Saatchi art warehouse up in smoke

:(

So, how sure are we that this isn't some enormous Bill Drummond stunt?

It would not surprise me one iota if it turned out to be an insurance scam.

HSA independently reached the same conclusion, ha ha, but he did so with a great deal more glee and derision.

xpost - i had suspected some kind of scam too.

Arson I would not rule out, mind. And I would completely agree with Kate regarding the workings of art dealers and exhibition organisers being dispicable.

This is a fitting end to a lot of YBA artworks though, to my mind.

It's dumb, dumb, dumb to suggest that Momart (an extremely respected art storage company) are insurance scammers.

Tracey Emin crashed my friend's book launch last night and did not bother speaking to my friend - rude cow - she just stuck to her three useless artworld rentamates in the corner until the freebies ran out. She didn't look like she'd lost anything in a fire, or if she had, she looked like she didn't give a shit.

When it was suggested to him that Tracey Emin's famous tent was destroyed in the blaze, he said "that would be nice."

He's a businessman at the end of the day.

The social death that can happen to someone who sells something on the secondary market that they ought not to have is really not worth it to most nerdly collectors, as they have to buy their social life from the art world in the first place.

(or Tim, are you arguing that ALL art is, by its very definition, precious?)

Name names please. What deserves burning?

Barry, why are you so determined to read complex inferences into the words "really? why?"?

I was asking a question: what deserves to be burned and why? But since you ask, no I don't think everything which is called 'art' is inherently precious. I also think there has been a lot of unseemly smiggering about this from people who are unsympathetic to the art and the art world. The destruction of pieces which many people find / have found exciting / inspiring is not something to be celebrated, surely? (x-post obv).

I thought he was just calling people out on ill-informed pontification, personally.

Obviously they were 'making a point', but it was totally banal. Disposability of art=so 1964.

Say you're a collector and have purchased a piece of yBa from the artist's gallery. If you as the collector take it to Sotheby's and sell the piece on yourself, you have entered the secondary market. The only person who does not suffer for doing this is Elton John, because when he has one of his yard sales at least he turns over the cash to AIDS research.

Gallerists like to maintain value for their artists and one of the ways they do this is by selling to particular collectors. If the collector sells on the work to somewhere obscure, or not to a museum, that's a bad thing for the artist, especially if the collector sells that bit too soon and adversely affects prices. There are many, many collectors who have more oomph in the market than Saatchi and these are the ones even more actively courted by gallerists.

I can't see why my point about immortality was irrelevant, because you seemed to be saying that disposability = insignificance.

Do you really want artists to be deadly serious about their Great Works all the time? Or are you simply going to hate on the Chapmans whatever they say?

I probably will hate on the Bros whatever they say, fair point.

Also I don't think it's nice to hate on the Chapmans. For all their bluster and punkrockery they are very astute and know their crit well enough to completely hose on their critics. And are also good people. Please don't be surprised at their flippancy toward a mainstream press which is stupidly reductive about art and artists' practice.

I was cabbing it home last night with my friend's gallerist boyfriend and we got talking about Tracey before and after getting ridiculously famous and agreed that she's a real arsepain now and has completely exhausted the goodwill of most people we know.

Bryan Ferry also turned up to wish my friend well (it's a long story) and was much nicer. He's also a well-regarded art collector.

What I am arguing against is your "if this was anything significant they'd never be so flip".

(Suzy: understood, that's interesting. I recall being pleased when you stuck up for TE some time back and am sorry to hear she seems to be living up / down to her media image.)

For the full Edwardian look?

I seriously doubt it. I could also call my band of depilatory marauders the Frida Kahlo Moustache Riders, because that's much more fun.

Vaughn Oliver would soak the ashes in mud, take some snaps, and there's your Cocteau Twins box set cover.

xpost

It'll be interesting to see if any of the artists involved will try to recreate their lost works and sell them all over again, now that the originals have gone. Or does the person who bought them own the concept as well as the piece?

not being bothered about bad art being destroyed: I think several of the artists mentioned in reports are worthless, but on many, many occasions i've come back to stuff i thought was worthless and reappraised it and liked it. at the very least it's acted like a goad and a challenge to what i consider good and stopped me from getting bored with myself.

I thought it was interesting that all the bumf I read abt this, or heard on the radio has been about the monetary value of the burnt art, not "oh no, a valuable treasue has been lost forever".

I had a wander thru town this a.m. and mentioned this to a few people, and the response was pretty much uniform - a kind of gleeful indifference.

