Phaidon published Mr. Saatchi's 2009 My Name is Charles Saatchi and I Am An Artoholic. He had plans to publish two more books, The More You Like Art The More Art You Like and Questions by Charles Saatchi, with the house but says Phaidon's control over his material, in terms of editing and licensing the book, is too strict.

If there's anything at all amusing in this, it's that The Telegraph has shoehorned Mr. Saatchi's wife TV chef Nigella Lawson into the second paragraph. She has nothing at all to do with the case, but that's U.K. journalism for you. If David Zwirner was married to Paula Deen, you'd expect that we'd keep her relegated to the fourth paragraph on something like this, no?

Mao (1973) by Andy Warhol.

Charles Saatchi is the most influential collector of the past 25 years, and one of the most controversial. Notorious for never appearing at his own openings and for not granting interviews, the British former advertising magnate remains a mysterious figure who wields his influence through his Saatchi Gallery shows and the subsequent sale of the artworks in them; to this day he continues to influence the market for contemporary art in his Gatsbyesque style. I’ve met him only once, at a London restaurant with our mutual friend Jean Pigozzi; Mr. Saatchi picked up the tab, which was generous of him since he was on a diet and ate almost nothing.

A new edition of The History of the Saatchi Gallery (Booth-Clibborn, 1,008 pages, $85.00) has just been released. It’s a reprint of the same title done in a monster-size “OPUS” edition in 2009. Now that it’s available in a manageable size, it’s time to buy it and study it. I scored my signed copy at Sotheby’s in London during last month’s auction previews. This tome is essential for serious art collectors because it shows us the amazing breadth of what Mr. Saatchi has bought, exhibited and sold between 1985 and 2009, following a collecting model I’ve dubbed the “show and sell.” There are many questions surrounding the underlying meaning of his collecting activity, and the morality of his method; just about everything about Mr. Saatchi interests me, in fact, because there’s a lot of Saatchi-ness in today’s art market.

What motivated Mr. Saatchi to produce the oversize book two years ago and to republish it today in a smaller but still jumbo size is no doubt both his ongoing need for recognition and his desire to donate his gallery with its sundry art leftovers to the British government, presumably so that he won’t have to continue underwriting it himself. He tried to get out from under it last July (see my article from Nov. 3, 2010) but that deal fell apart over the gallery’s plan to fund itself through future purchases and sales, a practice that violates museum bylaws in Britain and everywhere else. But buying and selling is what Mr. Saatchi has done for years, and it has worked amazingly well for him it seems, at least until fairly recently.

Flipping through the book, I couldn’t help but marvel at the amazing Warhols he owned, the Judds and the Mardens, the Freuds and the Serras, though sadly for him he owned no Lichtensteins, Bacons or Basquiats. I couldn’t stop myself from adding up what these artworks would be worth today, forgetting Mr. Saatchi’s recent shows and sticking only to the really good stuff he had up until the end of the mid-’90s: I easily came up with $1.5 billion. Even this past decade he proved he still had the eye when he bought, exhibited and then sold great painters like Marlene Dumas, John Currin and Peter Doig and even a few emerging artists, like the then-up-and-coming Mark Grotjahn, who have since garnered blue-chip status. He also had great sculptors like Charlie Ray and Thomas Schutte, but over time his hit ratio has been going down, the proof of this being the book’s inclusion of some horrid and unforgivable chazerai—junk food—that you couldn’t pay me to hang in my house.

Making things more difficult for Mr. Saatchi today is the fact that the art market has become more efficient, and he’s often priced out of it. Rising art prices have forced him to eschew the four-man shows of famous artists he used to do in favor of broader and broader shows with catchy adman titles like “Painting Today” or “Sculpture Tomorrow,” probably because his buy-show-sell strategy has become riskier and less lucrative; art today is fully valued and looks like it will remain so.

When those drift-net shows dead-ended, he went ethnic, with Indian art, then Chinese art, and I’ve already forgotten what else. It’s all worth studying because he has successfully invented a new way to collect art, though sadly now the overall quality of the work keeps forcibly trending down.

Part of me feels Mr. Saatchi never should have moved beyond the original show of 1985, “Judd, Marden, Twombly, Warhol.” It was so good it could have stayed up permanently. As crazy as this sounds, and though it wouldn’t cause any “sensation,” the quality was outstanding, and it would be worth a helluva lot more money than whatever is left in his collection today. In fact, the number of never-ever-to-be-seen-again-on-the-market works that he has shown and sold over the years is downright depressing.

So what conclusions, if any, am I to draw from all this? I asked a wise veteran, art dealer Arne Glimcher, founder of the Pace Gallery, who has dealt with Mr. Saatchi over the years; his answer: “Charles was always a dealer.”

