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Saatchi straddles porn to promote new sensation
By Tom Teodorczuk, Evening Standard 22.09.06
Lara Shnitger's sculpture has upset Academicians. She describes it as a "sort of fertility symbol"
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Charles Saatchi was today embroiled in a controversy over pornographic content in his new Royal Academy exhibition.
The millionaire art collector's new show, USA Today, will feature more than 150 works by 40 up-and-coming American artists when it opens at the RA next month.
It is Mr Saatchi's first show at the 238-year-old institution since the controversial Sensation in 1997 which turned Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin into household names.
Among the works at USA Today are Monica, a painting by Pennsylvanian artist Gerald Davis, which depicts a young girl with pompoms on her socks engaged in oral sex.
Davis said: "I don't think I fully understood a lot of these things at the time and that's why it's interesting to meditate on them with an adult perspective."
He added: "I realise that childhood sexuality is a taboo subject and can offend some people and be exciting to others."
Mr Saatchi, who is married to TV chef Nigella Lawson, said: "There are no portraits of child killers but those who are in the business of being offended shouldn't be too disappointed."
Other exhibits include Lara Shnitger's sculpture entitled I Want Kids, in the shape of a giant phallus. The artist rejected notions of paedophilia, arguing her work was a "sort of fertility symbol".
Norman Rosenthal, the RA's exhibition secretary, who co-curated USA Today with Mr Saatchi, said he was "a little fearful" when the exhibition was first mooted, but described it as "the next great show".
He said: "It doesn't mean any artists condone paedophilia, but it doesn't mean to say you shouldn't confront it - just as one confronts issues of the environment or global politics."
Mr Saatchi appears to have made little if any effort to censor the exhibition and several members of the Academy have voiced their fears about the institution being embroiled in renewed controversy.
Sculptor Ivor Abrahams said Mr Saatchi should not have been allowed to take over the main galleries. "Charles Saatchi never had much of an eye," he said. "What little eye he had has gone. He's scraping the barrel now."
Leonard McComb, the former Keeper of the Royal Academy Schools, said: "It is very inappropriate for Saatchi to be connected to the Royal Academy. The Sensation exhibition was very harmful."
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