I don't really know what to think, to be honest, beyond it being sad that a bunch of people's work got destroyed, I'm not feeling very "with it" at the moment.

I used to imagine people in the future coming across tracey emin's tent, or some of her other similar pieces, looking at them out of context, or out of the time they were made in, and wondering just what the hell it was supposed to be exactly.

and wasn't a lot of the above art 'conceptual' which would mean the idea of it is more important than any given implementation of it. (i'm a pack rat and hate it when things go missing / get destroyed so this is me being devil's advocaat here)

another thought: someone ought to rush out an update of this: http://www.poster-und-kunstdrucke.de/images/product-pics/artist/turner/turner_der_brand_16_oktober.jpg

8)

I don't disagree with any of that, and no my comments weren't aimed at you (or anyone in particular).

damn you tim, you beat me to it :)

Barry: why didn't you answer my question? I asked nicely and answered yours and everything.

i am thinking (hoping beyond hope), considering what he said about Quinn earlier in the year, that we may have the best stuff miracously saved (ie emin, chapman, lucas, hirst)

from what i understand of the secondary market, it usually means that the big prices you see for contempary art are not given to the artist, and it perpetuates the master/slave dichtomy of galleriest/artist...or at least mother/son. There are exceptions to this (koons, strangely enough)

i think emin has an exhaustion that comes from constant and overly earnest self aware examanation, and that kind of exhaustion can lead v. much to a distaste/distrust of other people.

i think that if the work is meant to be ephemeral (or disposobal or tranisent), and it is destroyed then that is as legitimate then if the peice is intended to be permanant, with the added realaztion that nothing is permanant.

i do not think you can explain this work in under an hour, to talk about the 4ad analogy, and anyways records are not unique objects (this is noted knowing that the cult of the object is one of the more complicated and damaging aspects of contempary visual culture)

i think whiteread is as thoughtful and consdired as any of the other people we have been talking about, different and frankly a bit more derrative but as thoughtful (i have only v. recently gotten over my contempt for her though)

what exactly has been lost, i know about works by chapmans,lucas (who i am really really sad about),hirst,whiteread and works in the buckingham collection--anyone have a full list ?

i dont think this is about the saachis--i am not fans of them either, but i think of it more as work then i do as collectors.

chapmans work is as or more impt then the concept, in fact i am unsure that they are conceptual artists

kafka was working towards his legend when he said he wanted things burnt, or making modernist statements about the mutability and unperseved nature of texts (see brunel)

yes and i think this is mutual as well - not meaning to single her out but this seemed a very good point.

is it only among the British that this is a problem? I know the huge skew of being British and living in the UK all my life makes answering this difficult, if not impossible, but it still seems to me that the British are more inclined to deride and poke fun of modern and/or conceptual art than Americans or (especially) continental Europeans. Travelling around various continental European cities, one thing that is very noticeable is the respect such art is paid and the prevelance of it in streets and p[ublic buildings that you just don't get in the UK, or if it does occur, it will be in very specific contexts, e.g. in the New Towns where there are no older items vying for attention.

Intriguing question - if an extremely rich person with a warehouse full of modern/conceptual art suffered the same misfortunbe in, say, France, or Belgium or Switzerland, how would the public and media reaction be different?

Momart is a very specialized storage company and that warehouse was extremely high-tech and climate-controlled. That's probably why it's still burning.

Mark H, I know a ton of British artists who've won competitions for public art commissions in mainland Europe. They're all 'ooh, GRAVY' when they win one. I can't say whether or not the public there value the art more than we do in Britain because I don't meet very many of 'the public' as such when I go to those countries.

What did "some people" think deserved to burn?

Does "emperor's new clothes" mean "I can't see value in it so I have decided that those who can are being cheated, because I know better than them"? Do you think destruction of these works will snap the poor dupes out of their delusions? Can you explain how "some people" think they know better?

Yes, that's about right.

You have a value judgement on art; there will be people who have an equally valid (read: subjective) judgement who will see no worth in certain pieces. No-one "knows better". Or perhaps you think you "know better"?

(p.s. I am not referring to myself - this is intentional as I don't know enough/have mixed feelings about a lot of the art in question.)

Still, I can easily see why the Chapmans couldn't give a shit - not only have they sold it, the fact some of their work has been destroyed will in some way enhance their own personal mystique. Plus, if I'm remembering right, they're something less than respectful towards Saatchi himself, hence the not-so-secret delight.

When you (or some people) say "emperor's new clothes" about something I love they are saying something more than "this is rubbish", aren't they? They're saying "this is rubbish and those who say they like it are lying, or have been fooled." That's what the story means, isn't it?

