Yes, But is it Art? No. 2: School of Saatchi
BBC2
12 Dec 2009 – 10 Jan 2010

Rea Cris:

Since the creation of Big Brother, the market for reality TV shows has been booming and nowhere more so than in the United Kingdom, with blockbuster shows like Pop Idol, X Factor and The Apprentice. British television caters for all tastes with shows like Masterchef (cooking), I'd Do Anything! (West End musicals), Operatunity (opera) and for those who like to see B-rate celebrities eat bugs and get showered with manure, I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here.  And these are just the tip of the tip of the iceberg.  The only realm of society that had escaped the grips of reality TV was that of the elusive art world… until now.

Co-founder of the global advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi, Charles Saatchi is now better known as an art collector. Since offering his patronage to the Young British Artists (YBA) movement, he is responsible for launching contemporary British art worldwide and, of course, turning it into a lucrative commercial opportunity for collectors and artists alike. School of Saatchi is the new BBC2 four-part reality TV series where young artists battle it out for a chance to win the prize of a place in Saatchi’s group show at The Hermitage in St Petersburg and their own studio for three years.  It goes without saying that winning the competition guarantees the winner a golden ticket into art stardom. 

In the show Saatchi would be the equivalent of Sir Allen Sugar in the Apprentice or Simon Cowell in the X Factor, apart from the fact that he refuses to appear on camera.  Famously reclusive, Saatchi instead delivers his messages through one of his assistants, Rebecca Wilson. Saatchi does have a mixture of art world heavy weights to help him in his quest: YBA superstar Tracey Emin, Barbican’s head of galleries Kate Bush (not that Kate Bush - the joke’s old already), critic Matthew Collings and Manchester-based collector Frank Cohen, who is often called “The Saatchi of the North.” Although, in the end all final decisions are Saatchi’s.  While Collings is present throughout the show as an (ambiguous) advisor to the contestants, other established figures from the art world are also featured for each different episode.

The first episode shows the judges witling down the contestants from 100 to just six.  The subsequent episodes present the contestants with challenging commissions culminating in a self-curated exhibit in the Saatchi gallery. Unlike other reality TV competitions, each episode does not end with an elimination round, rather, the six contestants stay for the duration with the winner announced at the end.   I was quite skeptical about how the show would pan out, dreading choppy sequences, bad music, exaggerated pauses and a sarcastic voice-over, but overall the show was of a high quality and well edited. The show skirts between documentary and reality TV, the first and last episode acting more are a documentary or debate about modern art, while the sandwiched episodes revert back to the more formulaic format of reality TV albeit of a much tamer and intelligent standard.

Soon after sitting down to write my review I came to the realization that I cannot dissociate my review from my own personal experiences of being an art graduate, of being part of the art world itself as such.  If anything this show highlighted for me my constant and continuing struggle between my disillusionment of the art world and my desire to defend it.  I’m my own devil’s advocate, switching camps incessantly.  The show made me face and question my ideas about what I think art is and what I believe constitutes a good artist.  The show’s credits explain that the winner would be propelled into super sonic stardom while at the same time the show would be attempting to understand what modern art is.  The show is addressing and demonstrating the huge misconceptions and preconceptions about art both from the ‘inside’ and the ‘outside’; audience and contestants alike. Eugenie Scrase questions whether being good at life drawing makes you a better artist and Saad Qureshi continuously gets annoyed throughout the show about being asked ‘stupid questions’ such as “why is it art” at this stage in his career (none of the contestant are older than 30).

So what is Saatchi looking for and ultimately going to present to the world as modern art? Kate Bush explains that talent and skill is not enough, an artist should have a fresh vision, something original.  Throughout the show, Collings debates about the artist as a charlatan or genius, whether a borderline between the two is what modern art is about now.  For me the show holds the two ends of a spectrum of what an artist should and shouldn’t be in the two contestants Eugenie Scrase and Suki Chan. Eugenie is basically the centre of Collings’ musing on the charlatan genius. Eugenie is a first year art student who is not too fussed about the future and whose manner can easily be taken as pretentious and a ‘chancer’.  Suki is an art graduate who is very meticulous but incredibly sincere about her art.  Throughout the show Eugenie consistently produced works which are of the variety that leave audiences irritated with modern art, while Suki’s work, while sometimes equally ambiguous, at least are more calculated and considered.

