Charles Saatchi

Charles Saatchi (/ˈsɑːtʃiː/; born 9 June 1943) is a British businessman and the co-founder with his brother Maurice of the advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi. The brothers led that business – the world's largest advertising agency in the 1980s – until they were forced out in 1995. In the same year, the Saatchi brothers formed a new agency called M&C Saatchi. Charles is also known as an art collector and the owner of the Saatchi Gallery, and in particular for his sponsorship of the Young British Artists (YBAs), including Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin.

Early life

Charles Saatchi is the second of four sons born to Nathan Saatchi and Daisy Ezer, a wealthy Iraqi Jewish family in Baghdad, Iraq. The name "Saatchi" ساعتچی (sā’ātchi) means 'watchmaker' in Iraqi Arabic.^[2] Charles's brothers are David (born 1937), Maurice Nathan (born 1946) and Philip (born 1953).^[3] Nathan was a textile merchant and in 1947, he anticipated a flight that tens of thousands of Iraqi Jews would soon make to avoid persecution and relocated his family to Finchley, London.^[4][5] Nathan purchased two textile mills in north London and after a time re-built a thriving business. Eventually the family would settle into an eight-bedroom house in Hampstead Lane, Highgate.^[3]

Saatchi attended Christ's College, a grammar school in north London.^[4] During this time, he developed an obsession with US pop culture, including the music of Elvis Presley, Little Richard and Chuck Berry. He also manifested an enthusiasm for collections, from cigarette cards and jukeboxes to Superman comics and nudist magazines.^[4] He has described as "life-changing" the experience of viewing a Jackson Pollock painting at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. He then progressed to study at the London College of Communication.^[6]

Advertising career

In his first advertising role as a copywriter in the London office of Benton & Bowles, where he met Doris Lockhart (later his first wife), Saatchi paired up with art director Ross Cramer. They worked as a team at Collett Dickenson Pearce and John Collins & Partners before leaving in 1967 to open a creative consultancy CramerSaatchi.

Unusually for a creative consultancy, they took on employees – John Hegarty was their first, followed by Jeremy Sinclair, who as of 2011 still retains a senior role at M&C Saatchi. In addition to offering consulting with ad agencies they also took on some clients directly.

In 1970, he started the advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi with his brother Maurice, which by 1986 had grown to be the largest agency in the world, with over 600 offices. Successful campaigns in the UK included Silk Cut cigarettes and the promotion of the Conservative Party led by Margaret Thatcher through the slogan "Labour Isn't Working". Eventually, he and his brother Maurice left the agency, and together founded the rival M&C Saatchi agency, taking many of their clients with them, including the British Airways advertising account.^[5]

Art

The Saatchi Gallery's new premises in Chelsea, which opened in October 2008.

In 1969, at age 26, Saatchi purchased his first work of art by Sol LeWitt, a New York minimalist. Saatchi initially patronised the Lisson Gallery in Marylebone, London, which specialised in minimalist works; he purchased an entire show by Robert Mangold. On a visit to Paris in 1973 with his first wife, Doris Lockhart, he purchased a realist work by the British artist David Hepher, a detailed depiction of suburban houses. In the early 1980s, Doris and Saatchi purchased a 30,000 sq ft (2,800 m²) cement-floored and steel-girded warehouse at 98A Boundary Road in the residential London suburb of St. John's Wood. The Saatchi Gallery was opened to the public in February 1985, to exhibit the art Saatchi had collected.^[1][5]

At one point the Saatchi collection contained 11 works by Donald Judd, 21 by Sol LeWitt, 23 by Anselm Kiefer, 17 Andy Warhols and 27 by Julian Schnabel.

His taste has mutated from "School of London", through American abstraction and minimalism, to the Young British Artists, whose work he first saw at the Freeze exhibition. In 1991, he turned his back on the New York art world with two major acquisitions by new British artists. He was instrumental in 1992 in launching the career of Damien Hirst and in bringing Marc Quinn to the forefront of the art world. His renown as a patron peaked in 1997, when part of his collection was shown at the Royal Academy as the exhibition Sensation, which travelled to Berlin and New York, causing headlines and some offence (for example, to the families of children murdered by Myra Hindley, who was portrayed in one of the works) and consolidating the position of the YBAs.

Charles Saatchi by Paul Harvey

In 2009, he published the book My Name Is Charles Saatchi And I Am An Artoholic.^[7] Subtitled "Everything You Need To Know About Art, Ads, Life, God And Other Mysteries And Weren't Afraid To Ask", it presents Saatchi's answers to a number of questions submitted by members of the public and art fraternity. From November to December 2009, he had a television programme on the BBC called School of Saatchi in which he gave young aspiring artists an opportunity to showcase their work. He made no appearance in the programme, only communicating through an assistant. Artists including John Keane and Paul Harvey have painted pictures of Saatchi.

