Charlie's own words would have been a better link actually. Jonathon Jones - snoresville....
What I get from his remarks is that the 'Eurotrash' only do it for the investment and prestige, whereas in his day he did actually go out there and find the things himself. He did actually look at the stuff and decide for himself before he bought it, perhaps not very long, but his motto seems to have been buy in haste and resell at leisure. At least it wasn't about a lot of sleazy middlepeople with management mentalities and their cliquey little
Fairs (a cruel irony in that name)!
It is funny to hear him complaining about curators who don't have 'an eye' - he has been accused of this so many times himself! - but I think it was more a question of having no eye for 2D stuff in his case - but actually a very astute eye with 3D stuff. This is not so very uncommon. "'Man's got to know his limitations" as that esteemed art critic Clint Eastwood would have it. But toward the end of his article he says -
I am regularly asked if I would buy art if there was no money in it for me. There is no money in it for me. Any profit I make selling art goes back into buying more art. Nice for me, because I can go on finding lots of new work to show off. Nice for those in the art world who view this approach as testimony to my venality, shallowness, malevolence.
Everybody wins.
(my emphasis)
Well it's not quite true everybody wins, Charlie. This is tacit acknowledgement that he resells work regularly (when/where there's money to be made and needed) and this brisk turnover is not always good for an artist's prices or reputation. If Saatchi dumps an artist it can be a massive vote of no confidence for the rest of the market. And Saatchi is or was undeniably a major player - people notice when he unloads. Moreover it sets a worrying trend. As other mega-collectors adopt similar tactics, collecting begins to look a lot like dealing. Unless they hold onto the stuff, they're not really collecting. And if they're not really collecting, then artist's reputations look even more precarious. Everyone's just juggling hype. It's because of all this fast-tracking to the secondaries market that we get the equally disappointing stories about Zwirner's protectionist dealings on behalf of Marlene Dumas and Neo Rauch. Zwirner just won't sell Rauch's to private collectors since about 2007 - 1) to make sure the stuff goes into public collections (i.e. stay collected a little longer) 2) To stop collectors turning the stuff over in the secondary market and ramping up the prices (he can't sell even Rauchs when they're going for nearly a mill $ a pop (after Brad Pitt went on a spending spree at some art fair (Basel?), egged on by Eli Broad and picked up an early (1998) Rauch). Everybody wins? I don't think so. That's strictly short term thinking.
This is the real craziness of the current art world and Charlie has done his bit to bring us here. He's not the only one, by any means, and he admits himself he likes the competition, the thrill of the chase and the bargaining and all that. But let's not pretend what's good for the goose is good for the gander or that there's some trickle down bullshit. This was always about being first, making the most and getting out while you're ahead. As for turning around and pointing the finger - that's probably just a bonus.