In fact, it’s interesting to wonder how Saatchi’s act will adapt over the next few years to fit the changing zeitgeist. All we know is that he has India and Middle East shows lined up, fun stuff we’ve heard about and seen in reproduction, which like the Chinese version seem to be either tailor-made to fit the needs of the international art market or accidentally appropriate for such a market, having been hanging around in dusty storage cupboards for decades with signs on the door saying Also-ran and Derivative. (Now the signs are changed to Urgent Expressions of Identity.)

Go for it
In the 1960s, Pop art caused a little revolution in the UK: at last, a "popular" form coming out of high culture. It didn’t last long (just a few years), and then it was back to the old impasse: the majority of Brits, intimidated, basically kept out. When Saatchi started his popular-art revolution, it was very different. The effect was much more long lasting. Going around "The Revolution Continues," I was struck by the great mass of people there, and I spoke to several of them who said this was their second or third trip, and that in some cases they’d come back with friends to spread the good news. But the meanings are still weird; what is the quality of the experience that these unpretentious nonexperts are getting? Are they really gaining higher awareness of important matters? Has art become popular because of market success or because we are all so much more soulful now?

On the top floor of the gallery is a display of new blobs by Julian Schnabel on a Japanese theme (once again proving what a good, if mannered, blobbist he is) in a room given over to the auction house Phillips de Pury (whose sponsorship enables visitors to the gallery to get in free) and a Projects Space with a display of outsize drawings of newspaper headlines by the New York-based artist Aleksandra Mir, who was born in Poland. And nearby, photos and paintings by a mixture of schoolchildren, art-school graduates, and striver-artists who haven’t made it big time yet, which all have something to do with Saatchi’s open-ended populist online empire, where anyone can have a go at playing the contemporary-art game. (There’s no particular character to the website; no look, no design, no mood — just a barrage of information and a multitude of participants. My personal feeling about it is that I’m amazed at the democracy, and I want to take part too.)

Give me more free trips
All current art tastes seem to be covered at the new gallery. Keeping your finger on the pulse of now: hot art from China. More-or-less aestheticism: Schnabel. Asinine conceptual solemnity: Mir. Fun random art diversions for amateurs: everyone else. The main thing is the Chinese art. However, I’ve no idea what the proper way is to approach it. With shock, awe, or pity. I’ve been to Dubai and Abu Dhabi and Beijing and Cairo. I loved those trips. I don’t want to say anything here that would jeopardize my being invited to go on some more. But I admit I had the same feeling about the art on offer in those places as I have in the Saatchi show: harmless cartoons for anyone.

Is the big issue that comes out of the Saatchi phenomenon the evil of commercialism? A striking thing about the present is that we often hear about a return to seriousness that art-market collapse might bring on, but the seriousness always turns out to be some kind of conceptual gag with an idiotic political meaning, or inane questioning of what "art" is, not seriousness as in something genuinely worth looking at. Complaining about commercialism in this context is meaningless: all this recently emerged, global art-market product is commercial, of course, but so is anything genuinely serious, beautiful, or powerful that’s happened in art for many centuries.

Why shouldn’t China have an art market? UK critics at the highbrow papers have been negative about this show, complaining the art is junk, as if they had a uniformly good record for sensitive radar on the difference between junk and refinement, which they don’t. I don’t care much about the art, either, but I mistrust the motivation of the bad reviews. I think it’s more about economic resentment than aesthetic judgment. On so many levels, the UK has been trounced by China. Now we see even our own YBA junk China-fied. We find it a bit rich.