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London’s Palace of the Perverse
The Saatchi Gallery

By David Peevers

Cows, neatly chain-sawed and stitched around their severed sections into vivisected cross-sections floating in enormous vats of formaldehyde. The head of a slaughtered beast of some sort lying in a Plexiglass bin surrounded by thousands of corpulent flies who were, mercifully, more attracted to a bowl of mush provided them. Was this a sort of nouveau ‘coat of arms’ for the inbred British, I wondered? “Flies rampant with beasty head” for example?

Who better to send half way around the world to witness and write about what’s possibly the world’s most stupefyingly twisted modern art museum than someone who knows absolutely nothing about it whatsoever? So I went to London to record reactions, revulsions and various repugnances that I might experience at the Saatchi Gallery; the Frankenstein of the south-bank-of-the-Thames’ cultural explosion. 

It’s all the brainchild of gazzillionaire and advertising maven, Charles Saatchi who has said of his lust for outraging the public, “I think that new British art is the most exciting in the world and needs a dedicated showcase. I don’t want the artists I believe in to have to wait until they are pensioners before the public has a chance to see their works in large-scale shows." The Gallery opened in its current home in 2000 to hub-bub, hoopla and hordes of the merely curious or the simply deranged.

The Saatchi is literally at the foot of the Millennium Wheel (actually known as the ‘London Eye’) which hoists passengers to a dizzying 350 feet above the city for the best photo (or puking) ops you’re likely to find in all of the city. It’s a colossal experiment in glacial transport – as it makes its agonizing 40 minute loop above the city - and a test of one’s ability to avoid death through sheer boredom. A blonde, blue-eyed Rastafarian was shilling for the Gallery amidst the hordes of an ethnic mish-mash queuing for entrance to the Eye. I think I detected a Swedish/Jamaican accent. 

The Saatchi occupies a staid and stately old building, formerly the London City Council HQ’s, and you reach it via ‘tube’ to arrive at Waterloo Station. “Fittingly named” I thought. “Napoleon began his ultimate demise at Waterloo. Why shouldn’t I begin and end my career as an art critic at the same locale?”  Imagine the loathing and disgust that the Fleet Street and Parliament crowds of Victoria’s era would feel if they made their way into the sprawling halls of the Saatchi in these down and dirty days of  publicly celebrated perversions. Decorum and a certain British sensibility had been maintained within these hallowed walls. What awaits within today is, however, another matter entirely.

My viewing of the floating cows ensured what I had always suspected: Cows are very empty animals except for the portions dedicated to producing methane. Next among my musings were the Hiroshe Sugimoto gelatin-silver prints of famous dead British royals taken in Madame Tussaud’s waxworks and printed, I was told, one and a half times life-sized including a portrait of Henry VIII that made me fear for my life. I shall not wax further on the subject…

Through this hall I passed piles of manure building other piles of manure into the gigantic main hall where I discovered a group of sniggling Spanish school girls astonished by an armchair that intermittently sported an enormous schlong. Nearby, artist Marc Quinn created a unique self portrait entitled “Self”. It’s a death mask, really, fashioned from gobs of his own blood and frozen within a plastic cube by a really neat refrigerator, which I was far more attracted to. I was actually tempted to ‘pull the plug’ on old Marc –an act of artistic mercy killing, I would claim in court – but since the head had been floating there since 1991 I decided to let it awake to the horrors of industrial freezer burn. 

I then encountered a vast aquarium of scum-sucking fish that looked as though they could make short work of Marc Quinn’s head. They were swimming through a maze of gee-whiz technology items such as computers and a gynecological exam table, their drooping jowls making them look like sedated Fu-manchus. And I wondered if gynecologists look like this to all women. This was the work of the fabled Damien Hirst whose work is also honored at the nearby Tate Modern where you can watch a video of him beating himself to a pulp. If I specialized in pickling cows I might have a pretty rotten view of my self worth too.

Nearby was a withered tree with a nice collection of dismembered and castrated corpse-mannequins impaled on the sharp branches. It was supposed to have something to do with Goya… Yeah, right.

I was beginning to think that most of this …art …was something that could be put together by a group of mongoloids at summer camp when I rounded a corner and was hit in the solar plexus by an image of total malignity. It was a painting by Marcus Harvey of Myra Hindley, one of the “Monsters of the Moors” murderers who once tape recorded the murder of a child for later amusement. Rendered in gobs of grey, white and black pigment and twelve feet high it was as palpable an expression of pure evil as the eyes of Charlie Manson. Frightful.

Nasty, lumpen murals of grotesque women I hope never to wake up next to then led me on to yet another tank (Mr. Saatchi must just have a thing for them) containing a 17 foot Australian tiger shark. Its snarling visage leapt out at me from different angles of its light-warping tank: I couldn’t get away from it. It reminded me of being in the Boston Aquarium in the sixties and watching the acid heads who would gather at the shark tank roaring, “Oh My Gaaaawd!” while screaming school groups clambered for safety.

Then I discovered one of the ‘poetry sections’ of the museum. It was a patchwork quilt looking as though assembled from patches of fabric slashed by a pack of rabid wolverines on Benzedrine. Its message? “Come unto me. Every time I feel love, I think Christ! I’m going to be crucified! So I close my eyes and become the cross. SO BEAUTIFUL”. I could imagine Shakespeare’s ghost in the nearby Globe theatre turning cartwheels in horror.

Not to be outdone in the literary department were the coy and insightful comments occasionally pasted up next to the exhibits by the curators themselves. One of these sages had written of an exhibit, “In ‘Chicken Knickers’ she straps a plump, juicy Butterball to her pants, reducing herself to a piece of meat; raw, gaping, cold and provoking an instant desire to fuck it”. “Boy”, I thought. “I’m not having this guy over to my house for Thanksgiving anytime soon”.