Many would concur, but I don’t; if you’ve owned all that, even if most of it is long gone, then you are what they call a collector-dealer. And, yes, Mr. Saatchi is the original collector who deals. The very reason why Mr. Saatchi, who should instead be lauded for what he’s done for art, is more often maligned by the “art world” is that he regularly sells anything he can. The art world to this day loves to adhere to its hypocritical views that dealers are permitted to sell for profit but “collectors” should not do the same.

I’ve had to deal with this disingenuous hypocrisy for over a decade, but as archaic and absurd as this may sound, most of the art world still buys into the charade. Though I can’t compare myself to Mr. Saatchi, I too have sold art to buy more art, and I refuse to bow to any false moral judgments that others may cast upon me; nor will I behave like a rich, vacuum-cleaner-style collector. I’ll let others play that role.

It’s a well-known fact that in 2007 I sold a fabulous sculpture by Jeff Koons at auction and it achieved the highest price ever paid for an artwork by a living artist. It was a great work by a great artist and it made a great price, so why should I feel badly about a sale that was good for the market, good for the gallery (prices jumped for new works) and a good market confirmation of the artist’s enormous stature? Instead, I received several dirty looks and was accused of being a profiteer: all sour grapes, I’m afraid.

This brings us to the tired old story of how Charles Saatchi ruined Italian painter Sandro Chia’s market when he dumped a suite of Mr. Chia’s paintings at auction years ago—what rubbish that all is. Mr. Chia is a minor figure today; his paintings just aren’t that interesting. Mr. Saatchi didn’t sell just his Chias; he’s dumped everything for years, including his John Currins and his Peter Doigs, but those works have gone straight up into the millions of dollars. As a matter of fact, a Doig painting made $10 million in London last month and collector demand for work by John Currin has never been stronger.

It’s not the selling of art that hurts the market, it’s the timing of the sale, but no matter, good art finds its level so I don’t believe any collector can singlehandedly “plunge” the market of a good artist. That’s why I take offense at the double standard many dealers apply to collectors: on one side are the great patrons who get lots of respect and on the other are those who are derided as speculators and traders, those eponymous collector-dealers. But I’ve seen many of the so-called golden patrons sell paintings in the market, including respected names like Aggie Gund and Dakis Joannou, so these pseudomoralistic views are absurd. They are quite simply the self-serving attitude of dealers who want their “model clients” to buy and never, ever sell.

I also hate those ridiculous resale agreements some dealers have concocted. Though I graduated from law school a while ago, I don’t think they are legally binding, and, anyway, I prefer the old-fashioned handshake deal.

I’m not saying anything goes. If you buy a great piece fresh from the studio through a gallery you know, and you promise to “have and to hold,” then you should cherish it. If you subsequently sell at auction, thus breaking your vow, well, you’ve lost your relationship with the gallery and the artist, and you deserve to because you didn’t play by the rules.

Mr. Saatchi has never played by the rules; he invented his own, and thus changed collecting forever. He must be happy with the result because he’s done it for decades, and the entire contemporary art world owes him a lot for the awareness he’s created, the artists whose works he’s shown and promoted, and the public excitement and enthusiasm he’s created. I don’t think we’ll ever see another like him, not only because he was visionary but also because the market has changed.

Studying The History of the Saatchi Gallery made me wonder: Is it the experience of collecting that counts or is it the physical possession of powerful art? Is it fulfilling to have once owned masterpieces, or does it count only when “death do us part”?

I need it both ways, meaning that I need the excitement of owning work that can be published and shown, but I’m not willing to part with it all, even at exorbitant prices. When I come home I want to be surrounded by a collection that represents my personal history with art, works that were important to my life experience. Given the chance to be a Saatchi I’d like to think I would have kept much of his great stuff and not have succumbed to the temptation to always cash in and seek out the newest new thing.

There was a time when chasing the art world’s next sensation was a great strategy, and Charles Saatchi was the master pioneer of the “show and sell” technique. Several private contemporary art foundations followed in his footsteps, including Dakis Joannou’s Deste Foundation in Athens, François Pinault’s Palazzo Grassi and Punta della Dogana in Venice, the Rubell Family Collection in Miami and Peter Brant’s Brant Foundation in Greenwich, Conn. Mr. Saatchi invented the model over 25 years ago and has been the leader in finding tomorrow’s art market stars and cashing in on them, but those days are mostly over, because the days of “easy pickings” and low-hanging fruit are gone for good. Today, the mission of seeking out the hottest new thing has become painfully tedious, because really going forward in art often requires reaching backward: too often the old is better than the new. Flipping through Mr. Saatchi’s book, a memorial to masterpieces come and gone, I can’t help but feel that today I’d rather see a major Saatchi Collection retrospective than anything he’s liable to cook up next.

editorial@observer.com

1. Ukranian Billionaire Selects Art-Prize Nominees
Victor Punchuk's PinchukArtCentre announced the nominees for his $100,000 Generation Art Prize. He funds the award, which goes to an emerging artist up to age 35. Whitney Biennial exhibitor (2008) Ruben Ochoa is the only American on the short list.

