1980s, had an exhibition at the Tate in 1982. Organized by the Patrons of New Art,
nine of the eleven paintings on display were owned by Saatchi. A main point was an
ethical one dealing with conflict of interest; Haacke wanted to make the various rela-
tionships more transparent. Victorian values were cited by Haacke. The main image
in
Taking Stock (unfinished)
is a portrait of Thatcher; oil paint as a medium and the
choice of frame were based on Victorian era works in the Tate Gallery, as a way to
mimic her promotion of nineteenth century conservative policies at the end of the
twentieth century. ‘Of course, in their own way, the Saatchis are also Victorians.
They match the young bourgeois entrepreneurs of the nineteenth century, relatively
unfettered by tradition, without roots in the aristocracy, and out to prove themselves
to the world’, according to Haacke (Bois, Crimp, and Krauss 1984: 24).
Having learned from the world of entertainment, the value of so-called event
pictures, a term first associated with
The Exorcist
, a film noted for attracting ‘money
reviews’ (i.e. reviews that attract a cycle of attention in which people read about it and
do not want to be left out) and developing ‘legs’ (i.e. strong popular appeal so that it
has box-office longevity), the 1997 ‘Sensation’ exhibition at the Royal Academy of
Arts exhibited works from the Saatchi collection of ‘young British artists’ (such as
Damien Hirst, Sam Taylor-Wood, Gillian Wearing, and Tracey Emin). ‘Influences
such as Saatchi’s in the art world is not new. He belongs to a long line of civilised
entrepreneurs whose collections form the basis for today’s “educated tastes”’,
according to Lisa Jardine (London
Daily Telegraph
, 19 November 1997). More
revealing in Jardine’s interview with Saatchi is the relationship between his early
professional success in advertising and aesthetic choices:
From the beginning he felt ‘pretty’ confident with visual images and their
manipulation and that made him relaxed about saying what he liked and fol-
lowing that up with purchasing. He acknowledges that some people consider
his advertising man’s eyes a weakness. It is true that he instinctively picks the
kind of work that plays vigorously on rapid audience reception, and that he has
a preference for artists who are likely aware about the interaction between
themselves, their work and the gallery goer.
(
Daily Telegraph
, 19 November 1997)
This represents an example of mass media shaping fine art (which is a reversal of
the conventional case of learned culture exerting an influence on popular culture).
It is not difficult to see links between Saatchi, a ‘big league’ collector of contempo-
rary art, and public institutions. Saatchi has already donated art valued at £500,000 to
the Arts Council of England. There is a strong likelihood that at least some of the work
from the Saatchi collection will enter the permanent collection of the Tate. Thus
Saatchi’s donations to public institutions will form a historical record for future gener-
ations of British art production of the 1990s. Contemporary patronage is a topic
suggestive of further research in order to decode more fully the relationship between
personal taste and the public perception of (national or ‘official’) artistic production.
Yet it is important to recognize the complexities associated with private collectors
and public institutions. Montreal collectors between 1880 and 1920 (such as Sir
Collaborations in the arts
45
George Drummond, R. B. Angus, Lord Strathcona, Sir William Van Horne, Charles
Hosmer, and James Ross) were the product of the industrial boom associated with the
building of the transcontinental Canadian Pacific Railway, one of the most ambitious
infrastructure projects in Canadian history. They formed a new category of collector:
middle class by birth and aristocratic in fortune. Before the social and psychological
effects of war and the more direct impact of income tax put a halt to the boom period of
collecting, these Montreal collectors ‘had created the greatest private collections yet
seen in Canada’, according to Janet Brooke (1989: 14). She added that ‘the dispersal
by auction houses overseas of several of the most significant of them’ is one reason
why the history of collecting in Montreal is ‘not merely an aspect of [the Montreal
Museum of Fine Art’s] institutional history’ (Brooke 1989: 15). She attempts to
account for why there was not a closer mapping of private collecting and the MMFA’s
history: tax laws in Canada at the time made gifts of art extremely onerous on the
donor and his family, whereas gifts of cash were not affected by tax laws.
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