Increasingly I’m annoyed at the prevailing impression that artists don’t seem to be interested in making art any more per say but are more interested in becoming famous without putting in the work or deserving the credit, like a perverted Picasso-syndrome.  But it is equally annoying that people seem to judge artists not by their work but by how they present themselves, do they look the part, do they talk the talk? It’s cringing when Collings says to one of the contestants “well you seem like a real artist to me”. So is modern art really more about the artist’s persona rather than their work? Do I even have the right anymore to be irritated by the increasing celebrity culture seeping into art if the art world fuels it itself?  

It has to be said that forevermore and from now on modern art is conceptual. As Collings explains; “we can no longer turn back to the past, art has changed irrevocably”.  Therefore the increase in artists discussing their work at length and all the concepts behind artworks are, in equal measure, necessary and hindering to modern art. It also explains the fine line between the charlatan and the genius. If an artist cannot understand the concepts they want to convey in their work, let alone discuss them, how can they then expect an audience to and, subsequently, take them seriously?  At the same time it is now much easier to get away with being a horrible artist but an excellent orator.  And this is where all the problems arise and the chasm between the ‘art’ world and ‘normal’ world arises.  Would the contestant, in episode one, whoscrunched up the two emails about art have been rejected if he has been a better orator instead of standing there basking in his own unoriginal cleverness, especially when in a later episode they reference Martin Creed’s “Work No.88” which the contestant was referencing.   It must be pointed out that Eugenie made it through selection despite similar ropey, wishy-washy explanations and concepts (although she did have a little help from Emin, who liked her work).

Because of all the conceptualism, there is now a lot of formulaic, cliché verbal diarrhea in the art world and it is very easy for artists to become complacent behind these tired and over used phrases. Bush (who did take issue with Eugenie’s work from the start) is especially good at asking poignant questions, getting the artists to reflect with more depth and asking the artists to identify the art in their work.  To someone who holds art dear, like me, it is an upsetting and time consuming struggle to constantly explain and defend art (especially modern art), but perhaps this show has revealed something to me.  For all its good, conceptualism in modern art has its disadvantages. Trained to think, look and critique things in a certain way, the art world never ‘switches off’, and therefore finds great depth in works like Eugenie’s handrail and whistle and Saad’s 2,000 towering chipatis, works that leave everyone else cold.  I agree with Bush that what makes good art is “something that makes you see something differently, takes something ordinary and makes it extraordinary, questions our compliancy with the world that surrounds us, effects a change in the mind of the viewer”.  But this conceptualism has now gone too far, the ideas are too far stretched, the connections and connotations too feeble and unconvincing even for me.  We’ve simply all become a parody of ourselves, the way we present ourselves, our terminology, the way we discuss art.

And before we can announce the winner, should we not take a moment to reflect on Saatchi’s intentions in making this show. I have never found him to be a really sincere art lover but rather a continuously calculating advertising giant.  I can’t help but think that Saatchi is not really interested in the contestants as artists who he can help nurture and evolve, but rather as his next big pay check.  Some critics believe School of Saatchi, is Saatchi’s attempt to regain the monumental influence he had with the YBAs which has since been steadily waning.   Unlike what most reviewers thought, the lack of Saatchi does not injure the show, but rather makes it stronger, focusing the audience on its content rather than its personalities.  The Apprentice seems to focus on yuppies shamelessly cavorting before Sugar, constantly gushing ‘Thank you Sir Allen’, while Simon Cowell’s judgments must be the only reason anyone watches the X Factor, cue audience screaming incomprehensibly. By visually removing himself, Saatchi has allowed those involved and those watching to actually concentrate on the task at hand.