Our take: We're so glad the oligarchs are back. And points for a diverse group—the 21 finalists hail from 18 different countries and include 13 men and 8 women.

2. BP Corporate Art Sponsorship Backlash
In the UK, debate rages over BP's sponsorship of British cultural institutions. Vigilante groups have staged protests at partner museums-one group filled the Tate's grand hall with dead fish hanging from black balloons. Bloggers take their corners: Culturegrrl argues that museums shouldn't reject the money, while Edward Winkelman feels the BP backlash is too little, too late.

Our take: Why get angry at cultural institutions supported by BP when you could get angry at BP itself?
[The Guardian, Artnet, Culturegrrl, Edward Winkelman]

3. Louis Vuitton Demands Removal of Copycat Sculptures
Louis Vuitton demanded the removal of nine sculptures of locusts made out of fake designer purses that were on view at the Kobe Fashion Museum in Japan. The fashion house argued that the sculptures endorsed the illegal trade of counterfeit goods.

Our take: Murakami can install an entire LV boutique in the Brooklyn Museum, but artist Mitsuhiro Okamoto can't even use the designer's logo. Who's really getting ripped off here?
[Pinktentakle]

4. Yale Finds Velazquez Painting in Basement
In what may be Yale's most exciting basement cleaning session ever, University art gallery employees happened upon a painting of the Virgin Mary that they have officially attributed to Velazquez after years of research.

Our take: We were cynical, but it looks like the real deal. All we find when we clean out our basements are yellowed family photos and old boxes of Pringles.
[Bloomberg]

5. Charles Saatchi to Donate Collection and Gallery to Britain
Gallery impresario Charles Saatchi announced over the weekend that he would donate his collection, valued (very conservatively) at more than $37.5 million, and his London gallery to the nation of Britain upon his retirement. The Guardian isn't too impressed.

Our take: Looks like the Tate didn't schmooze over its contentious relationship with Saatchi in time to cash in.
[The Guardian]

6. Marilyn Manson and David Lynch Exhibition Opens
What do you get when you combine Marilyn Manson, David Lynch, watercolors, and a short film titled "The Amputee"? The Manson/Lynch exhibition "Geneaologies of Pain," which opened in Vienna on June 30. According to a press release, "Marilyn Manson's career as an artist started in 1999 when he produced conceptual five-minute watercolors which he sold to drug dealers."

Our take: "Pain" gives a new and unwelcome meaning to "cutting-edge art."

7. Guggenheim Expansion Provokes Protest
The Guggenheim Foundation announced interest in building a museum in the Urdaibai Biosphere Reserve, 25 miles from Frank Gehry's iconic Guggenheim Bilbao. The regional Basque government and many local people fiercely oppose the expansion, arguing it will irreparably damage the nature reserve.  

Our take: If authorities in the Basque regional government were given more of a voice in the proceedings, the two parties might be able to make this happen.
[The Guardian]

8. Artist Gao Yu to Design Bottle for Absolut Vodka  
This week in corporate artist partnerships: Absolut Vodka has commissioned Chinese Pop artist Gao Yu to design a limited-edition bottle in honor of this year's Shanghai Expo.

Our take: Andy Warhol designed a bottle for Absolut 25 years ago. Is there any corporate collaboration that man didn't do first?

9. Sarah Palin is Rendered in Porn
British artist Jonathan Yeo's latest exhibition includes a portrait of Sarah Palin made entirely from clippings from pornography magazines. (All the better, the image has been placed in a furry moose head frame.) Other celebrities given Yeo's pornographic treatment include Tiger Woods, Sigmund Freud, and Paris Hilton, whose portrait-in-porn was bought by Damien Hirst.

Our take: When a politician headlines a controversy dubbed "Boobgate," isn't it only a matter of time until Playboy gets involved?
[Artinfo]
 
10. Art Market Heats Up for Summer
Artnet rounds up results from the summer's hottest sales, which include the highly anticipated Impressionist and modern auctions as well as contemporary art sales at Sotheby's and Christie's. In June, about 230 artists achieved record sale prices above $100,000 (up from 120 for the same price bracket in May).

Our take: We'll take any signs of recovery we can get, but we know deep down it's not all coming up records and roses.
[Artnet, Transom, ArtObserved]

One way to get access to the best artworks is to open a private exhibition space to both showcase emerging artists and confirm the status of established market favorites. An example of a private exhibition changing the course of art history is the case of master ad man Charles Saatchi, who handily succeeded in creating a role for himself of art collector/kingmaker. Early on, he owned great Donald Judds, Andy Warhols and more, and sold most of it in order to start buying and showing newer art at his London gallery, flipping over and over again. But it was when he created and exhibited a group of young artists he branded the YBA (Young British Artists) that he pioneered this important trend of privately sponsored exhibitions. He succeeded in having his private holdings exhibited-the show was aptly called "Sensation"-at the Royal Academy in 1997, the Hamburger Bahnhof in '98 and the Brooklyn Museum of Art in '99. The controversial show propelled several of the YBA artists into major-league market stardom. Fifteen years later, their ringleader, Damien Hirst, is the king of the art-market machine; Chris Ofili has a full-blown retrospective at the Tate Museum; and several others, like Marc Quinn, Rachel Whiteread and Tracey Emin, still have healthy careers. Clearly, Mr. Saatchi chose good art, but we can only speculate where those artists would have been without "Sensation."

