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
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.
Nothing is as uplifting as standing before a great painting whether it was painted in 1505 or last Tuesday.
The fact that in the last 10 years only five of the 40 Turner Prize nominees have been painters tells you more about curators than about the state of painting today.
Its obvious nonsense, but it makes nice people feel good about themselves to do their bit for the planet. Its vanity of a grotesque kind to believe that mankind, and our carbon footprint, has more impact on the future of Earth than Nature, which bends our planet to its will, as it sees fit.
The most abiding memory of visiting Lucian Freud's studio were his eyes, with the gimlet gaze of a Hooded Falcon. But he made for very relaxing company, quick to be amused at the world and his own peccadilloes. He enjoyed the seedy squalor of his rooms in a posh house in the most desirable part of Holland Park, and living up to his persona as an oddball bohemian.
Art collectors are pretty insignificant in the scheme of things. What matters and survives is the art.
I don't buy art in order to leave a mark or to be remembered; clutching at immortality is of zero interest to anyone sane.
My aim in life isn't so much the pursuit of happiness as the happiness of pursuit.
If I stop being on good behaviour for a moment, my dark little secret is that I don't actually believe many people in the art world have much feeling for art and simply cannot tell a good artist from a weak one, until the artist has enjoyed the validation of others - a received pronunciation.