And at the end I feel just as frustrated. The winner is Eugenie, whose final piece ‘Trunkated Trunk’ was the best in show, but whose overall performance personifies for me the direction modern art should not take. ‘Trunkated Trunk’ is a section of fencing with a piece of a tree trunk impaled upon it. The found object is tactical and is a frozen moment of the extraordinary in the ordinary, it can be playful or full of sorrow in the eyes of its beholder; but it begs the questions: if Eugene had not come across it, what then? Her second piece for the final show was completely ripped to shreds by the judges, yet there seems to have been a collective decision to turn a blind eye to it in order to appoint her the winner. A lot of the praise is based on everyone being impressed by her confidence to extract the fence for the exhibit. So is she really a great artist or simply incredibly lucky and ballsy woman?  I need not worry about the other contestants as they will surely be picked up by some gallery or another, yet I still feel a sense of injustice that the person who won is the person who (on a whole) represents everything I hate about modern art; who essentially is the exact opposite of what I believe art should be and what an artists should be.  But then again I could be barking up the wrong tree.

Tonya Warner:
I will start with a disclaimer that I live in the US and therefore had some trouble watching School of Saatchi online.  I managed to find the first 3 episodes, but the final, wherein – surprise, surprise – the most controversial contestant won – proved elusive.

One thing to keep in mind while watching this show is found in the title itself: Saatchi.  This is not really about defining or qualifying modern art but what is favored by Charles Saatchi – a man who earned his notoriety presenting work that pissed people off.  His approach to art and what he deems to be good art seems to be what falls in line with what the general public would hate but what is highly marketable to the cultured elite.  Saatchi draws his cultural clout by positioning himself as an expert who is needed to explain why something is “good”.  The evaluation of art is highly subjective and this show does not try to hide the fact that it is all about what Charles likes. At first it seems strange that they would even bother asking the opinions of everyday people but when one realizes that he is equating whatever is misunderstood by the masses to therefore be valuable in the art world, it makes a lot more sense.

His choice of guest artists can be head scratching, including Tracy Emin herself.  Something of a media whore, I kept asking, who is she to judge?  What has she produced that is so fabulous?  What bothered me most about her presence is that rather than really asking Eugenie about her work, Emin explained it for her, therefore giving substance and meaning to otherwise half assed attempts at “being original”.  I think this show places too much emphasis on the “fresh” and “new” and not enough on artwork being well-executed and thoughtfully conceived.  Unlike Rea, I am not so anti-conceptual – I believe it can be well done, but the biggest challenge that the art world currently faces is how to differentiate between meaningful conceptual work and sheer laziness.  As we see with Eugenie, the difference is not so cut and dry.  I think where the art world and the art educational system (especially in the UK) has gone wrong is in turning a complacent eye, thereby encouraging bullshit to proliferate.  Conceptual art is, on the surface, technically easier by far than learning the craft of painting, sculpting, or photography, which is, I think, why it is so appealing to young artists.  Not that having a refined technical skill automatically denotes good art nor is it required (see Jeff Koons).  It is strange that the jurors even bothered to force the contestants to create a life drawing.  A combination of craft, concept, and generally an allusion to a large narrative or idea is what to me makes good conceptual art.

The fact that Eugenie cannot speak about her own art is rather telling.  At one point she describes one of her pieces as “it makes them think a bit more about [pause] things.”  I think as a first year art student she has a good start and some good ideas, however, she needs more time to explore and experiment, more teachers who force her to really think about what she’s trying to communicate before she can truly be called “an artist”.  Saad’s outrage at being asked “is it art?” “at this stage in [his] career” is telling of exactly why such questions need to be asked.  I think Saatchi, by making her (or trying to make her) into an art superstar at this stage, based on the shit she’s been putting out is doing the girl a disservice.  The question is, will any collectors or critics buy it?

Like Rea I feel that Suki is by far the strongest artist in the group.  Her work is meticulous and well thought-out with a keen attention to site specificity.  I hope that despite not winning a spot at the Hermitage, this show will catapult her career.  In the end, the show, more than providing water cooler gossip, creates a good starting off point for a discussion of what is more important – intention or interpretation in evaluating modern art.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00p71qk

http://www.sukichan.co.uk