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Saatchi Sells Middle Eastern Art Through Online Outlet, The Auction Room

September 9, 2013 by Marion Maneker

Hayv Kahraman, The Carrying Shoulder 1 & 2

Colin Gleadell has the details on Charles Saatchi’s divesting himself of some Middle Eastern works of Contemporary art. The only unfortunate bit about the sale is that the auctioneer seems to be selling a form of anti-transparency where no records will be kept of the sale prices that can be accessed publicly. That’s

Charles Saatchi has chosen a new online-only auctioneer to sell works from his collection of Middle Eastern contemporary art this month, rather than a more familiar live auction at Sotheby’s, Christie’s or Phillips. The 15 works, valued at more than £250,000, were exhibited in Unveiled: New Art from the Middle East, held at the Saatchi Gallery in 2009. The sale is being staged by the Auction Room, which was formed earlier this year by Sotheby’s former managing director of Europe, George Bailey, and is directed by Janet Rady, an independent expert in Middle Eastern art.

Forty works are currently viewable online, with estimates ranging from £1,200 to £80,000, and bidding has already begun on half of them. A popular lot is Hayv Kahraman’s pair of portraits, Carrying on Shoulder 1 and 2 from the Saatchi collection. Since I last wrote about the artist’s work at Art Dubai in 2009, where her paintings were priced at $10,000 each, they have risen to nearly $100,000 (£62,000) at auction. An exhibition of her latest work which opens today at the Jack Shainman Gallery in New York has already sold out, so bidding on this work is likely to exceed the estimated £36,000 to £40,000.

Charles Saatchi to sell collection of Middle Eastern contemporary art online (Telegraph)

Charles Saatchi Hates Everybody

December 2, 2011 by Marion Maneker

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)

Saatchi's Eye for Sculpture

May 28, 2011 by Marion Maneker

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)

Saatchi Explained

November 3, 2010 by Marion Maneker

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

Saatchi's Curator: 'Art History Can Be Very Cruel'

October 26, 2010 by Marion Maneker

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)

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