Qatars Sheikha Mayassa tops art power list Sheikha Al-Mayassa bint Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani and family estimated to spend more than £600m a year on art Her full title is Her Excellency Sheikha Al-Mayassa bint Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani, and although the 30-year-old is a long way from being a household name she has been named the most powerful person in art. The sheikha, daughter of the former emir of Qatar and sister of the current one, has control of the biggest cash pile in the world when it comes to buying western modern and contemporary art, with her family estimated to spend more than £600m a year on works that will adorn the museums Qatar is creating from scratch in the desert. Sheikha Mayassa tops a list now in its 12th year: the ArtReview Power 100, an annual ranking of how the dealers, collectors, curators and, yes, artists too compare in their importance to the delicate ecosystem of contemporary art. The editor of ArtReview, Mark Rappolt, said the numbers spoke for themselves in terms of the sheikhas sheer buying power and what that means for the market. There are no confirmed figures for how much is being spent or what is being bought, but it has been conservatively estimated at £600m a year over the last eight years. That includes a world record £160m for the last privately held version of Paul Cezannes The Card Players and a reported $310m for 11 Rothkos. Then there are the Warhols, Lichtensteins, Bacons, Hirsts and, according to Le Figaro, the £50m purchase of Picassos Child with a Dove, on which the UK government placed a temporary and ultimately unsuccessful export bar. Rappolt said the list showed there were two different ways of looking at the contemporary art sector in 2013. One sees art as an interchangeable exchangeable commodity, and one is about ideas and aesthetics. As the art market and art scene generally has globalised, we are seeing a dominance of that sense of art as being something that is exchanged. Whats happening with Qatar epitomises that. It is symptomatic of a trend that you can have someone buying up western art, importing it to what is essentially the middle of the desert. The Qatari royal family have investments all over the world: it owns properties as wide-ranging as Harrods and Paris St-Germain football club and is spending in excess of £100bn as it prepares for the 2022 World Cup. Culture is a big part of its grand plan and the sheikha heads the Qatar Museums Authority, which will have at its centre a national museum designed by Jean Nouvel opening in 2016. The next three most powerful people in the power list are the American dealers David Zwirner (up three places), Iwan Wirth (up one) and Larry Gagosian (down two). They are followed by curators in the shape of Hans Ulrich Obrist and Julia Peyton Jones – who run Londons Serpentine gallery, or galleries as it became this year by opening a sister space five minutes walk away – and Nicholas Serota, the Tate director, who is overseeing Tate Moderns £215m extension. The highest-placed artist is the Chinese dissident Ai Weiwei at nine, followed at 11 by the performance art pioneer Marina Abramović, who has recently been collaborating with Lady Gaga. She is a good example of how art can move out of the closed and elitist environment of galleries into culture more generally, said Rappolt. There are some striking omissions, including Charles Saatchi, who topped the first list in 2002, and Damien Hirst, who was number 41 last year. Rappolt said: Its partly a reflection of the fact you dont find many artists claiming to be from the school of Damien Hirst. Its about influence, and the 1990s to a lot of people can seem like a long time ago. Other artists on the list are Cindy Sherman (13), Gerhard Richter (16) and Steve McQueen (59), whose new film, 12 Years a Slave, has opened in the US to rapturous reviews and predicted Oscar success. Interesting new entries include the American artist Ryan Trecartin, one of a number of artists examining culture in a post-internet world, and Bard College in New York state, where so many of the next generation of curators are being trained. By Mark Brown Guardian culture
Posted on: Thu, 24 Oct 2013 16:28:51 +0000