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Man, You’re a not-so-Bad Man
The longest-serving member
of the now-dissolved artist collective BANK, Simon Bedwell was nominated
for this year’s Beck’s Futures prize, from which Charles
Saatchi bought the posters and paintings currently on show at County
Hall. Simon joined Jennifer Thatcher for a few beers at the Lord
John Russell pub in King’s Cross to continue an ongoing debate
about Saatchi, scumbag capitalists and piss-poor contemporary art.
JT …Did you see Saatchi
come to the ICA? When did you know he’d bought your work?
SB I knew at the Beck’s
opening, and the next day Philip [Dodd] negotiated for me. But I
didn’t know it was going to be shown [at ‘Galleon and
Other Stories’]; most stuff just goes into storage, doesn’t
it? About a week after the Momart fire happened, I just got a phone
call: I’m going to show the work.
JT And then he picked it
up straight away…
SB Yeah, I didn’t
want the work to go to Scotland [the next leg of the Beck’s
tour], ’cos I didn’t want to risk anything, er, happening!
The week before the show, I went down to see what he’d done
with it, and I met him then. I’d met him once before, actually.
He came to Zombie Golf. He’d rung John Russell – who was
in the bath – ’cos that was the number on the advert.
So he was desperately cycling all the way from Deptford ’cos
he thought I might have just gone out for a coffee. But I just happened
to be finishing the blood smears on the zombies, and he walks him.
He seemed nice; seemed like an ordinary bloke.
JT What did he think of
the show?
SB He said, this show is
the nuts. But he didn’t buy anything.
JT I was Googling you today,
and in an interview a couple of years ago you praise Saatchi for
being vulgar, rude and populist – an example of all the things
you wanted to be.
SB Well, he’s a symbol.
As a symbol, he seems to piss people off because it’s new money
versus English aristocracy. And that just seems ridiculous to me.
When the Berlin Wall came down, Saatchi & Saatchi were the first
over the Wall – the first advertising in the Eastern Bloc.
On the one hand, that’s like, you fucking scumbag capitalist
bastards; on the other you think, well, I’m a scumbag capitalist
bastard too, so it’s a logical conclusion to what I don’t
do anything about. It’s just chattering class Radio 4 bullshit,
a lot of this.
JT But no one actually
complains much about capitalism in the art world here other than
when Saatchi’s being discussed. Like you never hear about politics.
There’s an assumption that he’s the only one with a connection
to the Tories. So, it amazes me when it’s suddenly used against
Saatchi. But there are loads of other entrepreneurs or philanthropists
in the history of London’s public art institutions, like Henry
Tate getting the then government to give him money for his museum.
Saatchi might have got the government to give him money to build
a public museum if he wanted. But it doesn’t seem necessary
any more because all the public museums are so reliant on private
sponsorship anyway. Here’s someone who’s actually being
transparent about their money coming from one source. We don’t
know where the money’s coming from with many public institutions,
apart from when we see all these embarrassing corporate logos –
Egg, BP…
SB BP are drilling for
oil in the Arctic, for Christ’s sake. We’re all fucked.
We had free lighting from Siemens plc. I think Siemens were manufacturers
of Zyklon B in the Second World War. I think it’s stupid to
bitch about Saatchi. Would British art be anywhere now without him?
I don’t think so. What’s the complaint? His taste’s
so maverick and widespread: he buys some shit and occasionally he’ll
buy something good? Yeah, that’s true. So what?
JT That’s true of
the Tate.
SB If the Tate buys something
interesting, oh yes, a lot of chin-scratchers, ooh they’ve
really got good taste. A lifetime’s training.
JT But while they deliberate
and wait a year for funding, etc, Saatchi’s got in there first
with his chequebook, getting the best stuff!
SB They need to formulate
their policy on this very point: what is it that we want to represent?
They never ask these questions because, as you say, they’re
just the same champagne bandwagon. What Saatchi’s made happen
is to completely eradicate the difference between public taste and
private taste. And Tate – and people like that – are running
away from that idea. The only thing they’ve got left is to
invoke some higher power of public morality. And no one believes
that shit any more because it’s so obviously commercial. The
Tate is commercial.
JT How can they possibly
compete with Saatchi in terms of contemporary art? There never seems
to be anyone in their Art Now space when I go, maybe because it’s
tucked away at the very back of Tate Britain. The Tate seems to
be run more like a nice liberal TV station.