Religion naturally comes in for some heady treatment at the Saatchi. Look! Here’s a nice Virgin Mary done up in some sort of Aboriginal style. Almost tasteful, you think, until you notice that those hundreds of little medallions she sports are actually porno cutouts of various orifices, all lacquered onto a board in some kind of slime that looks like the last orgasmic juice of a diseased manatee. Tasty. I thought of mailing a Christmas card of it to Jerry Falwell. Next up is a soiled mattress cradling two large melons and an upright cucumber sprouting from between a pair of swollen oranges symbolizing… Oh! I just can’t put my finger on it. But it’s right on the tip of my tongue…

A glowering infant looking like the lovechild of Mussolini and Marlon Brando made me grateful that I don’t have kids. Another reason not to have kids is to be shown how adults look to them. Ron Mueck’s frighteningly realistic self portrait – three times the size of God almighty and suspended in its own alcove - glowers down at you with ultimate parental rage and disapproval. It’s a perfectly created work, actually, and gets pride of place in the entire gallery. It’s effect on me was that I just wanted to crawl under the nearest bed and sulk with my ‘blanky’.

Then, in an antechamber, (is that where you store used aunts?, I wondered) I discovered Yasumasu Morimura, surely a household name in gay sushi bars. He had photographed himself as Marilyn Monroe approaching her ‘70’s and looking like she was out arm-twisting corporate donors for George Bush. Nearby was a photo installation of a couple of white trash lizard people as they scratched and clawed and puked and bled their way into Modern Art immortality.

The world’s largest medicine cabinet had me lusting – by this time – for Maalox as my stomach was feeling kindred with that shark in his embalming fluids. I wasn’t alone in feeling this way. I met a woman and her son just flown in from Boston. She said to me, “I wish I hadn’t had corned beef for lunch,” as she eyed a nine-foot-tall pile of embalmed mice. But finally I rounded yet another corner and came face to face with the reason that fate had sent me here.

It was a bed like most I’ve slept in. With soiled sheets and books and cans and bottles and cigarettes spewing everywhere. Reams of sheet music and torn newspaper scattered like the survivors of a small bomb. Unclean dishes were stacked in complete defiance of gravity. Stabs at creativity jostled for space with cheese rinds. And it was here that the Saatchi provided me with my epiphany. I felt so grateful that I nearly wept, for the truth was revealed! I was indeed not a slovenly, drunken, smoker who is basically incapable of taking care of himself. No, by God! As it was revealed by Saatchi himself, I can now stand up proudly in front of the world and shout, “I… am… an… Artiste!

Getting There

Knowing that I was gong to be soon engaged in the front lines of the ‘Art Wars’ at the Saatchi, I had only two things in mind. Complete comfort in getting to London and – after enduring an onslaught of sensory overload – complete comfort in the place I chose to stay. Getting there, as it turns out, was half the fun. I flew on Virgin Atlantic in Business class and it was a very real joy as countless times I’ve flown the ‘sardine skys’ where you’re packed in like lab rats and the couple behind you – apparently – is boiling their two year old. Not so with Virgin. The stewardesses all looked as they’d just stepped off the dance floor at a Viennese ball; radiant, intelligent, glowing. I was having a total blast trying out my reclining seat that had more positions than the Kama Sutra when one of these angels of mercy asked if I would like to schedule a massage for later. No, I wasn’t dreaming. I demurred, however, as the first glass of Pouilly fuisse arrived, knowing that sleep was an imperative. After a dinner that I can only recall as splendidly prepared, I sprawled my lanky frame nearly flat out and – for the first time ever in crossing the Atlantic – slept a blissful and uninterrupted eight hours. This is the way to fly.

A Note on Jet Lag

Save your sanity and health when making long flights. I have flown drunk and stone cold sober. I’ve fasted for days before a flight or gorged myself with heavy meals. I’ve stayed awake for days before flying in the hopes that slumber would catch up with me. But nothing I ever did prevented me from arriving at the airport looking like someone who should go to the top of all Interpol computers. This ‘Werewolves of London’ factor would actually cripple and stunt me for weeks. Until I found this stuff called ‘No Jet Lag’. It’s homeopathic, tastes like sugar pills and you just pop ‘em like M&M’s. And when you arrive – wherever you arrive – there you are! Do NOT fly without these little guys.

The Radisson Edwardian at Heathrow

Don’t be deluded about the skill sets that travel journalists are supposed to have been born with. I’m about as oriented in a new city as a lone Cub Scout in Vegas. I depend on the kindness of strangers to keep me from getting run over by trolleys and other lumbering hulks. German train schedules instill a horror in me akin to facing an exam in Chinese algebra. When I step off a plane, I’m in shock: My God! Now what?!? I want to get to the absolute best place to hide and then I want all my connections to be brainless and painless.

So it is at the Radisson Heathrow where a shuttle picks you up and you’re swept into your room with all the kind attentions you could ask for. The place is a palace, truly, and deserving of each of its five stars. Suites are largish, filled with creature comforts and absolutely, blissfully silent. The staff people here all seem to have PhD’s in people skills and are vast repositories of local knowledge. When finally I felt ready to brave the world again, I felt like a six year old whose name and home phone number had been safety-pinned to his parka. I was ready for the Saatchi and –for the first time in recent memory – actually felt fondness for a hotel. A highly recommended experience.

The Saatchi Gallery: www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk

Radisson Edwardian Hotels: www.radissonedwardian.com

Virgin Atlantic Airways: www.virgin-atlantic.com

Story and copyright 2003 by David Peevers
Phone: 310-636-0015
Email: peeversla@aol.com
Website: www.peevers-la.com 

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