Before becoming known internationally as art collectors, Charles Saatchi (Baghdad, 1943) was dedicated to advertising. Together with his brother Maurice, they founded Saatchi in London in 1970.
But from the beginning, publicist Charles Saatchi always kept an eye on what was happening in the crazy world of contemporary art, which became his obsession. He collected works, even if they were by unknown, starving artists, as if there was no tomorrow. In 1985, he opened the impressive Saatchi Gallery, in which he exhibited part of his already vast collection to the public. He was the promoter of the Young British Artists, among whom Damian Hirst (the one with the shark floating in formaldehyde) and Tracy Emin (the one with an unmade bed with dirty sheets) stood out, among others.
In 2004, a fire turned into ashes a hundred works of highly valuable contemporary art that Saatchi kept in a warehouse in a London neighborhood. He didn't even flinch: he has the magic wand that allows him to decide what is or is not art... and its price.
A restless and somewhat unsociable man, he has also dedicated himself to writing, and has already published several books. One of them, We are bananas (2017), which can be translated as “We are bananas”, or rather, “We are crazy”, and whose subtitle announces: “All the truth you don't need”.
For years we have all been lost when it comes to distinguishing truth from lies. So much so that when we are faced with a truth like a temple, we often tend to consider it as fake news, just another one. False things sell; The truth, in addition to sometimes stinging, seems increasingly implausible to us, like the truths that we do not need that he tells us in his book Saatchi.
It turns out that we share no less than 50% of our DNA with bananas. Who was going to say it. In 2016, more photos were taken than in the entire history of photography. The iPhone 6 is two hundred and forty thousand times more powerful than the computer on the Challenger spacecraft (1986). Every year more people die from vending machines than from shark attacks, as do deaths caused by the lethal impact of an icicle or coconut on a person's head.
The existence of a whopping 2,368 species of bacteria has been identified in a human navel, of which almost half were unknown to science. With every second that passes, five million ants are born, and the combined weight of all the ants exceeds that of human beings.
In the United States, the deplorable writing of many doctors is the cause of at least seven thousand deaths a year, in addition to causing injuries to a million and a half patients. The human body produces about two liters of saliva per day, which translates over a long life into enough to fill, more or less, two Olympic swimming pools, although Saatchi says nothing about the amount of saliva produced by the spokespersons who tell us. surround.
In a 1980 survey conducted in the United Kingdom, the following were at the top of the list of respondents' wants and needs: 1) a color television; 2) a car pon (car telephone, primitive mobile phone of the time); 3) a dishwasher; 4) that their children study in a private school; 5) have two cars.
After almost forty years, their preferences are these: 1) that their children study in private schools; 2) traveling on business; 3) a house with a pool; 4) a babysitter; 5) house with electric gate.
Well, they are nothing more than a sample of truths that we do not need, but they say a lot about who we are and how we think. And in the same way that Charles Sattchi decides what is or is not art and its value, we play with what is or is not true, yes, with no little help from the networks, media, opinion makers, influencers, televangelists and a long, very long etc. So, yes, we are bananas, that is, completely crazy, as well as very, very gullible, which is another way of saying fools.
