenstein, but he did have a collection that today would be worth well over a $1 billion. And where is it now? All sold long ago. (Much of what’s in the book has shown up at auction, or somewhere else outside of the Saatchi collection.) He sold it all in the early ’90s, before the market ever took off.Continue Reading

TodayOnline interviews Charles Saatchi’s curator, Nigel Hurst, and gets an answer to why Saatchi buys and sells so much art work:

You’ve been working with Charles Saatchi and his gallery for 13 years now. Has there been one single big change you’ve witnessed in London’s contemporary art scene during that time?

Nigel Hurst: The London contemporary art scene certainly, when I joined the gallery, was still quite parochial. Charles Saatchi was probably the only significant buyer of contemporary art at that time. There’s now a huge number of contemporary art buyers.  […]

So what does Saatchi Gallery find interesting in art coming from this part of the world?

We’ve actually been interested in (art coming from) anywhere. If you look at the history of the Saatchi Gallery, we’ve always shown work that internationally are the most important work as and when it’s being made – not five or four years after it’s made. It’s very much about showing contemporary art now and that hopefully points the way to future trends rather than acting as some kind of archive.

Which is why there’s a constant process of acquisition and sale because it’s important that the collection remains fresh and relevant. It’s a contemporary art collection, not a modern art collection. It’s not art from the last 100 years, it’s about the here and now.

But having your pulse on the here and now would mean there’s a chance that it’s going to be a hit-and-miss thing and that an artwork might not stand the test of time, right?

Art history is very cruel. We can’t control it. (Laughs)

Saatchi’s Life (TodayOnline)

The Independent reports that talks between Charles Saatchi and UK Dept. of Culture, Media and Sport have broken down over Saatchi’s plan to donate his art collection to the UK to form a MoCA London.

It is not clear why the talks failed, but it is understood that the idea of part-financing the institution after it had been handed over by buying and selling items from the donated collection runs against the code of ethics set out by the Museums’ Association. […] The intention to buy and sell items for the collection would ensure that, when Saatchi retired, the gallery would have “a strong, rotating permanent collection of major installations”.

These issues may have torpedoed the talks. But doubts creep in when the story later identifies the “The Physical Impossibility of  Death in the Mind of Someone Living” as still belonging to Saatchi’s collection. Its sale was, of course, captured in the title of a recent book and the piece has been installed at New York’s Metropolitan for some time with a great deal of publicity surrounding the new owner and the restoration required for the installation.
Saatchi rues lost art of conversation as gallery donation talks collapse (Independent)

The BBC reports:

Art collector Charles Saatchi is gifting more than 200 works and his Saatchi Gallery to the British public, it has been announced. The artworks, including Tracey Emin’s My Bed and Chapman brothers works, are worth more than £25m ($37.7m). The 70,000 sq ft Saatchi Gallery in Chelsea, owned by Cadogan Estate, will become the Museum of Contemporary Art for London (Moca London). The museum will meet all costs and “no charges will fall to the state”.

Charles Saatchi Gives Gallery to Nation (BBC News)