What a class underplay by Steve Wynn, the Las Vegas casino tycoon, after falling into “Le Reve”, his1932 Picasso, last week, puncturing a dollar-sized hole in its centre. Nora Ephron (writer of When Harry Met Sally) said: “There was a terrible noise and then it fell silent and then he said… ‘Oh s***t’”
GQ loves this story; there can’t be much else to say when suffering that kind of mental torment, prior to sealing a world record £74.3m deal with a buyer, to then do…. that. He wouldn’t exactly have thought to prepare a comeback in a last-minute attempt to redeem some dignity either. What a clumsy clut! His only defence is that he has bad vision. You’re not kidding! He’s actually suffering a medical condition called retinitis pigmentosa (it’s a kind of tunnel vision).
We don’t suggest Wynn shouldn’t be responsible for such a rare and beautiful piece, since art is separatist; but for some, their opinion is that rare masters should be collectively housed in galleries for the enjoyment of the masses. Either way, any story that links a masterpiece with its visually impaired owner, fills creative nerds with a collector’s agony.
There are other similar scoops: such as Nick Flynn who tripped on his laces and smashed three 17th century Quing vases. Or the snappers at a New York catwalk show who damaged a Damien Hirst piece when they decided to catch a falling model Chloë Sevigny instead. And what about that cleaner in the Tate Britain who threw away a rubbish bag, unaware that it was part of Gustav Metzger’s, and this is funny, “First Public Demonstration Of Auto Destructive Art.”
The reason for bringing all this up is that, apart from them being a bunch of amusing slapsticks, it’s reminiscent of a story told at an art party last week. GQ finds itself at many of these soirees; evidence of London’s current art boom; with so many invites to blockbuster exhibits we just don’t have enough gaps in the diary, and all this undiscovered talent is instilling panic in the art department; what if a low-rent exhibit is overlooked in Hoxton and the next Grayson Perry is sitting there, selling his earthenware for a song? I’d do a private dance for one of his pieces right now and it’s that kind of torment that brings out the classroom bore in art editors.
Anyway, that evening we hurried along to 43, a Mayfair members’ club on South Molton Street. The showcase manifesto was the Saatchi USA after-party, where we made acquaintance with exhibiting artist Stuart Semple who absorbed us with his tale of how he came to display there.
It started the previous week when he’d sneaked one of his paintings into the Saatchi gallery wrapped in brown paper and walked straight past security, in a reversed methodology to The Thomas Crown Affair. He’d admitted he was “sweating a bit” but so angry at Saatchi’s comment that “Young British Artists would be nothing more than a foot note in the history of art”, when it’s evident Saatchi has made millions out of young creatives in Britain.
So Stuart made a glittery painting and “stuck it in a gap” on one of the gallery walls at Saatchi’s “Triumph Of Painting part 2” show. (The first time in a decade that Saatchi hadn’t included a British artist.) Stuarts painting read: “BRITISH PAINTING STILL ROCKS” in caps.
Laughingly, it stayed up undetected throughout the exhibition and when time came for the curators to dismantle the works they noticed Stuart’s large comedy name and number on its reverse; later Stuart found his masterpiece in the bins outside, someone had allegedly mistaken it for scrap.
It seems some experts don’t know their art from their elbow, and to think shortly before, an American collector had offered Stuart’s Gallery £50,000 for this piece, but it’s been destroyed. Even so, Stuart’s work been causing a stir since he exploded onto the scene in 1999 so watch out for this mischievous one, he’s good!