Saatchi: I'll pay 10 times the value for art

Multi-millionaire art collector Charles Saatchi today said money is no object when it comes to buying art. He said he was prepared to pay up to 10 times to value of a work to secure it.

Saatchi also poured scorn on the new generation of British artists, citing falling standards in art schools as the reason for their decline.

Saatchi, whose avid purchases of modern artists such as Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin led to the rise of the Young British Artist (YBA) movement in the 1990s, says as a result he is now buying, and subsequently exhibiting, American and Chinese artists.

Saatchi told the Guardian: "I'm not in it for the money. I make a lot of money from the stuff I sell, but then I pay incredibly high prices for the things I want."

Saatchi, who is married to the TV chef Nigella Lawson, has often been accused of buying many artists' work cheaply at the beginning of their careers, only to sell it on for a vastly superior price. But today he said: "I make a list of my favourite works by [an] artist and I will try to get those pieces. And if that means I pay 10 times the market price, I don't mind doing it."

He also said he has no idea how much his fortune, derived from a career in advertising as well as his art, is worth. Recently Saatchi has bought art by artists such as Annie Kevans and Conrad Shawcross, leading some to conclude that his interest in YBAs is as strong as ever.

But today he scotches that speculation. Referring to the 1990s, he says: "I think that something conspired to make British art suddenly probably the most exciting in the world. I think the art schools were particularly strong at that period.

"For the last five or six years the art schools have been very weak, and I see much less good art." He said he hadn't seen anything with the visceral impact of Damien Hirst's rotting cow "for a long time".

"The era of Damien, the Chapmans and Sarah Lucas has had its golden age," he said. "I used to buy lots but in the past five years I haven't. This year I've bought one artist out of Goldsmiths, nothing from Chelsea."

Saatchi said his new Chelsea gallery will open next June probably with an exhibition of Chinese art. USA Today, a Saatchi exhibition showcasing young American artists, is due to open at the Royal Academy next month in spite of last week's fire there. Saatchi said: "America is now as exciting as Britain was in the early 90s."