<nettime> NY Observer on YBA exhibition pseudo-spectacle

["nettime's_ roving_reporter" <nettime@bbs.thing.net>]

<http://www.nyobserver.com/pages/frontpage1.htm>

   How Saatchi Orchestrated Brooklyn Museum
   Frenzy: Money--Not Art--Rules Show

   by Jeffrey Hogrefe and Hilton Kramer

   How Saatchi Orchestrated Brooklyn Museum Frenzy

   For two weeks in September, Charles Saatchi showed up at the
   Brooklyn Museum of Art every day to install his art collection for a
   show that will occupy the entire museum for more than three months. 
   Mr. Saatchi, who runs the advertising firm C&M Saatchi from
   London, has over the last two decades become the most prominent
   patron of contemporary art--amassing works by young Americans in
   the 80's and young Britons in the 90's. With the Brooklyn
   show--imported from the Royal Academy of Arts in London--he has
   turned the tables on the second-largest museum in New York City,
   using it to give himself unprecedented leverage as a collector.

   "Saatchi creates his own reality," said Bruce Wolmer, editor of Art &
   Auction magazine. "First he goes around and buys up enough young
   artists' works to create his own movement. Then he gets the Royal
   Academy to show it, and then he holds an auction to test out the
   market on these artworks, donating the proceeds to charity to drive up
   the prices. Now he gets to have another show--in New York--that will
   expose the work to another group and get more buzz because of the
   controversy."

   So far, the controversy surrounding the show--called Sensation:
   Young British Artists from the Saatchi Collection and expected to
   open on Oct. 2--has been about politics more than art. Mayor Rudolf
   Giuliani declared at least one work, a Virgin Mary decorated with
   elephant dung and plastered with bits of pornography, "sick" and said
   he would withdraw city funding. The museum fired back with a First
   Amendment lawsuit. But in the New York art community, the issue is
   about the dissolving barriers between art and commerce. Exhibitions
   are supposed to be conceived by museum directors, organized by
   curators, and funded by wealthy individuals or organizations without
   an economic interest in them. Sensation is the brainchild of a
   collector with his own dealer's license and gallery, and it is 
   sponsored mainly by Christie's, an auction house that has dominated 
   the recent sales of the artists featured in the show.

   In 1990, Mr. Saatchi purchased the very assemblage that's in the
   Brooklyn show. He and his brother Maurice Saatchi, a couple of
   Iraqis who created Margaret Thatcher's ad campaign when she was
   elected Prime Minister, had already bought up the works of the Young
   Americans--David Salle, Julian Schnabel and Eric Fischl--and Charles
   Saatchi had opened his own 30,000-square-foot gallery in London, 
   designed by the late Max Gordon, in 1985. His first discovery was 
   Damien Hirst. He reportedly underwrote Mr. Hirst's first forays into 
   fish and animal life, including the notorious killer shark and
   the cow and sheep parts suspended in formaldehyde in tanks. Then came
   Jake and Dinos Chapman, and Rachel Whiteread; he gave the group the 
   nickname the Young British Artists.

   In 1997, he took his show to the big stage: the Royal Academy, an
   institution reported to be in debt. About 120 works from his private 
   collection went into Sensation. Christie's in London, an auction 
   house that was just beginning to sell newly minted contemporary art 
   and had never sponsored an exhibition of this scale, signed on as
   the sponsor. (Mr. Saatchi had just dumped Sotheby's as his preferred
   venue for art sales.) Record-breaking numbers of museumgoers came to 
   be appalled--rescuing the Academy financially--and the art world was 
   infuriated. The show was criticized because it reflected the strange 
   taste of Mr. Saatchi, not a trained art historian, but a very active 
   player in the art market. The show traveled next to the Hamburger
   Bahnhoff in Berlin, where it also broke attendance records.

   After the first two legs of the Sensation tour, Mr. Saatchi sold 128
   works, many by the artists in the show, at a Christie's auction in 
   December 1998, and pledged the proceeds to four London art schools--
   the same schools that produced many of the Sensation stars. The works 
   sold for $2.6 million, at least $260,000 of that sum going to Christie's 
   in commissions. Immediately after the auction, it was reported that only
   $65,000 would be spent per year on art-student scholarships--a
   commitment scheduled for review at the end of this year--and the 
   balance of the proceeds was to be used to commission new art exclusively 
   for Mr. Saatchi's London gallery.

