Happily, the British sculpture scene is in rude health, but there is only one place where works from both emerging and established artists come together. Wilfred Cass writes about his artistic idyll in Sussex.
My wife Jeannette and I bought this property 17 years ago, an idyllic setting in the grounds of Goodwood, near Chichester. We placed some of the sculptures we'd collected around the 20 acres of ancient woodland in which our house is set; they looked so magnificent that we wanted to do something more interesting with the space. So we took ourselves around the world and looked at about 30 sculpture parks.
We decided to limit our ambitions and concentrate on British sculpture. There was nowhere you could go to actually see what was happening with British sculpture. And it was always going to be tough for young, emerging sculptors to break through. Since the Cass Sculpture Foundation opened in 1993, we've offered financial help to both established artists and those straight out of college. Artists can only get well known by producing larger pieces. We quite literally use the grounds as a showcase for British sculpture. Our aim and consistent focus is to advance British sculpture and to promote it to a global audience. It's that simple.
We commission 15 to 20 large pieces of sculpture a year. We then try to get interested parties - museums, private buyers, town centres - to buy them. We use the money to commission another one.
In one way or another, we've probably spent £10m on this place - of which £6m or £7m is the initial commissioning of the sculpture. Had I not had extensive experience in business, we would have gone bankrupt a long time ago. But once we got the revolving, rolling mechanism in place, there were no funding problems. This is probably one of the few charities in the UK that is entirely funded by two people: my wife and myself. As we're quite a small operation, we can turn on a pin. There is always either a new piece coming in or going out or being shown somewhere. We recently showed, for example, a piece by Eilís O'Connell called The Loop in front of the new Wembley Stadium for the FA Cup Final. Around 60 per cent of all works go overseas to America, Japan and Germany. We've just sold seven pieces to a Portuguese multi-billionaire called José Berardo who's opening a museum in Lisbon. He took four or five of what I'd call our best pieces; luckily he didn't take them all.
"If a major piece sells we've got to struggle to get another artist who can do something of the same calibre"
Unlike the rest of the art world, where prices are withheld till your bank account has been checked, we give everyone a price list. The range goes from a few thousand pounds for the maquettes we sell in the shop to a Bill Woodrow at the top-end, which costs about £800,000. The average price is around £100,000. You could get a Tony Cragg for £200,000 or £300,000. There's a solo Cragg exhibition on here now; we have 12 pieces, including some produced for the exhibition.
I don't get emotionally attached to the sculptures. There's a canvas of 72 pieces in 20 acres and we're trying to create a changing picture with them. If a major piece sells, we've got to struggle to get another artist who's going to do something of the same calibre. We're always moving forwards. We don't keep the woodland static; we landscape the grounds in relation to the pieces.
I'm immensely proud of the fact that quite a few artists are on the road to being important as a result of working here. Tom Heatherwick for one; we own his graduation piece. Andy Goldsworthy did quite a lot of early work here. We've done experimental work with Sir Anthony Caro. Cathy de Monchaux has got a great big piece here, Confessional, with which she probably should have won the Turner Prize.
Quite often we get artists at the start of their careers, but not always. We only worked with Marc Quinn in 2003, when he created a 12-metre metal orchid, The Overwhelming World of Desire (Paphiopedilum Winston Churchill Hybrid).
I couldn't be specific about when I became interested in sculpture. I come from a German-Jewish family that was very much involved in the arts; my great-uncle Paul Cassirer was the most important dealer for the Impressionists in Europe. So I think it's in the genes. I got to know the late Henry Moore quite well and talking to him over the years - he was always very generous with his time - doubtless got me interested in sculpture, albeit subconsciously.
I am 82 now and the Foundation keeps me going. I've probably got far too much energy; I'm always moving pieces around and constantly working to make the piece look better; it's our commitment to the artists. I never stop learning what the market is all about. It's a small world but quite complex.
We don't stage big shows. We don't have to curate anything. We just have to choose one or two new sculptures every four to six weeks, which then take one or two years to produce and install in the ground. Over the past 12 years, we've commissioned more than 140 large-scale sculptures from over 120 British artists.
We get around 10,000 paying visitors a year. But not enough people know about us - the art world is still based, more or less, completely around London and it's a day out to come here. But those who do come always say they absolutely love it and want to visit again. Once you get people down here, there's absolutely no problem. It's a simple idea in beautiful grounds.
Wilfred Cass CBE is an honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Art and a Fellow of the Institute of the Electrical Engineers. Born in Berlin, Cass has worked as an engineer, run various award-winning companies and been chairman of Moss Bros plc. his wife finally urged him to move out of London in 1992, to West Sussex, but he hasn't stopped working.
Article by Amy Raphael, first published in the June 2007 issue of The Quarterly Magazine.