And more, even if I was being fooled into loving a piece of art which was rubbish, why would some people take a pleasure in the destruction of something I love and which means nothing to them? Why is that perfectly valid?

What is still open to debate however is whether it is the IDEA or the EXECUTION which is the most important element. If you think that art is only art if not everyone can physically do it then you are obv going to have a scornful attitude to a lot of modern/conceptual art, whereas if you say "Well, of course you could have put the dead animal in the formaldehyde tank but you didn't think to do it which is why Hirst is the artist and you're not" then you'll going to have a more +ve attitude towards it.

And again, the "emperor's new clothes" thing is not a value-neutral critique of a piece of art, it's not "everyone can feel whatever they like", it's a loaded criticism of anyone who likes that art. And that's ugly too.

On the other hand, there seem to be people who don't care about this stuff, who would never go and see it, who are actively pleased that it's been destroyed. That seems to me unpleasant, spiteful and dog-in-the-manger, and I genuinely don't understand it.

Also with "emperor's new clothes" Mark managed to hit on a particular sore spot of mine.

It's weird for me for probably a lot of the same reasons as Tim cites. I saw a lot of those pieces before Saatchi got his meathooks on them and will miss them, and will feel bad that others won't get to see them now.

I'm invited to the after-opening dinner for Haluk Akakçe tonight and I'm sure that Momart's losses will be all we talk about after we see his work.

double X.

m. - I shall have to look at Mark's response again.

Since I've got over a decade of experience writing about art for a non-art readership I cannot tell you how important it is to avoid hyperbole. I tend to concentrate on the practice: explaining how the artist works on their pieces and what interests and aesthetics led them to make such things.

Does that help at all? I hope you understand I'm not intending any sarcasm or digs in any of these replies.

I understand that there is high-quality art and low-quality art but no-one has argued otherwise. I also understand that there are such things in the world as opportunists, and that sometimes the things they produce are bad (sometimes they're good, too). This issue of how we choose what to keep and what to discard is difficult but probably another discussion.

That doesn't really affect my argument.

PF I think that's an ugly response. Would you be glad if everything else you don't like was destroyed?

Well, enough of my experience dealing with artists and knowing how much time it takes them to make work, whatever its composition, leads me to believe there are very, very few scammers/bandwagoneers operating as artists. It's the privileging of the creative process which creates bad feeling towards artists, and most of this is manufactured by media commentators and broadcasters with a particular axe to grind, or middlefolk like gallerists and curators who want to privilege the lines of clear communication they have with artists. In order to do so, they make intellectual red tape to keep their position of power vis-a-vis the artist.

It is also the fault of editors in the media, having made space to write about art in the wake of yBa boom times, that the second wave of whatever often has artists who are either derivative or not ready to hatch onto the pages of magazines, having had little of the maturation time afforded the Hirst generation. They mean well, but we all know what kind of paving-stones good intentions make.

See this is where I'm uncomfortable because if I go to see a work and am moved or excited, or if I laugh or feel thrilld, or whatever, I can't see at what stage in that process I'm being fooled even if the artist is a charlatan, or a bandwagoneer. I'm getting the emotional goods regardless, aren't I?

And PF (re: the thread in that other place) if ENC is about intimidation, who are the guards? I mean, who's being intimidated and by whom? Am I the intimidatee? Or am I the guards? Maybe I'm both, but how can I tell, and how can you?

all of which does not apply to the ybas

Also it's due to him there's less bias against West Coast artists.

You probably feel about this the way I feel about 'The Magnificent Ambersons', but if someone came back and saif 'Welles was a fraud', I'd kind of admire their chutzpah, rather than call them 'ugly'.

I like Dinos C's comment about Hell being destroyed by an act of God!

the fact some of their work has been destroyed will in some way enhance their own personal mystique

Absolutely. In the back of every artist's mind, especially the YBAs, is Marcel Duchamp's 'Big Glass', which was broken then reconstructed and only made Duchamp more famous and enigmatic. Perhaps, too, they may have read Mishima's Temple of the Golden Pavilion.

