From:  =
   aspendex
Category: Art
Date:     07 October 2006

Poor Charles Saatchi. It must be hard being a =
collector today. You search high and low, west and=20
east, uk and us, looking for the next big thing. Your last big things, =
new blood, which received a=20
horrific critical reaction, and painting:  triumph of, which got =
mediocre press, weren't big enough to=20
qualify as even medium large.=20

So you are left spending every weekend searching squalid little =
galleries for big talents. You even set=20
up a website so that people can submit their own work, in case you and =
the art world has missed=20
anything. It's very hard work being a great collector and recognising =
tectonic art movements,=20
exhausting and debilitating on the eye seeing so much crap, just hoping =
for that stand out catchy=20
visual surprise that might herald the next YBAS. Perhaps they were a =
one-off, a once in a lifetime find,=20
the equivalent of the Impressionists or Picasso. You just can't know.

USA Today looks like the highlights from some MA shows at good colleges =
(which is nearly exactly=20
what it is). Even shabbily hung to add to its authentic art school look. =
Artists like Dana Schultz might =20
be quite good, but the whole looks like the usual hole-hearted attempt =
at creating art, make some=20
vaguely spectacular or carefully crafted, or carefully careless stuff =
that looks like other art, add a small=20
twist, or a whiff of the perverse, make a bigger version,  blend and =
churn out yet more average quite=20
pretty large-scale pieces of nothingness.=20

So poor Mr Saatchi has tried very hard to put this all together, and you =
just wish he had better=20
material to work with. This probably is the best show of youngish =
Americanish artists he could find, it=20
is just that he is scooping water out of a barrel with a hole in =
it.