Saatchi's "Idol": Is This Any Way to Pick an Art Star?

It had to happen. Now it has:

On Monday, mega-collector Charles Saatchi launched a website, Showdown, which will pick new talent, "American-Idol"-style, for a three-month show at his prestigious new London gallery. The winner, voted upon by website visitors, also gets £1,000---not exactly the artworld equivalent of a megabucks recording contract, But, hey, it's a start.

This new initiative is an outgrowth of the popular Your Gallery feature on Saatchi's website, which gives exposure to online submissions from artists around the world.

Ben Hoyle reports in today's London Times:

The [Showdown] website...has already received more than 35 million hits. Over the next six months the thousands of art works will be whittled down to 12 in a series of fortnightly votes. Visitors to the site will rate each work on a scale of one to 10 and the dozen most popular art works will then compete against each another for the top prize. The runner-up will receive £750.

I don't know what this will do for the winning artist's career, but advertising genius Saatchi has once again found an outside-the-white-box way to draw international attention to himself and his collection. His new gallery opens in London's Chelsea later this year.

Maybe CultureGrrl should start one of these competitions: I'd like to get 35 million hits too!

UPDATE: I think the Saatchi sites are being overwhelmed by those hits. I got through once; now they won't reload. Eventually, these links should work!