Charles Saatchi
Charles Saatchi
Charles Saatchiis a British businessman and the co-founder with his brother Maurice of advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi. The brothers led the business – the world's largest advertising agency in the 1980s – until they were forced out in 1995. In the same year, the brothers formed a new agency called M&C Saatchi. Saatchi is also known for his art collection and for owning Saatchi Gallery, and in particular for his sponsorship of the Young British Artists, including Damien Hirst...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionEntrepreneur
Date of Birth9 June 1943
Artists need a lot of collectors, all kinds of collectors, buying their art.
Lots of ambitious work by young artists ends up in a dumpster after its warehouse debut. So an unknown artist's big glass vitrine holding a rotting cow's head covered by maggots and swarms of buzzing flies may be pretty unsellable. Until the artist becomes a star. Then he can sell anything he touches .
The art critics on some of Britain's newspapers could as easily have been assigned gardening or travel, and been cheerfully employed for life.
Few people in contemporary art demonstrate much curiosity. The majority spend their days blathering on, rather than trying to work out why one artist is more interesting than another, or why one picture works and another doesn't.
When a critic knows what she or he is looking at and writes revealingly about it, it's sublime.
Who's to say what will one day appear to have been trendsetting? Sometimes artists who receive breathless acclaim initially, seem to conk out. Other artists who don't register so keenly at the time, prove to be trailblazers.
By and large, talent is in such short supply that mediocrity can be taken for brilliance rather more than genius can go undiscovered.
Nobody can give you advice after you've been collecting for a while. If you don't enjoy making your own decisions, you're never going to be much of a collector anyway.
I liked working in advertising, but don't believe my taste in art, such as it is, was entirely formed by TV commercials. And I don't feel especially conflicted enjoying a Mantegna one day, a Carl Andre the next day and a brash student work the next.
Be the Worst You Can Be: Life's Too Long for Patience and Virtue
If you can't take a good kicking, you shouldn't parade how much luckier you are than other people.
I may not be much good at most things, but if I didnt have the pleasure of planning and installing shows, and doing it better than anyone else, I would have stopped buying art many years ago.
If you study a great work of art, you'll probably find the artist was a kind of genius. And geniuses are different to you and me. So let's have no talk of temperamental, self-absorbed and petulant babies. Being a good artist is the toughest job you could pick, and you have to be a little nuts to take it on. I love them all.
When you see something special, something inspired, you realise the debt we owe great curators and their unforgettable shows - literally unforgettable because you remember every picture, every wall and every juxtaposition.