Don and Mera Rubell went a different route. In 2002, when Art Basel launched its annual Miami art fair, a few collectors joined in to exhibit their private collections to the thousands of partygoers, collectors and scenesters who came to town. The Rubells seized this opportunity and, mingling good timing with an attention-getting location, opened a private building in Miami to exhibit their recent art acquisitions. Exhibitions of Neo Rauch, Kelley Walker and Wade Guyton, or local Miami favorite Hernan Bas, were influential in creating awareness and consensus about the value of their work. Of the Miami private annual exhibitions only the annual Rubell exhibition became a required stop on the Art Basel Miami tour, and shows like 2008's "30 Americans" were given the attention normally accorded museum exhibitions. The same show anywhere else, any other time of year, would never have achieved the same critical mass. The Rubells did on a relatively modest budget what most contemporary museums could not do with triple the resources.

In Europe, one of the most powerful collectors today is luxury goods magnate François Pinault, owner of Christie's. During the last Venice Biennale, he filled two beautiful buildings, his spectacular Palazzo Grassi and the refurbished Dogana, with his selection of 20th-century art. These shows displayed major works from established artists like Richard Prince and Maurizio Cattelan, all the way back to Mark Rothko. But alongside them, artists like Rudy Stingel were given somewhat overdue recognition, and emerging stars like Anselm Reyle were showcased. The spillover effect was tangible-a young artist like Mathew Day Jackson went from relative unknown at last summer's Pinault show to million-dollar result at auction in London in February.

Peter Norton, of the household-name computer program Norton Utilities, also exerted considerable influence when he was collecting more actively. Mr. Norton jumped into art collecting in the 1980s. He became active and high-profile in museum philanthropy and started buying large quantities of very promising contemporary work at a great time in the art-market cycle. Next, he hired influential curators to do keenly watched installations of his works at his house. Suddenly, his patronage became an important credential in marketing and positioning young work to other collectors. Then he came up with a unique, now famous idea: the Norton Family Christmas gift. Each year, a new artist is selected (Kara Walker and Takashi Murakami were early picks), and an extensive list of art-world movers and shakers receive a small work by that artist as a gift. It became important to see whom Mr. Norton was selecting, as well as who got on the list, so the gift had two meanings-neither of which was lost on the art world.

Publisher Peter Brant, meanwhile, has been a shrewd collector for years. He bought Warhol in the early 1990s when prices were soft; then he bought Jean-Michel Basquiat when few were interested. In the late '90s, he bought great, large-scale work by Jeff Koons when the broader market wasn't paying attention. His big spending and contrarian collecting has earned him the friendship of artists; the respect of some other collectors who follow his lead; and a coterie of dealers who track his every move like a pied piper. Last year, he opened a foundation space in Connecticut and exhibited highlights of his collection to the public for the first time. It featured top works by Richard Prince, Cindy Sherman, Paul McCarthy, Mike Kelley and more. His stated plans to do single-artist shows of emerging artists will likely ensure he continues to influence the art market.

Today, when it comes to collecting art, buying well is not enough. Many collectors who have spent the money and done shows of works they own still do not garner credibility; they remain buyers of art trophies but never makers of art trophies. To make the leap requires a creative and focused approach to dealer relationships; museum patronage; focused exhibition strategies-and significant capital. The reward, beyond the art itself, is that thoughtful collectors can have more of an impact than before: in setting prices, influencing dealer and museum programming, weighing in on new discoveries and confirming reputations. The art market has totally changed, and for the good. No need to be nostalgic.

editorial@observer.com

If, from this queasy-making fact, you suspect that Mr. Quinn's exhibition might have something to do with Charles Saatchi's gang of Y.B.A.'s (Young British Artists) who were responsible for the Sensation show at the Brooklyn Museum of Art a few years ago, you're entirely correct. Mr. Quinn thus joins the company of Damien Hirst, Dinos and Jake Chapman, Chris Ofili and sundry other Sensation alumni whose work has lately titillated so many jaded sensibilities on this side of the Atlantic with an eager embrace of perverse, degraded or otherwise repulsive subjects.

Be assured, however, that there isn't a drop of blood to be seen in Mr. Quinn's show at Mary Boone's, nor is there anything as off-putting as those sliced-open animals in formaldehyde that have won Mr. Hirst a devoted international following. Mr. Quinn is out for far bigger game: nothing less than immaculately carved white marble figures of nude bodies that can be seen to enjoy, as the artist himself claimed, "a direct physical link to the neo-classical perfection of Canova," and even a significant relation to the Venus de Milo.

