Since the 1990s, Charles Saatchi has exercised considerable influence over the British art scene. An advertiser turned art collector who has built previously unknown artists into household names with the power of his check book, Saatchi’s influence over popular art began when he first started buying famous artworks in the late 1980s. Saatchi abandoned this practice by the beginning of the 90s, but his accumulated prestige allowed any art he bought up afterwards to be viewed in a prestigious light. Saatchi is perhaps best well known for his patronage of the Young British Artists (YBAs) Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin.

Saatchi’s influence over contemporary art was cemented with the opening of the Sensation exhibit in September 1997 at the Royal Academy. Sensation created a media firestorm thanks to its controversial subject matter and provided Saatchi with a multitude of free publicity. The exhibit was promoted by Time Out and was one of the most popular shows the Royal Academy ever put on with approximately 300,000 visitors. Sensation was an important move for the Royal Academy, and any press generated – good or bad – was desperately valued. Due to a decade of mismanagement, the Academy was in debt and looking to improve its reputation among a younger generation of art lovers.

Almost all of the mainstream press Sensations received was incredibly critical. The exhibit included sexually explicit paintings and sculptures by YBA artist Sarah Lucas, as well as controversial images of religious figures and serial killers. One such work, The Holy Virgin Mary by Chris Ofili, shows a black Mary messily painted, surrounded by what appear to be butterflies, but what are actually magazine clippings of crotches. The painting caused a public uproar and was vocally condemned by Christian organizations, many of which protested outside the Royal Academy regularly.

The second painting which garnered strong emotional push-back from the British public was Myra by Marcus Harvey: a massive portrait of Myra Hindley made from the hand prints of children. Hindley and her boyfriend Ian Brady were infamously convicted in the 1960s for torturing and murdering a series of children in Manchester. The Moors Murders collectively haunt the British conscience and were an extremely sensitive subject in the fall of 1997, as Hindley was in the midst of appealing her conviction. The shock of Harvey’s painting was only compounded when the artist declared he was “sexually attracted” to the image of Hindley, an attraction he believed was “part of the appeal” of his piece. Myra was spat at, criticized, and protested against until it was temporarily removed for repair following an incident in which ink and eggs were thrown on it by outraged viewers. 

Though I would never go so far as to deface Myra, I can’t exactly say I blame the people who did. Had Harvey merely created the piece and left its interpretation up to the viewer, I’m not sure I would feel as strongly about it as I do. But Harvey’s despicable comments regarding his sexual attraction to a woman who tortured and murdered children is disgusting. And as if those comments alone weren’t enough to make Myra heinous, Harvey even went so far as to support Myra’s pleases for release during the 90s, claiming that she was largely innocent and forced to participate in the murders by the psychotic Brady. This opinion goes against all evidence from the original trial (which included photographs taken of Hindley beaming atop a murdered child’s makeshift grave), and completely obliterates Harvey’s sense of morality in a way which makes me extremely uncomfortable. If siding with and professing sexual attraction to a child murderer isn’t enough to have your art removed from a gallery, then I don’t know what is. Even Myra Hindley herself asked Harvey to remove the painting, skillfully claiming that it was offensive to the memories of the victims- children she herself ended the lives of.

The stir caused by Myra and The Holy Virgin carried across the pond when Sensations opened in NYC. Mayor Giuliani declared the depiction of Mary “blasphemous” and lobbied to shut the exhibit down, at one point even threatening to withdraw the Brooklyn Museum’s funds. The debate started a culture war which culminated in a court case that forced Giuliani to restore funding. Still, opinions of Sensation were as divided in the US as they were in the UK. The Holy Virgin was defaced and the media was largely critical. Yet despite all the negative publicity surrounding Sensations, the hype allowed Saatchi to accumulate credibility as a collector. This credibility bolstered the careers of several YBAs, but when their extreme personalities and ridiculous art became tiresome, Saatchi’s value wavered. Since then, Saatchi’s patronage has been increasingly viewed as a curse instead of a blessing.