Wheel of fortune: Svetlana Alpers on painting past and present.(SLANT)(Saatchi Gallery, London)(National Gallery, London)(Critical Essay)

I WENT TO SEE "The Triumph of Painting: Part 1" at the Saatchi Gallery on a morning in February. (There will be three more installments this year and next of this vast survey of some 350 canvases from Charles Saatchi's collection.) I went out of curiosity about seeing the works, of course, but also out of curiosity about the site--the old London County Hall (opened in 1922; until 1986, the seat of the city's government), which had been vacated, sold, and converted into a leisure complex with hotels, an aquarium, and, eventually, the gallery.

As it turned out, the ...

Read the rest of this article with a Free Trial at HighBeam Research.