To this formidable attraction, Mr. Quinn brings considerable mastery of his medium and a hearty appetite for provocation. In other words, he has what it takes to meet the Saatchi standard of titillation, which requires a work of art to have some conspicuous element of perversity, kinkiness or shock. In The Complete Marbles , as this exhibition is called, Mr. Quinn concentrates on mutilation. The most distinctive feature of the Venus de Milo, after all, is its armlessness. This and other examples in the sculpture of classical antiquity have inspired Mr. Quinn to explore the aesthetics of lost or amputated limbs in a series of white marble nude portraits of specific people who, as a consequence of either birth defect or amputation, are obliged to cope with this impaired condition.

What's especially jarring-intentionally so-is the dramatic disjunction between the flawless purity of all the white marble "flesh" on display and the inevitable feeling of dread we experience upon encountering so many otherwise perfect bodies devoid of hands, feet, arms or legs. As viewers, we're made voyeurs of a succession of personal catastrophes-an experience that bears a distinct resemblance to involuntary encounters with pornography. The pathos of the physically handicapped is thus shamelessly exploited in the name of a moribund classical tradition.

In an extensive interview with Neville Wakefield in the as-yet-unpublished catalog for The Complete Marbles , it is suggested to Mr. Quinn that he's "fetishizing" the tragic subject of missing limbs. He's also asked if there's "a sexual content to these works." In response to both questions, the sculptor gives his interviewer lengthy and elaborate non-answers. Mr. Quinn is an accomplished casuist, as adroit in adorning his work with high-minded rhetoric as any other member of the Saatchi gang of Y.B.A.'s. We get the expected references to Duchamp and Wittgenstein, a topical allusion to 9/11-which produced, we are reminded, a greater number of mutilated bodies than even a sculptor like Mr. Quinn could hope to match-and the artist's claim that his mutilated figures "are very definitely celebrations of wholeness, not evocative fragments like a Rodin."

He concludes his repertory of explanations by claiming: "The marble sculptures really are about how biology isn't destiny …. Marble is the classical material for heroes of ancient times and these people [i.e., the subjects of the portraits] are modern-day heroes because they have dealt with their bodies and inner worlds. Their free will has conquered biological destiny and so they become celebratory." This is followed by some tosh about "Heisenberg's famous uncertainty principle."

This interview is itself an amazing performance, and so is The Complete Marbles , if you have a stomach for it. Not surprisingly, it's also a runaway success. On the day I visited the exhibition, less than a week after the show opened, seven of the mutilated figures had already been sold at $125,000 each. The era of amputation chic has opened with a bang!

Marc Quinn: The Complete Marbles remains on view at the Mary Boone Gallery in Chelsea, 541 West 24th Street, through Feb. 28.

What was not to be expected, however, was that the Mayor would be so promptly vindicated in his further charge that the Brooklyn Museum had conspired with Charles Saatchi and other vested interests–as The Times belatedly reported on Oct. 31–to "inflate the value of the works on display" in the Sensation show. Whether any laws have been violated as a result of these hugger-mugger financial machinations remains unclear. What is now beyond question is that the entire project of bringing this shabby inventory from the Saatchi Collection to Brooklyn has from the outset been what even The Times , after publishing some 60 or more news stories, editorials and reviews in ardent defense of the exhibition, has finally been obliged to concede is "an ethically dubious enterprise."

That from the outset the Sensation exhibition has also been an esthetically barren enterprise is not something The Times will probably ever bring itself to concede. But that no longer matters. No one not directly involved in the trade–the trade, that is, in contemporary art futures–gives much of a damn anymore about the critical judgments of Michael Kimmelman or Roberta Smith, the newspaper's chief critics. About events like the Sensation exhibition, these critics now enjoy the same level of credibility as Joe Lockhart's daily "spin" game at the Clinton White House. Mr. Kimmelman's everybody-does-it defense of the Brooklyn Museum's financial deceptions is itself a vivid example of Clintonesque ethics. About the only thing missing from that ethically dubious defense was the Al Gore mantra of "no controlling legal authority."

As for Ms. Smith's equally pathetic attempt to defend the Sensation show on the grounds that it brings New York "up to speed" on the great things happening on the London art scene, that is neither accurate reporting nor sound criticism. For what the Sensation show brings us "up to speed" on is simply Mr. Saatchi's latest venture in the art-futures market. Because of the Sensation scandal, all the world now knows exactly how this market-manipulation venture works. Mr. Saatchi first commissions work that is guaranteed to cause outrage, then promotes it as his latest "discoveries," then importunes once-respectable institutions like the Royal Academy of Art or the Tate Gallery to endorse it, and then makes a killing in the art-auction market. This is what now passes for "avant-garde" art in London–and, of course, in New York–and it has proved to be a highly successful business enterprise.

