Date: Wednesday, 16 May, 2007
Time: 18:00
Location: Fritt Ord
Uranienborgveien 2, Oslo
Both YBA (young British artists) and Charles Saatchi have for the last decade or so been buzzwords continually on the lips of the chattering classes who so eloquently talk up the contemporary art scene in the U.K. But what's in a name? Saatchi's has the advantage of covering an unusually wide and varied spectrum: collector, dealer, curator, publicist, self-publicist, trend-setter, aesthete, and power broker. After a decade of successfully branding and promoting a whole generation of young British artists, Charles Saatchi has transformed himself not only into a quintessentially British brand, but even, by now, into an institution. The extent to which Saatchi is able to exert power over the contemporary British art world is tellingly revealed by the fact that, when he opened his new gallery in London's County Hall in 2003, within walking distance of Tate Modern, both the Saatchi Gallery and the man himself were perceived as direct challenges to the hugely successful Tate Modern and its godfather/director, Sir Nicholas Serota.
When it came recently to celebrating the twentieth anniversary of his collecting career, it is significant that Saatchi chose to give the grandiloquent title of The Triumph of Painting to the series of three exhibitions he organised for 2005. This is a move that is both prospective and retrospective. My paper sets out to investigate some of the reasons why this advertising-executive-turned- dealer/collector, having built himself an international reputation as a patron of cutting-edge art, of shock and sensation, was now turning to traditional painting on canvas as the new love of his life. By looking into his commercial strategies, his manipulation of the art market, and the careers of some of the artists he has patronised, the paper will attempt to answer the question Why Be a Saatchi?, and offer an explanation of why painting should now have come to play so prominent a role in the professional activities of the U. K.'s leading contemporary art collector.
Chin-tao Wu (b. Taiwan) is an author and academic who specializes in contemporary art and culture, and has contributed to New Left Review and New Statesman. Her latest book, Privatising Culture: Corporate Art Intervention since the 1980s, published by Verso in 2002, is being translated into Chinese. The Turkish edition was published in 2005, the Portuguese edition in October 2006, and its Spanish edition was published in February 2007. She is currently Assistant Research Fellow at Academia Sinica in Taiwan and an Honorary Research Fellow at University College London.
OCA launches in 2007 a series of talks and discussions entitled Kunst and Kapital in an effort to examine the increasingly porous sectors of private and public. It was launched in January 2007 with No. 1, Beatrix Ruf, Director and Curator, Kunsthalle Zürich, On Collection Building and Exhibition Making. As the debate ensues within Norway as to the viability in supplementing public funding sources with contributions from the private sector in the area of culture, OCA recognizes that discussions around these issues are without precedent of example. How is it possible to proceed with an assumption as to behaviour of the private sector toward contemporary art without fully understanding the motives and psychologies of the private sector, especially in the unique field of contemporary culture? How do international initiatives in the field lend to understanding further the range of possible examples? The Office for Contemporary Art will launch a series of seminars and talks around these topics in an effort to demystify the contemporary art market while illuminating how the critical community is being steadily streamed into these new initiatives.
The Office for Contemporary Art Norway is a private foundation and was founded by The Norwegian Ministry of Culture and Church Affairs and The Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Fall 2001. The main aim of the Office for Contemporary Art Norway is to develop collaborations in contemporary art between Norway and the international art scene. The Office for Contemporary Art Norway aims to become a profiled contributor to the discourses of contemporary art.
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