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Charles Saatchi

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Charles Saatchi
Born (1943-06-09) 9 June 1943 (age 81)
Baghdad, Iraq
NationalityBritish[1]
Occupation(s)Advertising executive, art collector and creative director
Known forSaatchi Gallery
Saatchi & Saatchi
Spouse(s)
Doris Lockhart
​
(m. 1973⁠–⁠1990)​

Kay Hartenstein
​
​
(m. 1990⁠–⁠2001)​

​
(m. 2003)​

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, and 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 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" derives from the Iraqi Arabic ساعاتي (sā’ātī) meaning "watchmaker",[2] Persian and Turkish. Charles' 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 a house with eight bedrooms on Hampstead Lane in Highgate.[3]

Saatchi attended Christ's College, a secondary school in North London.[4] During this time he developed an obsession with U.S. 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 consulting to ad agencies they also took on some clients direct.

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 departed 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 twenty-six, 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 realist 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 eleven works by Donald Judd, twenty-one by Sol LeWitt, twenty-three by Anselm Kiefer, seventeen Andy Warhols and twenty-seven 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 much offence (for example, to the families of children murdered by Myra Hindley) 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]

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[10] 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[11] before getting married in 1973 and divorcing in 1990.[10]

Saatchi's second wife was Kay Hartenstein (married from 1990[12] to 2001),[13] also American from Little Rock, Arkansas who was a Condé Nast advertising executive. Together they have a daughter Phoebe.

Saatchi married celebrity cook Nigella Lawson – his third wife – in 2003. In January 2011, Saatchi and Lawson moved from their former home in Belgravia to their new house in Chelsea, London. Their new home is a double fronted 7 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 live with her two children Cosima and Bruno, as well as Phoebe.[14]

According to the Times Online, he is "reclusive", even hiding from clients when they visited his agency's offices,[4][need quotation to verify] 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][15] 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."[15] 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 £120million.[16]

In June 2013, at Scott's, a London seafood restaurant, he was photographed placing his hands around the neck of his wife.[17][18] The day after the pictures were published, Saatchi said they were misleading and depicted only a "playful tiff".[19] He was subsequently interviewed by police about it and accepted a caution for assault.[20][21] The BBC later reported his wife's agent had stated she had left with the children following the assault, but did not state whether this was temporary or permanent.[22] On 7 July, it was announced that the couple were to divorce.[23]

References

  1. ^ a b "Charles Saatchi". Britannica Online Encyclopedia. Retrieved 24 November 2009.
  2. ^ Alkalesi, Yasin M. (2006). "Nouns of Occupations with Suffixes -chi and -chiyya". Modern Iraqi Arabic: A Textbook. Georgetown University Press. ISBN 978-1-58901-130-4. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
  3. ^ a b c d e Goldman – Conflicting Accounts
  4. ^ a b c d e Thomson, Alice (28 February 2009). "The Saturday interview: Charles Saatchi". London: Times Online. Retrieved 24 November 2009. {{cite news}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
  5. ^ a b c Jones, Chris (12 July 2002). "Charles Saatchi: Artful adman". BBC News. Retrieved 24 November 2009.
  6. ^ Gleadell, Colin (31 December 2001). "Adventures in Saatchiland". London: Telegraph. Retrieved 25 November 2009.
  7. ^ ISBN 0-7148-5747-5
  8. ^ Hewage, Tim. "Saatchi Donates Art Collection To Public", Sky News, 1 July 2010.
  9. ^ Dorment, Richard (1 July 2010). "Charles Saatchi's donation". The Daily Telegraph. London.
  10. ^ a b Darwent, Charles (18 October 1998). "Pieces from a confessional". London: The Independent. Retrieved 24 November 2009.
  11. ^ Goldman, p.39
  12. ^ Heller Anderson, Susan (13 August 1990). "Chronicle". The New York Times (New York ed.). The New York Times. p. B6. Retrieved 26 February 2010.
  13. ^ Dougary, Ginny (26 July 2008). "Kay Saatchi on life after Charles Saatchi". The Times. London: Times Newspapers. Retrieved 26 February 2010.
  14. ^ Hilton, Beth. Lawson 'won't leave children a penny'. Digital Spy, 2008-01-29. Retrieved on 2008-01-31.
  15. ^ a b "Readers' questions". The Sunday Telegraph. Retrieved 24 November 2009.
  16. ^ "Rich List 2009". London: Times Online. 2009. Retrieved 26 November 2009.
  17. ^ Victoria Ward "Nigella Lawson 'attacked by husband' at restaurant", telegraph.co.uk, 16 June 2013
  18. ^ "Nigella Lawson's throat attack ordeal Charles Saatchi momentary tiff". Daily Mail.
  19. ^ Davenport, Justin (17 June 2013). "EXCLUSIVE: 'It was a playful tiff': what Charles Saatchi says of pictures showing him holding Nigella Lawson by the throat". Evening Standard. Retrieved 18 June 2013.
  20. ^ Topping, Alexandra (17 June 2013). "Charles Saatchi says restaurant row with Nigella Lawson was 'playful tiff'". The Guardian. Retrieved 17 June 2013.
  21. ^ "Charles Saatchi accepts caution for assault", independent.co.uk , 17 June 2013 Retrieved 17 June 2013.
  22. ^ "Nigella Lawson images 'playful tiff', says Saatchi", BBC News, 18 June 2013
  23. ^ "Charles Saatchi and Nigella Lawson to divorce", BBC News, 7 July 2013

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

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