What gets marketed, however, isn't so much the art as the buzz, to which critics like Ms. Smith are always eager to contribute their support. And if the buzz is sufficiently repellent–if it delivers on its promise to offend decency, promote perversity and celebrate violence–there will be no shortage of well-heeled fools eager to write checks for the privilege of acquiring a piece of the action. That they, too, may stand to profit in the auction market is a further incentive, of course, but meanwhile they collect kudos for being so "advanced" in their artistic tastes.

To the extent that the uproar over the Sensation exhibition has now laid bare the essentially commercial character of such "avant-garde" events, the show itself may someday be seen to have served some redeeming social purpose, after all. Thanks to the total lack of conscience, tact and taste which Arnold L. Lehman, the director of the Brooklyn Museum, brought to the organization, the financing and the promotion of the Sensation show, all art museums that traffic in this particular vein of "cutting-edge" hucksterism have also suffered a significant loss in public confidence. The sheer quantity of cynical hokum that it has long been standard practice for our art institutions to invoke in defense of whatever horror or inanities the art traders are currently promoting as avant-garde is no longer as persuasive as it once was for anyone not involved in the market. We haven't witnessed the death throes of this phenomenon yet, but some of the other institutional defenses of Sensation have shown signs of moral fatigue and a distinct diminution of mental acuity.

Consider, for an egregious example, the obtuse contribution of Glenn D. Lowry, the current director of the Museum of Modern Art, to this scandal. Writing on the Op-Ed page of The Times on Oct. 13, Mr. Lowry warned: "If Americans wish to continue to be a major cultural force well into the next century, then we must recognize that the arts–and contemporary art, in particular–are not just important to our society, but also our collective responsibility." He called for "engaging in an open debate" about exhibitions like the Sensation show, yet his own contribution to the controversy was clearly designed to sidetrack the debate that was already in progress by invoking the names of Manet and Cézanne and Picasso and Pollock. And when was the last time that MoMA invited public debate about its own policies on contemporary art?

Now if the future of the United States as "a major cultural force" really does depend on accommodating the commercial interests of Mr. Saatchi, then the whole question of American cultural influence in the world needs to be radically reconsidered. But that is not where America's future cultural interests lie, of course. Much may depend, indeed, on our ability to resist such accommodations to current sensations.

What made Mr. Lowry's remarks especially alarming is the fact that MoMA's own current expansion plans call for an even greater concentration on contemporary art than in the past. If the Sensation show is to be taken as a model for the kind of "daring" art that can now be expected to fill MoMA's vast new exhibition spaces on W54th Street, then we are in for even greater disasters in the next century.

Mr. Lowry was responding, of course, to the remarkable article which Philippe de Montebello, the director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, had contributed to the Times Op-Ed page on Oct. 5. "We are meant to view the art in this show, or most of it," wrote Mr. de Montebello, "as visual pronouncements, even statements of a higher order, aimed at making us pause, think and reconsider our surroundings, our beliefs.… Well, here is where I part company, at the risk of apostasy, with many colleagues and critics alike. I have seen the exhibition, and I think the emperor has no clothes."

And further: "In the end, what remains terribly disturbing to me is that so many people, serious and sensitive individuals, are so cowed by the art establishment or so frightened at being labeled philistines that they dare not speak out and express their dislike for works that they find either repulsive or unesthetic or both." Mr. de Montebello even characterized Kiki Smith's Tale , in the current show of The American Century at the Whitney Museum of Art, as "simply disgusting and devoid of any craft or esthetic merit."

This really was an important contribution to the current debate about contemporary art, or at least the aspects of contemporary art that are designed to make headlines and controversy, and because of it Mr. de Montebello was the only member of the New York art establishment to acquit himself with professional honor in this dismal episode. It was a reminder, too, of why the Metropolitan Museum is now so often the most important of the few New York art museums where considerations of esthetic quality remain the top priority.

As to why The New York Times mounted its blitzkrieg coverage in defense of the Sensation exhibition, that is not much of a mystery. As soon as Mr. Giuliani took action against the Brooklyn Museum, The Times clearly seized upon the event as a means of inflicting significant damage on the Mayor's campaign for a U.S. Senate seat. As they did twice with Bill Clinton, The Times ' top brass is preparing to hold its collective nose while endorsing Hillary Clinton for the Senate, and the Sensation controversy offered the paper a handy weapon for that purpose.

My own guess is that the Times blitzkrieg has backfired, politically and otherwise. It has damaged the paper's credibility, it has damaged the credibility of the city's art establishment, it has made the paper's critics look ridiculous, and it has probably won the Mayor some friends he didn't have before. As for the Brooklyn Museum's credibility on artistic matters, that will not be repaired until the time comes to appoint Mr. Lehman's successor.

