Saatchi Gallery website leads the way

Charles Saatchi is one of Britain’s most prominent art collectors, providing young artists with much-needed cash and an equally welcome leg up in the art world. A nod from Charles Saatchi is worth a lot: as he revealed in an interview with The Guardian, “I don’t ever think about money, so obviously in that sense I’m fantastically rich”.

Saatchi’s lengthy love affair with art began in 1973, when he was one half of the ultra-successful Saatchi & Saatchi advertising agency along with his younger brother, Maurice. In 1985 he opened his first gallery in London’s St. John’s Wood and in the 1990s became most famous for his support of what was unofficially dubbed Brit Art. His expert eye secured Damien Hirst’s 1990 work, A Thousand Years (a decomposing cow’s head in a glass vitrine complete with flies and maggots) and Tracey Emin’s embroidered tent, Everyone I Have Ever Slept With 1963-1995.

The U.K. press ridiculed the Brit Art movement and, by extension, Saatchi’s interest in and support of it. A rumour circulated that one of his purchases, Marc Quinn’s Self, a cast of the artist’s head in nine pints of his frozen blood, had been ruined when a freezer was accidentally disconnected by builders working on the house he shares with his wife Nigella Lawson. The truth was that he had sold it to an American collector in 2005 for £1.5 million: Saatchi had bought it for £13,000.

Now Charles Saatchi’s new gallery in Chelsea is making a massive contribution to the future of art in cyberspace. This lively and engaging website offers a massive range of features, from the more usual online shop to areas where new artists can create their own profile page, display their work and obtain feedback from established artists.

Charles Saatchi has moved on from his position as Britain’s leading artistic kingmaker, to providing a first home for aspiring artists.

You can visit the Saatchi Gallery website at: http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/index.htm

New post on at Wednesday, 12 August, 2009, 11:58 am and is archived in Art, Lifestyle, Places of Interest. Subscribe to answers with RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.