In July 2010, Charles Saatchi donated the Saatchi Gallery and over 200 works of art to the British public.^[8][9]

Philanthropy

He and his brother founded the Saatchi Shul, an independent Orthodox Jewish synagogue in Maida Vale, London, England, in 1998.^[10][11]

Personal life

Saatchi first met Doris Lockhart Dibley (as she was then known) in 1965 when she was a copy group head above him at Benton & Bowles.^[3] She was a native of Memphis, Tennessee^[12] and Kevin Goldman describes her as "a sophisticated woman who spoke several languages, knew a great deal about art and wine and who had graduated from Smith College and the Sorbonne".^[3] She became known during their marriage as an art and design journalist, with particular knowledge of American art and minimalism. They lived together for six years^[13] before getting married in 1973 and divorcing in 1990.^[12]

Saatchi's second wife was Kay Hartenstein (to whom he was married from 1990^[14] to 2001^[15]) an American Condé Nast advertising executive from Little Rock, Arkansas. Together they have a daughter, Phoebe.

Saatchi married his third wife, British journalist, author and cook Nigella Lawson, in 2003. In January 2011, Saatchi and Lawson moved from their former home in Belgravia to a new home in Chelsea, London. This was a double fronted seven-bedroom villa converted from its former use as a warehouse and conveniently situated only 200 metres from Saatchi's contemporary art gallery in King's Road, London. They lived with her two children Cosima and Bruno, as well as Phoebe.^[16][17]

In June 2013, while dining at Scott's, a London seafood restaurant, Saatchi was photographed placing his hand around Lawson's neck.^[18][19] The day after the pictures were published, Saatchi said they were misleading and depicted only a "playful tiff".^[20] He was subsequently interviewed by police about it and accepted a caution for assault.^[21][22] Lawson and her children left the family home,^[23] and in early July, it was announced that the couple were to divorce.^[24] Lawson cited ongoing unreasonable behaviour in her divorce petition.^[17] On 31 July 2013, seven weeks after the incident, Saatchi and Lawson were granted a decree nisi, ending their ten-year marriage.^[17] They reached a private financial settlement.^[17] R v Grillo and Grillo, a trial for fraud involving the former couple's two Italian-born personal assistants, sisters Elisabetta and Francesca Grillo, began on 27 November 2013.^[25] Charles Saatchi reportedly told his ex-wife that he would 'end' her.^[26]

Subsequent to the criminal trial of the Grillos, it was reported that both Saatchi and Lawson could be liable for employer tax contributions on the money used for the personal benefit of the two sisters. The money, and other benefits, could be considered taxable benefits in kind, that could potentially make them subject to a 13.8% employer National Insurance contribution. ^[27]

According to the Times Online, Saatchi is "reclusive", even hiding from clients when they visited his agency's offices,^[4] and, as of February 2009, has only ever granted two newspaper interviews, though he has appeared on Nigella Lawson's television shows as a background guest.^[4][28] He does not attend his own exhibition openings; when asked why by The Sunday Telegraph, he replied: "I don't go to other people's openings, so I extend the same courtesy to my own."^[28] Both Hartenstein and Goldman refer to Saatchi's reclusiveness/shyness as a feint or "his shtick',^[3] affected to allow him to accept (or more often decline) invitations and social requests as he chooses.

In The Sunday Times Rich List 2009 ranking of the wealthiest people in the UK, he was grouped with his brother Maurice and placed 438th with an estimated joint fortune of £120 million.^[29]

References

Further reading

• Hatton, Rita and Walker, John A. Supercollector: A Critique of Charles Saatchi, Institute of Artology, 2005. ISBN 0-9545702-2-7
• Kent, Sarah. Shark Infested Waters: The Saatchi Collection of British Art in the 90s, Philip Wilson Publishers Ltd, 2003. ISBN 0-85667-584-9
• Goldman, Kevin Conflicting Accounts – The Creation & Crash of the Saatchi & Saatchi Empire, Simon & Schuster, New York, 1997. ISBN 0-684-83553-3

External links

• The Saatchi Gallery
• Works by or about Charles Saatchi in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
• Charles Saatchi collected news and commentary at The New York Times
• Guardian Interview, 6 September 2006
• Saatchi answers reader's questions on Times Online, 4 April 2010
• Saatchi Says He’ll Give Britain His Gallery and Over $37 Million in Art, The New York Times, 1 July 2010