ABOVE: detail from Marc Quinn’s Self (1991). Charles Saatchi announced that he is selling the iconic Britart work to an American for £1.5 million.

Charles Saatchi, the Mediciesque British art collector, continued his spring cleaning this week by selling one of the most (in)famous and influential works in his collection for £1.5 million, a cool 10,000 per cent appreciation in 14 years. Self, a self portrait by Mark Quinn, sculpted out of 9 pints of the artist’s own frozen blood, was undeniably the exclamation mark in the 1997 “Sensation!” show at the Royal Academy in Britain.

Saatchi’s liquidation of his more sensation!al works over the last months (The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living (aka “The Shark“); Dead Dad) is causing some hand-wringing among Britons who are watching a decade’s worth of contemporary art get sucked across the Atlantic by rich New Yorkers; others regard it as rubbish and good riddance. This Guardian article notes that Saatchi has played this game before, purging his vaults of Warhols and Koons in the 80s, again with a savvy investor’s eye and a mercenary, predatory thirst for something new to sink his profits into. At the moment, Chuck is scooping up oil paintings and, the Guardian says, Chinese art.

LINK: Saatchi sells Britart classic for £1.5m