What is essential to understand about this exhibition, the full name of which is Sensation: Young British Artists from the Saatchi Collection , is that it is first of all about money–or, to put the matter more delicately, about the vicissitudes of art commerce in the 1990's. That Charles Saatchi is an advertising genius is beyond doubt. That he is also one of the shrewdest traders on the international art bourse is also well known. He buys and sells art futures the way other traders buy and sell pork bellies. It's not as if he is entirely indifferent to quality in art, either. The fact is, he has acquired the work of some very fine artists.

But it is also a fact that he isn't exactly inhibited by the total absence of quality. He is the Andy Warhol of art traders. He knows he has the power to make an unknown artist famous for 15 minutes–or as long as it takes to create a lucrative market for his work. He knows how to play the media for maximum effect. He made his fortune in the advertising business, after all. He also knows that in the market for contemporary art today, quality is an alien concept.

Another thing that Mr. Saatchi knows is that the facilities of museums that traffic in contemporary-art reputations are nowadays more or less for hire. Not for everyone, of course, but for certain influential traders on the international art bourse. It was therefore a cinch for Mr. Saatchi to get his latest collection of young British artists into the Royal Academy. The Academy jumped at the opportunity to bask in the limelight of Mr. Saatchi's controversial reputation. Whatever he offered the Academy was bound to be great box-office. It could have been elephant dung–or, for that matter, yours or mine–without paint or canvas, and the lines at the box office would have been equally long.

The title of the show, by the way, was not Mr. Saatchi's idea. In the acknowledgements in the catalogue for the London show, the well-known American art trader–sorry, consultant–Jeffrey Deitch is thanked for coming up with Sensation . The Brooklyn Museum hasn't bothered to produce a catalogue of its own for the show; it simply recycles the London catalogue, which is not an entirely reliable guide to what you actually find on view in Brooklyn. Not that it matters much with art products of this type.

As for what you do find in the show, be warned that quite a lot of the Sensation exhibition is fairly boring. What look to me like examples of slick art-school abstraction are particularly pathetic. Their only merit is to provide the eye with rest stops, so to speak, between our encounters with some of the nastier stuff on view. One of the nastiest objects in the show is indeed Chris Ofili's The Holy Virgin Mary (1996), which has already caused so much uproar. It turns out, however, that the elephant dung that is attached to this canvas is by no means the most offensive thing about this disgusting picture. Attached to its surface are myriad little cutouts from porno magazines depicting assholes and vaginas in graphic detail.

Who was it who said that anti-Catholicism was now the anti-Semitism of the intellectuals? I have no reason to suspect that Mr. Ofili is any sort of intellectual, but he seems to have understood that it is O.K. now to engage in this kind of public ridicule of sacred subjects–and win a little art-world fame in the bargain. Had he attempted something similar in mocking the sacred tenets of Islam, Mr. Ofili would probably now require the protection of Scotland Yard, and the Brooklyn Museum would probably have some security problems, too. But it seems to be O.K. to engage in this kind of lewd anti-Catholic expression in public places so long as it passes for serious art.

But the nastiest stuff of all in the Sensation show are works of Jake and Dinos Chapman, who specialize in doll-like mannequins of naked little girls amply equipped with erect penises for noses and more numerous vaginas than nature normally provides. The Chapman brothers served an apprenticeship as studio assistants to Gilbert and George, who, it will be recalled, made a sensational success of exhibiting pictures of their own assholes and penises–and even their own excrement. It was a hard act to follow, but the Chapman brothers have managed to score with their little-girl porno figures.

As for the Damien Hirst animal stuff, it would make me ill to talk about it.

As you might expect on an occasion of this sort, the catalogue for the Sensation show attempts to provide the exhibition with a very prestigious historical lineage, citing paintings by Géricault, Courbet, Manet and Hieronymus Bosch and the graphic art of Goya as precedents. All nonsense, of course, but a vivid reminder of what now passes for serious thought at the Royal Academy. I would suggest a more recent historical development as a likely precedent for the Sensation mentality: the early work of Salvador Dalí and the decadent milieu that nourished it in the period between the two world wars.

Writing in 1944 about Dalí and the perverse tastes of the European haut monde in that period, George Orwell gave us what now reads like a prophecy of this Sensation mentality. "If you threw dead donkeys at people," he wrote, "they threw money back. A phobia for grasshoppers–which a few decades back would merely have provoked a snigger–was now an interesting 'complex' which could be profitably exploited. And when that particular world collapsed before the German army, America was waiting. You could even top it all up with religious conversion."

As Orwell also wrote: "Clearly, such people are undesirable, and a society in which they can flourish has something wrong with it."

Sensation opens on Oct. 2 and remains on view at the Brooklyn Museum through Jan. 9.

Mr. Saatchi, who was once on a short list of collectors given first crack at Mr. Salle's work, has recently purchased seven Salle paintings, despite his unceremonious dismissal of the artist several years ago after which he turned his attention to young British artists such as Damien Hirst. One of the works was a large Pop Art-inspired painting, Bigger Rack , which Mr. Saatchi commissioned. All seven paintings are for an exhibition at the Saatchi Gallery in London, which opens April 30, called Young Americans 2 , unflatteringly characterized by the gallery as a show of artists who made their names in the 80's but were still doing "interesting things" in the 90's.