My own tiny contribution to YBA is not immaterial here. In 1994 I made a satirical 'manifesto' for an imaginary new British art movement (in fact it was commissioned by the artists Iain Forsythe and Jane Pollard). The document was exhibited in a glass case in the BritArt show 'Live/Life' at the Musee D'Art Moderne in Paris in 1996. And it connects British art with fire-setting:

Erratum Slip
A Dagger to the Heart of British Phlegm!
A Spurt of Blood for our Glorious and Flamboyant New Movement!
This is Ultra-Paranoid (Extra-Spatial) Portable Art!
Errata to the Original Manifesto (June 1994)

Our Manifesto, which this summer proposed the bold new artform 'Ultra-Paranoid (Extra-Spatial) Portable Art', aroused vigorous debate in the British art world. Unfortunately it also contained certain dangerous inaccuracies. At the behest of Detective Superintendant Ken Bradwell of Scotland Yard's Serious Fraud (Art Movements) Squad we have issued the following list of errata, apologia and retractions.

(Nevertheless, long live 'Ultra-Paranoid (Extra-Spatial) Portable Art'!)

1. In paragraph 17 (green calligraphy on a purple background) we stated: 'Burn down The Academy, for it does not represent 'Ultra-Paranoid (Extra-Spatial) Portable Art' !'

Our legal representative, Mr Bernard Bloom, has asked us to make it clear that no libel or calumny was intended against Norman Rosenthal, the board, trustees and friends of the Royal Academy, or in fact any public institution of art, be it gallery or college. And our thanks go to Reginald Longley of London Fire Brigade for pointing out that arson is, quite rightly, illegal. We do not for a moment endorse in the name of 'Ultra-Paranoid (Extra-Spatial) Portable Art' any act of fire-setting. We rather intended to represent, by 'The Academy', a state of mind, and by 'Burn down', a wish for peaceful, democratic change.

Therefore, long live 'Ultra-Paranoid (Extra-Spatial) Portable Art'!

(continues here)

"hmmm, that warehouse was unfortunately also the storehouse for the craft council's collection (and some V&A stuff also?) - this bit not an investment at all, but a major historical archive all gone now - mark s"

It seems the media have been rather lax in their reporting of this side of it, too.

Markelby - actually, modern/conceptual art prolly provides *far less* opportunities for ppl to do this and get away with it than art 100, 200, 300 years ago - walk thru a gallery of art from hundreds of years ago and you'll see huge numbers of artists working in essentially the same style and there are no accusations of bandwagon jumping, whereas if you were to put a dead cow in formaldehyde people would immediately denounce you as just copying Damien.

Tim - I can understand why you argue so vehemently about something you feel passionate about, that is perfectly reasonable, but your choice of the word 'ugly' to describe those who hold an opposing view does have the effect, deliberate or inadvertant, of making it look as if you think there are far wider implications of holding an opposing view - "if you think *that* about the art then you must hold dodgy political views like [X]". Cue speculation (I hope) about what [X] is.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/news/story/0,11711,1225678,00.html

Obviously more people lost work. I'm hoping Richard Billingham was lucky; after S & S I couldn't bear to go around asking as it was way too 'chasing an ambulance'.

Xpost with Mark H: Mark C's comment isn't off because it's ugly as such, more because it conveys zero knowledge of the stuff artists go through to make work and how complicated it is to make that work - like I keep saying, it's vocational for them, they 'mean it'. Usually the temptation to fit a current culture angle comes from bad curating or an opportunistic gallerist. Never the artist.

would that also be ugly? probably, but i would still feel it, so i can kind of sympathise with the anti-yba's a bit.

http://www.hankstruckpictures.com/pix/trucks/len_rogers/sept8a/merc_momart.jpg

Nick, you do realise the Sophie I mention is the one we ate dinner with some while back, at the Russian place?

Yes, Hobbypop Sophie. I've met her since then, in Paris.

it's becoming increasingly obvious that there were irreplacable things lost in the fire and that's a pity (suzi's post should be enough to shut up the gloaters) - they can't all just rush out and buy another packet of polystyrene cups or crumple up another sheet of a4.

As I keep saying, Saatchi isn't even the richest or most profligate collector operating in London, but he is the only one who's an adman connected to the Tories' re-election campaigns, thusly an endless source of fascination for the press. It's not as if the whole of the British art world exists to service him, because it most certainly does not.

FWIW it's a damn shame about what happened, Metro had a list of what went from Saatchi's collection and I really liked the motocrosser painting, and the tent thing is possibly the only Emin work that I *really* like.

Apologies for saying ‘ugly’ too many times last night when I was tired and in a hurry. I certainly should have used other words (please).

Mark H: I really, genuinely don't mind people not being interested in this stuff, I don't mind them disliking it, thinking it worthless, ignoring it completely (though obviously I'll happily discuss the merits or otherwise of stuff, that's fine).