SB The argument that I
was talking about before with this person who was saying that I
shouldn’t have sold to Charles Saatchi seems to be based, again,
on some conveniently non-described higher moral position, i.e. we
all have a choice. And, of course, one always has the choice to
say no. Well, that’s not really a choice for most artists.
It may be a choice for people who are well established or are choosing
whether to put their next work in Helsinki museum or Belgrade or
New York. But that’s certainly not the choice of people Saatchi
buys. He’s keen to support young or emerging artists (though
I’m 41!). The aristocratic point of not selling to Saatchi
is just stupid; what would be being proved, and to whom?
JT This goes back to Robert
Hughes’s lecture at the Royal Academy, and his article in The
Guardian. He was bemoaning the fact that there’s too much money
in the art world; demonising Jeff Koons, people muscling their way
into the art world based on pure financial power…
SB Like the Medicis? They
muscled their way in too. I don’t understand the difference.
Or artists being ruined by money. That’s patronising.
JT His argument assumes
that money is available to and corrupting everyone in the art world.
SB But also some of the
best artists in history are the ones for whom commerce is part of
the work.
JT He misunderstood Koons’s
work completely.
SB Are there collectors
who genuinely work with artists rather than just coming out with
the chequebook? Well, maybe, but to me that’s another version
of the same thing. In a way it seems disingenuous and dishonest;
and let’s not kid ourselves that the person doing that isn’t
making semi-moral ‘profits’.
JT Most artists don’t
know what’s going to happen to their work after it’s been
sold, anyway. How can you keep a moral track? By selling it, you’ve
already agreed to renounce your responsibility.
SB You’ve been paid
to do that. I’ve always said you can burn it if you want, and
I wouldn’t mind. Now I’m very glad he decided to show
it!
JT But what do you think
about the idea that Saatchi might manipulate your work to serve
his strange brand of humour? That he might see it in the same way
as his cartoon gallery? Do you mind?
SB Well, I don’t think
they’re the same thing. But I can understand why they might
be seen as advertising, scrappy slogans and all that. I don’t
mind that; that’s where I’m coming from partly.
JT Shame he didn’t
buy your earlier work with BANK, then the little girl with the headline
‘Ad man, you’re a bad man!’ would have been appropriate.
SB I thought the Tate should
have bought the fax-bak installation; a really nice snapshot of
the London scene, the final Gallerie Poo Poo show. We’re not
in the Arts Council collection either.
JT I re-read Jonathan Jones’s
profile of Saatchi [in The Guardian, April 2003] after his review
of the current show , which is virulently anti-Saatchi, whereas
I had remembered Jonathan being quite kind about him when he first
opened County Hall. One year on from Jonathan Jones calling Saatchi
‘nice’ and the best thing that’s happened to British
art, he now says, to paraphrase, as a Thatcherite Saatchi would
have hated to be called a loser, but that’s just what he’s
become. A year on, Saatchi’s gallery is now deemed a bit of
a joke. But why is it suddenly a joke? What he’s showing now
is far more intriguing than what he opened with: his old favourites
and a Damien Hirst retrospective, reminding people of what he’d
done so far.
[Beer break]
*****
JT ...But because BANK
didn’t sell, that became your position, or the position you
were associated with.
SB That’s just because
we didn’t sell.
JT You became seen as anti-capitalist.
SB Failed capitalists!
We weren’t trying to sell primarily; we were trying to do the
best shows we could. We weren’t going to sell much anyway.
There were three, four, five of us; we’d have to split it.
So if not selling reads as some rebellion, that’s not our fault.
I’m stupidly quite proud of the fact that BANK never sold anything
because it sort of keeps it clean. So you end up believing the bullshit
that other people thought about you, which is that BANK never meant
to sell. But actually if you make stuff that looks like shit, out
of cardboard…
JT Brian Griffiths made
stuff out of cardboard and Saatchi bought him.
SB But that was neat cardboard!
JT So do you feel differently
now that you are selling? I remember you telling me that being in
Beck’s made you feel more responsibility towards all these
posters that had just been lying around your studio for years.
