Saatchi On The Canvas

Charles Saatchi is about to unveil his epic new collection - and there isn't a tent or a preserved animal in sight. Instead, the millionaire art collector has bought canvas after canvas.
"Painting has been out of favour with international curators for some time," says Saatchi. "They have been obsessively peddling video, photography and installation art. Their eyes dull over when they see painting. It's categorised as bourgeois. They are fashion victims, beyond help."
The Triumph of Painting is unlikely to please either the "I know what I like" traditionalists or the art-world spivs. It's a collection of artists, few of whom are publicly well known here. Their work is personal, aggressive and neurotic. It isn't what the pro-painters mean by painting, although much of it is very painterly and quite beautiful. "This first show," says Saatchi, "is for the artists I most often see admired and ripped off when I go round art schools."
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Irish Art