Charles Saatchi saved my life (and I still hate his book)
Ben Lewis
The weighty art of Richard Serra
Charles Saatchi saved my life. It’s true. It was 1986. I was 19 and helping the MoMart team install Saatchi’s incredible Anselm Kiefer and Richard Serra exhibition at his Boundary Row gallery in West London. Saatchi came round to see how the hang was going. We were in the middle of erecting a piece of Serra’s that involved four heavy lead sheets leaning against each other in a house-of-cards style. We balanced one upright, as Charles walked in. Scott said to me, “Just hold this a moment” and turned towards his client. For a moment I thought I was going to have to hang on to a one-ton sheet of lead by myself: Serra’s sculptures had already killed one assistant and put the artist in a wheelchair for months. “Don’t let that young man hold that all by himself,” Saatchi said, and a couple of other strong men leaped to my assistance. Saved!
Yet despite this enormous debt, I have nothing good to say about Saatchi’s new book My Name is Charles Saatchi and I am an Artoholic (Phaidon, £5.95)—a sign of just how bad it is. To his credit, Saatchi does come across as self-effacing, unpretentious, enthusiastic and urbane; but that’s about it, folks.
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