   With the show set to open in New York, the art community has realized
   that one of its largest public institutions has become a tool of a 
   private collector, an issue that has only been debated on a much 
   smaller scale. The Guggenheim has been criticized for mounting the 
   Hugo Boss Prize, which gives money annually to an artist in exchange
   for creating artwork for the client. Hugo Boss also sponsors many of
   the museum's shows. The Guggenheim SoHo also came under fire earlier 
   this year when it agreed to exhibit several Warhols owned by its 
   landlord, Peter Brandt; the pictures were widely known to be up for sale.

   Christie's in London denied that the two European shows were a way to
   prime the market for the work of the artists on exhibit. "I am not 
   sure at that time whether we knew the sale was going to be taking 
   place," said Fred Goetzen. But many in the art world are certain that 
   the Brooklyn show will be bookended by the London auction and a second 
   taking place in New York after the show closes in January.

   A spokesman for Christie's in New York would not say whether an
   auction was already scheduled: "We do not discuss our relationships 
   with our clients."

   Harold Holzer, a spokesman for the Metropolitan Museum of Art, told
   The Observer that the Met has a policy against shows like Sensation. 
   "We have a stated policy against exhibiting works of art that are for 
   sale at the moment," he said. "There are occasions when an exhibition 
   is in need of a work of art that is for sale to fill out a show, and 
   we will allow that one work into the show if they agree to not sell 
   it during the course of the show."

   That used to be the unwritten policy at the Brooklyn Museum.
   Charlotta Kotik, the museum's curator of contemporary art, said that 
   she and director Arnold Lehman debated the topic of allowing a company 
   that sells art to act as a source for an exhibition. "We decided that 
   in the contemporary field there are so many collectors who have things 
   to say like Charles that it was no different than showing the
   collection of Leopold II of Sweden," she said, referring to the
   18th-century King of Sweden.

   She said having Christie's as the show's main sponsor was not ideal.
   "It was not easy finding a sponsor for this show."

   In the case of Sensation, said Randy Bourscheidt, director of the
   Alliance for the Arts, a nonprofit federation of arts organizations, 
   the connection between the market and the museum has people in the 
   arts very concerned. "It may be a major problem in the case of this 
   one show.... Saatchi is a special case."

   The Mayor's office did not return calls about the issue of a public
   institution accepting sponsorship from such an interested party as 
   Christie's, but Schuyler Chapin, the city's Commissioner of Cultural 
   Affairs, said the whole situation reeked of profits. "Mr. Saatchi is 
   the one who must be licking his lips with pleasure at all this," Mr. 
   Chapin said. "Obviously, all this attention, all this publicity, all 
   this business, is going to drive up the value of the particular 
   exhibition and its pictures, and he will be the ultimate beneficiary." 
   Mr. Saatchi will undoubtedly take it to an auction gallery and sit 
   back and rake in the results."

   Thomas Hoving, former director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art,
   said "Frankly, everyone does it."

   "Museums have been more and more forced to seek funding any way they
   can," said New York University art department chairman Carlo Lamagna. 
   "Whatever outside support they can get is welcome. Despite all the 
   funding that the city gives to the Brooklyn Art Museum, it certainly 
   does not cover their bills."

   Observers say Mr. Lehman's motives are to increase the museum's
   profile and its attendance. In the two years since he has taken over 
   as director, he has initiated activities like free concerts and disco 
   dancing on Saturday nights.  According to the museum, attendance has 
   already doubled during his tenure. According to press materials, in 
   addition to the ground-floor museum shop there will be a 1,200-square-
   foot shop on the fourth floor selling items related to Sensation:
   temporary tattoos, a T-shirt that comes with a condom (available in
   "Safe or "Unsafe"); baby-doll T-shirts with "Danger Art" written on 
   them; and toilet paper "wrapped in yellow 'Caution' tape."

   Before the Mayor got hold of the show's catalogue and gave Mr.
   Saatchi a week's worth of free advance publicity, all the hype was 
   supposed to kick off with a gala party, scheduled for Sept. 30, at 
   which David Bowie (who recorded an album in 1985 called Young Americans) 
   is scheduled to perform. Mr. Bowie, a friend of the collector's who 
   has hitched his star to the art world, also narrates the audio guide 
   for the Sensations show and gave some money to help pay for it. A 
   letter sent to Mayor Giuliani on Sept. 28 from 25 leaders of the city's 
   cultural institutions damning the Mayor's reaction to the show, seemed 
   to hint that the audience Mr. Saatchi and Mr. Lehman are seeking will 
   indeed start crossing the East River.

   Additional reporting by Josh Benson and Gabriel Snyder.

   --Jeffrey Hogrefe

#  distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission
#  <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
#  collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
#  more info: majordomo@bbs.thing.net and "info nettime-l" in the msg body
#  archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net