Charles Saatchi stages X Factor for artists

Charles Saatchi, the advertising man who is largely credited with ushering in the Brit Art explosion of the early 1990s, making the careers of Damien Hirst among others, is to oversee a BBC2 show that aims to do for contemporary artists what Simon Cowell's The X Factor has done for aspirant pop stars.

The show, to be called Saatchi's Best of British, is open to all comers, and will encompass every artistic genre, including installation art, painting, digital media, sculpture, printmaking, and performance art.

It is expected, as with The X Factor, that hundreds of no-hopers will apply, but they will be weeded down to six finalists by Saatchi. These will then attend an art school where they will be tutored by some of Britain's top contemporary artists before exhibiting their work at a Saatchi exhibition sometime next year at the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg, Russia.

Saatchi, who opens a new show at his Chelsea gallery this week, Unveiled: New Art from the Middle East, will not be adopting the sort of high-profile role Simon Cowell enjoys in The X Factor. "He would hate to be up front like that,” says a source for The First Post. “He likes to keep himself to himself, in the same way he sneaks into galleries and buys whole shows without even meeting the artist."

Sadly for the finalists, there is no chance of that happening to them: to avoid a conflict of interest, Saatchi has been barred from snapping up any of their work.

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