SB It’s as important
that these things are being shown in County Hall as it is their
being sold. There’s shit loads of people going to see it. Call
me a sentimentalist but that seems – since you’re doing
visual things that are meant to be seen – more logical than
one collector seeing them in a private house. Especially if you’re
using vernacular stuff like posters.
JT And posters are so often
about context…
SB The photograph of a
horse, The Rich Will Always Be With Us – that obviously changed
its meaning, because it’s now in the Saatchi Collection rather
than at the ICA. Means something very different, I think, because
he’s got the joke enough to buy it. Now, I think possibly the
winner in that is him, not me, but I don’t know. In a sense
I’m the winner ’cos I got the money, so the bait has been
taken. But, on the other hand, by taking my bait he’s getting
that joke, and changing the joke. And those relationships are what’s
interesting, partly as yet another illustration of the total lack
of power that artists have in the face of the market. And in the
same way – or maybe not the same way – Joseph Kosuth in
1967, or whenever he claims it was, decided to say, look, I’m
just doing these definitions, these Xeroxes. Anyone can just screw
them up and throw them away; it doesn’t matter. I saw one at
auction in Christie’s a few years ago for thousands of pounds.
Now, I don’t care what Joseph Kosuth says, the meaning of that
work is completely different, not just historically but even the
week after he said that in 1967. Money changed the meaning of that
work. And the same thing’s happened to my work.
JT There seems to be this
truism that British contemporary art now is very bad, or in Jonathan
Jones’s words ‘piss-poor’.
SB People have always said
that.
JT Maybe it’s to do
with fashion. You can’t be the arbiter of fashion for too long,
so maybe Saatchi’s run his course. No one wants him to be the
one still picking the great art now. But no one else has come along.
Or maybe there’s a time limit on how long a city can be trendy
for, and London’s run its course. People have made much of
Saatchi having ‘bad taste’, but actually he’s pretty
indiscriminate – he’s buying a lot, he’s buying the
centrepieces of most East End gallery group shows. It’s not
even a question of taste. He’s just buying the contemporary
art that’s been put out by these galleries as their best stuff.
He’s making some decisions, obviously, but it’s low risk.
SB And it’s still
cheap.
JT And he’s buying
from galleries or spaces already seen as ‘cool’. But most
people haven’t seen this art before, and so, as with most things,
people think it’s shit until they get used to it.
SB The thing about the
sentiment that ‘in the old days people did good shows and now
they’re not very good’… I mean, every single Saatchi
show I’ve ever been to had at least 50% shit in it. Now, this
show I’m in, I certainly hope I’m not part of the shit,
but I don’t know. History may prove me completely wrong –
that I am indeed completely part of the shit. I don’t know
and I don’t care either. Fuck it!
JT Well, no one really
mythologised Saatchi in the same way when he was at the Boundary
Road space, although of course he put on some influential shows,
but as soon as he left, people were like, Boundary Road was so important,
so sci-fi…
SB I remember when we were
doing our shows in the early ’90s and they were all slagging
off the Brit pack – the Brit pack was shit, they’re all
just charlatans, Damien Hirst was an arsehole. Adrian Searle and
everyone was slagging them off, saying it’s just shallow. It’s
just so fucking English and boring.
[Break to
get another pint]
*****
JT Do you think Nigella’s
gorgeous?
SB I met her that time
and she is completely gorgeous.
JT I think so too.
SB I’d never seen
her on telly or anything.
JT My friend just saw her
in the sock department of Harvey Nick’s.
SB What, buying socks?
JT Maybe sexy tights or
something.
SB Lucky bastard…
I like what he said in some interview recently about artists nowadays
looking like rock stars, I wish I was 19! He seemed quite cool to
me when I met him. He looks a bit like Al Pacino; it’s a good
look.
JT I can’t imagine
Nick Serota saying he loved it that all young artists look like
they should be in The Strokes.
SB Exactly. Jesus... Don’t
you think: Sarah Kent and Nick Serota – you never see them
in the same room, do you? Think about that. I have a feeling they’re
perhaps the same person.
JT Apart from she was really
into Brit Art and he wasn’t really. She was a total apologist
for it…
SB But that was already
’95/96, when she did that shark book. I reckon if you look
back to when it was all starting, ’91/92, and read the reviews,
it was all sneering. I bet you any money…
Jennifer Thatcher is Director of Talks at the ICA, London and a
freelance writer. jen.thatcher@totalise.co.uk
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