Saatchi\'s Return - at the RA

Charles Saatchi's new show, 'USA Today', opens at the Royal Academy of Arts, London, on 6 October through 4 November. It shows the work of some 40 artists stateside, as shown in 150 works. It is nine years since the remarkable 'Sensation' show by Saatchi at the Royal Academy. Among the select is the Pennsylvania-born artist, Gerald Davis, who reveals his childhood fantasies. A mildly pornographic mega-phallus suggests that Lara Schnitger, the artist, may have stumbled across the Greek Island of Delos for such inspiration: or was it traumatised closer to home. Royal Academy officials agreed to the show with some trepidation, but Norman Rosenthal, the Exhibitions Secretary, had typically been to the US to see for himself, and was reassured of the groundbreaking quality, just like 'Sensation', now itself part of history. Saatchi himself admits that the majority of the work is not much known in the US other than among relatively small groups of supportive enthusiasts. Saatchi, as always, thrives as an agent provocateur in the cultural field.