A nurturing approach from Saatchi’s daughter
Charles Saatchi is collaborating with his daughter, Phoebe Saatchi Yates, and her husband, Arthur Yates, in a new 10,000-sq-ft gallery venture in Mayfair’s Cork Street.
His role, she told The Art Newspaper, has been “to completely guide us”. Which may mean they will get good publicity, but not that they will follow his example entirely.
The Saatchi Yates gallery will focus on “unknown” and “unseen” emerging artists, like Dad does, but give them long-term support and representation, which Dad doesn’t do generally.
“We wanted to maintain the Saatchi narrative of showing and buying young artists, but the difference is we want to stay with them for the long haul and nurture their careers,” they said.
That’s a wise decision as Dad’s example doesn’t endear him to artists. Take his 100-lot clear-out at Christie’s in May. Some he had shown only three years ago, others never had the kudos of being shown in his Chelsea gallery at all.
Then, more than a quarter of them were
withdrawn before sale due to lack of interest; a pretty devastating experience for a young artist.
As ever with Saatchi, though, someone came up trumps. This time it was a little-known 32-year-old London-based Filipino artist, Maria Farrar, whose slightly comic strip-style Baguette was estimated at £2,000 and sold for £56,250.
Last week, Saatchi sold another 10 works by young, little tested artists at a Christie’s online auction.
The star, once again, was Farrar. Estimated slightly higher this time at £6,000, her 6ft painting of a wave sold for £87,500.
Farrar, though, is unlikely to appear in Phoebe’s gallery. There will be no crossover in the artists they deal with, she says.
Saatchi, meanwhile, had less luck at Sotheby’s last month with a small clearance of seven works from his 2009 exhibition, Unveiled; New Art from the Middle East.
Expected to bring around £45,000, they brought only £28,000. One work, a sculpture called Tehran Prostitutes by Iranian artist Shirin Fakhim, had an estimate of £4,000 and was sold for just £630.
Apart from what the artist might think, that kind of mark down wouldn’t pay the rent in Cork Street. But as Saatchi père once said: “Ninety per cent of what I buy will be worthless in 10 years’ time.”
Again, not a sales pitch that is likely to be adopted in Cork Street.