Cultura: Reality TV has nothing to offer the art world

Charles Saatchi's new art reality show is a reflection of the low regard we have for genuine talent

Posted by Jonathan Jones

Monday 26 January 2009 13.14 GMT

Charles Saatchi, the Citizen Kane of the art world, is about to transform himself into the Andrew Lloyd Webber of art.

A new BBC2 series, Saatchi's Best of British, will see him preside over a contemporary art reality show, comparable with Lloyd Webber's I'd Do Anything. Talented hopefuls (I've put that phrase in as blog-fodder ...) will attend his "intensive art school, where they will be tutored by top contemporary artists." The show will "attempt to discover the next Damien Hirst or Tracey Emin." Well, I don't suppose anyone would expect it to discover the next Cy Twombly or Jasper Johns.

And yet... why not? For all his public image as consumer of the new for its own sake, time was that Saatchi had high standards and exuded authority. He did not just buy or exhibit any old thing. In comparison with today's new collectors, who splash out fortunes on hilarious graffiti knock-offs and wander dazed and confused, credit card in hand, through art fairs pulsing with banality, he was a veritable Pope Julius II of courageous taste. There was some sense that in making it into his gallery, a Hirst was achieving something - that it all ... mattered. Back in 1992, you could go to the Saatchi Gallery, see what Saatchi was buying, and the avant garde was right there before your eyes.

Does anything that happens in a reality talent show matter? What are you saying about art by becoming involved in such nonsense?

It's of a piece with the desperate inclusiveness of Saatchi's online activities, and the staggering, yet boring, plurality of British art now. "Everyone an artist", said Joseph Beuys, and in Britain this seems to have come true. Or, as Rupert Pupkin put it in Martin Scorsese's prophetic film The King of Comedy, you can have anything you want, so long as you're prepared to pay the price. We can all be artists so long as we're prepared to forget the idea that art has any worth or meaning. Art is easy if it's rubbish. Britain's Got Talent? No, what we actually believe is "Britain doesn't need talent."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2009/jan/26/saatchi-best-of-british