Cruise and be happy
Saatchi’s taste is hard to pin down. With this show, you’re offered mockery of authority and staging of eruptions of disturbing fantasy in a context of repressed order, done in a conceptually glib way. The art market is very new in China, and its sudden success is part of China’s current world leadership. On the other hand, who cares? The art market is a pretty boring subject unless you’re a market insider of some kind. It’s to his credit that over the years, Saatchi has made out of his collection an ongoing spectacle that is accessible to anyone. You can see how such visual gestures might interest him. He isn’t just an art-market man. He’s a former advertising man. And economically visually witty meanings are what he knows about and is good at. "Saatchi's Open-Door Policy" originally appeared in the February 2009 issue of Modern Painters. For a complete list of articles from this issue available on ARTINFO, see Modern Painters' February 2009 Table of Contents.