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This is a reply to a post by anonymous, who said, "the stuckists are described as a thorn in the side of charles saatchi ... People do bear grudges you know, and this is his toy and he can censor whoever he likes.”

 Let's not jump to conclusions. There is no prior evidence that Mr Saatchi has excluded thorns from the site. About 30 Stuckist artists have work on YourGallery, the site covered the Stuckists show Go West http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/blogon/2006/08/the_first_west_end_show_for_th.php and Matt Price chose Stuckist artist Philip Absolon as critic's choice. http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/blogon/2006/07/your_gallery_critics_choice_by_1.php  

There have been a number of rather uncomplimentary posts about Mr Saatchi and his motives on the forum discussions – though not by me, I might add. I have gone on record there and elsewhere as praising him for a remarkable and pioneering project, as in this thread, “Is Saatchi just being very very cynical?”, where I described the whole idea as “courageous, enterprising and radical”, and got told I was “Saatchi’s right hand man” and an “arse licker!” http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/artforum/topic_view/topic/1982

 

The tolerance and opennesss of the site is very much in accord with the spirit of Web 2.0, and without it the site would not fulfil its potential.  Therefore the disappearing blogs are not what one would expect.  Cock-up is just as probable as conspiracy, since the site does experience some technical problems, as one might expect with such a complex enterprise. 

 

Ah, I’ve just written that and an explanation has been posted by admin: “Our apologies for blogs that are being deleted.We are having a problem with two of our servers that are squabbling,and we are experiencing the same difficulty in the forum.We are trying hard to sort this out.”

 

Faith is restored, and it seems I have failed utterly to be censored.  

 

For the record, I didn’t take Charles Saatchi to court. I reported him to the OFT (Office of Fair Trading) for alleged breaches of the Competition Act. Their interesting  conclusion was “we do not have reasonable grounds to suspect that Charles Saatchi is in a dominant position in any relevant market.” http://www.stuckism.com/Saatchi/index.html

 

The full text of the anon’s post was:

 

to charles thompson

 

by Anonymous

 Come on charles, on the internet the stuckists are described as a thorn in the side of charles saatchi.  Your art movement also in recent years took charles saatchi to court for monopolising the art world.  People do bear grudges you know, and this is his toy and he can censor whoever he likes. 

By Anonymous at 2007-09-29 05:42 | 's blog | add new comment