London (REUTERS) — The great and the good of the British art establishment flocked to the opening of modern art mogul Charles Saatchi’s new gallery on the banks of the River Thames Tuesday — but the great man never showed.
“Charles simply hates parties,” his spokesman William Miller said of the publicity-shy millionaire.
While Saatchi’s partner Nigella Lawson, record producer Pete Waterman, artist Tracey Emin and model Jade Jagger rubbed shoulders, quaffed champagne and considered the varied works, outside 120 men and women shed their clothes in the name of art.
As artist Spencer Tunick, who has made a specialty out of picturing naked people in public places, urged press photographers not to flash, the 120 nudists did just that to the delight of tourists on the adjacent London Eye Ferris wheel.
“I love this stuff … maggots and all,” Waterman told Reuters, standing next to a work by Damien Hirst consisting of a cow’s severed head in a glass cage full of breeding flies.
“Art should make you look deeper, and this does,” he added before setting off for a full tour of the exhibition dominated by BritArt badboy Hirst’s works.
The reclusive Saatchi, 59, who made his fortune in advertising with his brother Maurice, has over the past two decades amassed a collection of more than 2,000 pieces.
Saatchi almost single-handedly made the reputation of Hirst with his penchant for pickled and diced animals, and Emin with her soiled bed covered in champagne corks and used condoms.
The gallery, which hopes to attract up to 750,000 visitors a year, is housed in the ornate and cavernous rooms of County Hall, the seat of London’s government from 1912 to 1987.
The monumental granite building overlooks the Houses of Parliament and is dwarfed by the London Eye, two of the capital’s biggest attractions.
On entering, the visitor is greeted by a polka-dotted Mini parked on the main steps leading to the old debating chamber.
Divided into two large and several smaller rooms, the Edwardian gallery challenges more than invites.
Works by Hirst of pickled cows, sheep, pigs, fish and a shark, as well as a fish tank containing a computer and a birthing bed, and rooms with colored discs, are scattered almost randomly through the gallery.
They are interspersed with works by Emin, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Marcus Harvey’s portrait of child-killer Myra Hindley made using the handprints of children, Jake and Dinos Chapman’s montage of mutilated mannequins and Ron Mueck’s morbid nudes, among others.
One startling piece by Richard Wilson is a room half filled with used motor oil that gives a dark reflection of the ornate ceiling but bears a health warning not on any account to touch.
“I never understood Tracey’s bed. But the oil room made me go ‘Wow!'” Waterman said.