Taking satisfaction in the destruction of something others find valuable and rewarding because you dislike it is what I've been finding objectionable. I have tried to be reasonably precise about that on this thread and I can't really help it if others want to impute broader political meanings that aren't there.

Enrique I've no problem with being thought fey. Your example of "The Magnificent Ambersons" may be a good one: the equivalent reaction to the one I've tried to argue against here would be "yeah well Welles is a fraud and a charlatan and he's annoying and did rubbish ads and the studio system sucks so I'm glad it was ruined and frankly you're a dupe for being interested. I laughed."

(I don't really understand your point about "you say ugly, they say elitist", but I'm interested. And the fashion world hasn't bought dibs on the word ugly, has it? Though I may have… sigh)

Momus I have one of those Ultra Paranoid (Extra Spatial) Portable Art boxes, I wish I had more. They were fab.

I find it hard to explain why I mourn the loss of a handful of paintings, a hut, a tent and a tableau. Perhaps it is that when we give life to art, it becomes an image of our own life. This is easier to explain if we imagine that a John Constable painting had been lost. Most of us find it easy to recognise a life in Constable's landscapes, a mirror of our own existence in the world. This sense of life is created by history, by the long intertwining of Constable's painted Britain and the real one. By comparison, some will say the works lost in the Saatchi fire are dead, lumpen things. But the fact is that an enormous amount of cultural energy has burned around those things: talk, argument, rows.

I really hate the assumption (maybe correct) that 'most of us' can see value in Constable's 'painted Britain', but not in Chapmanworld. 'Most of us' here is presumably rather cautious Guardian readers who catch up late with art, don't collect it, and need its value explained in traditional humanist or nationalist terms. Ironically (but this is also typical of Britain, and something to do with the double whammy of class anxiety and marketing hype) the energy flows much more strongly between the tabloid readers who are presumably chortling at this fire and the artists themselves (also mostly chortling, it seems). Think of Sarah Lucas and the Chapmans and Tracey Emin, and how they thrived on the tabloid attention and played with tabloid imagery.

I'm repeating myself now, aren't I.

The Hirst piece you reference is "Hymn" and I found it breathtaking, and yes I do know the original matchbox (or Hummel or whatever) model.

The subject itself is interesting, human bones and guts and musculature, and this was like a pop-art reading of human biology (which itself bounces off the context of Hirst's famous dead animal work). Most of Hirst's stuff touches on mortality and the fragile flesh and seeing a huge metallic fragile flesh was kind of exciting.

It really, genuinely made me gasp when I saw it, and I'd already seen pictures of it in the papers.

There you go. Low quality art reviews by the yard, I got 'em.

I should add that issues of craft and 'originality' aren't important to me.

x-post the robots thing sounds good.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/olmedia/1315000/images/_1316230_warhol_300.jpg

http://peter.wreck.org/pictures/europe/oxf_kebabvan.jpg

Other questions of the rights and wrongs of responses to the fire (about which I don't know much) may be a separate issue. This is just an ENC clarification. All employees may now re-enter the building. Thank you for your patience.

Nipper: remember - don't smoke.

No, Saatchi's's like the Jesuits. Get 'em at 7k and they're yours for life.

Can anyone explain something to me? This is from the Windy-pedant...

Robert Read, an art underwriter with Robert Hiscox, Europe's leading insurer of fine art, said it was the worst single loss in Britain since £100m of art was destroyed in 1991.

What happened in 1991?

This warehouse was apparently between 5 and 10% of MOMART's space, so it's quite possible they store HRH's stuff without it having been affected in this fire.

Tracey emin - "Camp Fire"
Damien Hirst - "Flamaldehyde"
etc.

now try one for america, yBa wouldnt of existed as a movement w/o the adman

There was a WWII war memorial inside, from a post office building, which had been passed onto another museum with a view to finally putting it on exhibition. It'll be interesting to see what the heat's done to the stone and brass...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,1226659,00.html

Except I don't really know what great art is, obv.

Her grief = my joy is a bit harsh on me maybe...

In those terms, I guess what I'm saying is the gleee at destruction feels to me like someone trying to close down discussion and arugument. this is bad => I'm happy it can't resonate. I can understand if someone reading this thread felt like I was trying to close discussion down*, and I apologise if I gave that impression (which maybe what MarkH was getting at upthread), that wasn't what I was after.

I'm against knee-jerk respect and knee-jerk disrespect for stuff, and the around-stuff conversation** is crucial to me. (NB this is a central plank of geezaethetics).

*Calling it 'Fiends'? You beast!

**Even if I'm talking to myself.