Saatchi’s MySpace goes American Idol for fun

Does everybody know about the Saatchi Showdown, the art competition at the Saatchi Interactive Art Gallery?

I’ve gotten three links from three artists who’ve asked me to vote for them in this competition, an American Idol for the art crowd. It’s silly but harmless I guess. Voting is open now through Sunday, March 25.

Mark Barry (our blog buddy over at ionarts) Vote for Mark.
Albo Jeavons (Philadelphia artist whose anti-corporate works tickle me pink)
Vote for Albo.

Fred Michiels (pop-porn artist from Belgium who’s an artblog reader)
Vote for Fred.

Saatchi’s website, a spinoff of his real world gallery, is a phenomenon of hegemonic intent. They clearly want to be the new MySpace for the hipster crowd. The site announces its intent to be your favorite place in the UNIVERSE, with flashing words and an insistent screen crawl. Why bother to go anywhere else when right there you can get

YOUR VIDEOS YOUR ESSAYS YOUR REVIEWS CHAT ROOM FORUM YOUR GALLERY ARTISTS STUART ART STUDENTS MAGAZINE & BLOGS MUSEUMS ART COLLEGES GALLERIES & DEALERS KIDS’ ARTROOM MEET OTHERS…

Saatchi is MySpace and YouTube and now, with the populist voting, American Idol rolled into one.

Of course here’s what it’s all about: Saatchi counts the numbers. They’ve had 20,290,485 HITS IN THE LAST 24 HOURS as of this morning’s visit. Are we at artblog jealous of those numbers? You bet. Maybe we’ll have to ramp up our bells and whistles and go mano-a-mano with Saatchi. How about an artblog chat room…would anybody go? Who would YOU vote for in a Saatchi v. artblog showdown?

Anyway, I completely agree with Jeavons’ take on the voting:

The contest itself is kind of ridiculous – some kind of weird approximation of “democracy” that really just ends up being a contest to see who’s best at doing what I’m trying to do here; using e-mail lists to get as many people as possible to vote for them. Maybe Charles Saatchi (the owner of the largest ad agency in the world, whose contest this is) has some kind of satirical intent? I doubt it. He seems to have a sincere interest in art, but what is this supposed to prove, really?