The buying spree began about a year ago, according to Jenny Blyth, curator for the Saatchi Gallery. But Mr. Saatchi has made most of his Salle purchases during the past several months, including important tapestry-style paintings of harlequins that were originally shown in the early 90's at the uptown Gagosian Gallery on Madison Avenue. Those paintings are softer, kinder and gentler (and consequently less popular) than his cold, postmodern 1980's paintings that combined naked women and 1950's objects in a cruel, Nabokovian dreamscape.

"We are very, very excited about the new work that David has done," said Ms. Blyth. "I think there has been so much focus on young British art, and it is very interesting for everybody over here to see what's going on in the States, to contextualize it." Mr. Saatchi was not available for comment.

The four other, lesser-known American artists in the show are Ashley Bickerton, Carroll Dunham, Terry Winters and Jessica Stockholder. The show runs until July 12.

Scharf Dashes Off Mr. Chow

Michael Chow, owner of Mr. Chow's restaurants, has organized his personal art collection–primarily portraits of himself and his restaurant–into an exhibition to celebrate 30 years in the restaurant biz. More than 40 contemporary artists, ranging from LeRoy Neiman to Louise Nevelson, have added their stamp to Mr. Chow's collection, most of which he insists he paid for, despite the longstanding rumor that the restaurateur bartered meals of prawns and squab for artwork. There's a portrait Helmut Newton took from behind the restaurateur that is inscribed You Stick to the Noodles & I Take the Snaps ; a Warhol silk-screen that's done in glitter; a Schnabel "plate painting" of Mr. Chow that includes a Mr. Chow dinner plate embedded among the broken crockery. The background of an Ed Ruscha portrait called Mr. Chow L.A . was originally done in soy sauce until the artist discovered that the salty condiment doesn't dry.

But when the touring show was about to hit the Tony Shafrazi Gallery in SoHo, Kenny Scharf, the graffiti artist who has been enjoying something of a comeback in the late 90's, asked Mr. Chow if he could be included.

"Kenny said, 'I'd like to have a painting in that show, too,'" Mr. Chow told The Observer recently while strolling through the show.

Three days before the exhibition opened on April 4, Mr. Scharf's painting arrived from Miami, where the artist lives and works. Mr. Chow sat for David Hockney three hours. He stripped to the waist for Mr. Schnabel. But Mr. Scharf had only the catalogue for the exhibition to go on for his airbrushed futuristic work that looks like an amalgam of a number of different portraits.

"Kenny looked at what other artists had done and added his own style," Mr. Chow explained.

"Actually, I used Andy's portrait," Mr. Scharf explained over the phone from Miami, referring to the Warhol in the show. "I would have preferred to have taken a portrait of him. But I didn't have time. I felt O.K. using Andy's."

Fun With Guns

"The reaction of some people is very negative. It's almost as if [they think that guns] were made in hell and brought up to Europe to be distributed by the devil," said photographer Theo Coulombe at the opening of his exhibition Who Invented the Assault Rifle Anyway? at the Margaret Bodell Gallery at 13 East Seventh Street.

Last year, Mr. Coulombe, a photographer who has documented a number of historic military re-enactments, and Jameson Ellis, a painter whose father was a military designer for the Army, went down to the U.S. Army Ordnance Museum in Aberdeen, Md., where they photographed the earliest assault rifles, dating from the late 1930's in Germany and Russia, including an AK-47 from the mid-1950's.

"I knew about this place and these guns," said Mr. Ellis. "I said, 'You do military stuff. You should do a piece on these guns.' And he said, 'Why don't we both do it?' Neither of us would have done it alone." The photographs, which show the guns life-size in minute detail, are being shown in a series of light boxes at the Bodell Gallery through May 10.

"When I would talk to people about the gun project, they would roll their eyes," Mr. Coulombe explained. "But the fact is that many of these things were made by individual designers and design teams, usually in direct competition. To be able to design a weapon that would enable one person to kill as many as possible in one setting was the goal. A lot of Jamie's and my conversation had to do with the beauty of the design. Designed with love to be used for complete hatred, is how we looked at it. Our purpose was to simply show the actuality of these things in unapologetic detail."

For Mr. Ellis, the project was more personal. "My background, via my father, is in guns. I guess I would have to say, yes, I am obsessed, but I think that guns are also problematic. I am not rabidly enthusiastic about the killing potential of guns … As physical objects, some guns are very beautiful. We tried carefully to not be apologetic or glorifying. It's kind of embarrassing to be into this kind of thing. But I am glad that I got it off my chest and made an issue out of it in a way that is sort of beautiful."

Added Mr. Coulombe: "We were apprehensive about the show because we didn't want to come off as gun nuts. We are walking on a tricky wire."