Having studiously avoided the media for years, Charles Saatchi was stirred enough to write an article for the Guardian last December that opened: ‘Being an art buyer these days is comprehensively and indisputably vulgar. It is sport of the Eurotrashy, hedge-fundy, Hamptonites; of trendy oligarchs and oiligarchs.’
He has a point. A new type of collector is taking a close interest in contemporary art and elbowing old hands such as Saatchi out of the way. These new collectors are not interested in watching artists build a career through museum shows over a period of years. They’re not out to spot new movements as Saatchi tried to do with young British art. Instead they want to find out who is the latest overnight sensation and indulge in a flurry of speculative buying and selling.
Nothing exemplifies this cultural shift more potently than the story of the sudden and meteoric rise of a young American artist, Jacob Kassay, who went from modestly priced newcomer to auction-house phenomenon in the blink of an eye.
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