Andrew Davies meets the man behind the rise of the Goodwood Sculpture Estate, Wilfred Cass CBE.
Kew Gardens has nice plants, but so do most municipal parks; it's the scientific research and education elements that give it its worldwide reputation. So it is with the Cass Sculpture Foundation: the public come to Goodwood to admire the sculptures, without realising that its principal role is to promote new artists and enable pieces to be commissioned.
Public art can sometimes be diabolical; conversely there is also a tendency to play safe. Too often potential buyers want a 'brand' name such as Gormley. As a balance, the Foundation aims to widen the knowledge base by encouraging and promoting a list of artists that now includes over one hundred names. Not everyone has the vision to commission work from an artist's drawing. Likewise maquettes do not convey a sense of scale. So to authorities, developers and collectors, the Foundation provides a valuable insight into who and what is out there, and how to go about the business of commissioning. As their website puts it, 'where else can you see a changing display of seventy specially commissioned monumental sculptures in an idyllic landscape and all for sale?'
Wilfred Cass CBE has a pin-sharp intellect and a determination and directness indicative of his scientifically trained mind. Thanks to an energetic fitness regime, he looks easily a decade younger than his 82 years. He and his wife Jeanette head up a family of artistic achievers. Their daughter is an established stained glass artist and their son runs Cass Arts shops. There is clearly a streak of brilliance in the Cass family genes.
Wilfred was born Wolfgang Cassirer, into an extremely prominent German Jewish family. His grandfather was Richard Cassirier, the famous brain surgeon. A great uncle, Paul Cassirer, was simultaneously an art dealer, patron, publisher and committed art politician who was highly influential in promoting the artists of the Berlin secession, the impressionists and post-impressionists, in particular the work of Vincent van Gogh and Paul Cézanne. Another great uncle was the philosopher Ernst Cassirer, but Wilfred's own father, Hans, was a hard-nosed businessman who ran a paper-works and had "no interest in art whatsoever".
Wilfred came to Britain with his brother Eric in 1933, was educated here and later worked in the electronics industry before setting up Cass Electronics Ltd in 1955. His career has since been described as that of "a philanthropist and serial entrepreneur". An effective manager; he turned around struggling businesses such as Moss Bros Plc (1987-1991). A precursor to the Foundation's aims in mixing art and business was the founding of Image Bank UK with his son Mark in 1979, which became one of the UK's largest suppliers of film and photography for the advertising industry. Between 1971-76, Wilfred was variously a shareholder, Chairman and Managing Director of art materials manufacturers Reeves & Sons Ltd, where he introduced 100 new products.
"You must have a dream: something you would like to make, not what you think you can sell. Don't worry about the expense" Wilfred Cass CBE
It was during this period that Wilfred met Henry Moore who became something of an artistic mentor and teacher. Wilfred's first sculptural purchase was a Henry Moore Mother and Child maquette. He also bought Moore etchings for £10 each, or rather "collected what we did not sell" from the Cass Picture Gallery's Henry Moore Show. The Cass's also befriended (and collected works by) Frink, Ayrton and Hockney.
Upon Wilfred's retirement in 1992, the Cass's moved from London to Hat Hill House, a Bauhaus-inspired property in West Sussex, and established the Cass Sculpture Foundation. Instead of slowing down, the couple dedicated the next year to visiting 30 sculpture parks around the world to get an overview of world sculpture. Intensive market-testing followed, with thirty five dinner parties and luncheons in four months.
"Everybody said a sculpture park was a crazy idea and you'll lose every penny" Cass recalls. A grant was applied for but refused, so to fund the park Wilfred and Jeanette sold their own personal collection. The Duke of Richmond and Gordon was fundamental in providing the additional acreage needed within the ancient woodlands of the Goodwood estate, and Sir Anthony Caro lent the Foundation his gigantic Tower of Discovery which helped launch the project when it opened in 1994.
The Foundation's first and most important decision was to concentrate on British sculpture, promoting new talent to a global audience through a vigorous programme of commissioning, funding and marketing. In this, Wilfred's energy and vision is fundamental to bringing everything together. Often, he enables works to be made by new artists. "The artist needs only one commission to begin a portfolio. A commission which enables an unknown artist to make a 15ft sculpture, which then sells, benefits the artist, the Foundation and everyone else."
Cass is always looking for new ideas from artists. "You must have a dream: something you would like to make, not what you think you can sell. Don't worry about the expense." He accepts that he has a quasi-dealer function in popularising new artists, but he is adamant that he is not a dealer and the park is not a gallery.
The collection is an organic and living construct; over 170 pieces have been commissioned since 1994 from over 130 British artists. After a few years, static collections get boring, but the Foundation's ever-changing display provides continuing interest and has attracted over 150,000 visitors to date. Around 40% of all works go overseas, primarily to the USA, Japan and Germany. Half a dozen pieces have been recently sold to the CCB in Lisbon, which houses the Berardo Collection of Modern Art, including Temple(1998) by Allen Jones.
An established 'British Pop Artist', Allen Jones has an often irreverent style; on a flat canvas forms appear sculptural, whilst his three dimensional works are painterly. Temple plays on the artifice of distorted scale that you can find with follies in eighteenth century landscapes; visual clues trick you into thinking the piece is huge but at just 800 centimetres high, it is reality quite small.
On the new four-acre site called the Chalk Pit, created especially for one-man showings, there is currently an exhibition entitled Tony Cragg at Goodwood the largest exhibition of his sculptures in Britain to date. Cragg's works include organic swirls such as Declination or Bent of Mind, which are reminiscent of windblown faces or eroded Death Valley rock stacks. His philosophy is encapsulated in one memorable quote. "Although sculpture remains for the greater part useless, unlike designed objects, it is an attempt to make dumb material express human thoughts and emotions."
Over the years, the Foundation has also been extensively involved as a partner in the Trafalgar Square fourth plinth project - possibly the most prominent public art programme in London. The idea of placing a series of sculptures on the western plinth, unoccupied since being built in the 1840's, was conceived by the Royal Society of Arts. Pieces such as Marc Quinn's Alison Lapper Pregnant(2005) certainly raised a lot of media comment. Bill Woodrow's Regardless of History(1999), which graced the plinth in 2000, was enabled by the Foundation. Rachel Whiteread's 90 cm high resin and plaster maquette for Monument(1999) is also in the collection. The full-sized version was placed in 2001. Other projects with which the Foundation has been involved are The Jerwood Prize for Sculpture and the Battle of Britain Memorial.
Wilfred Cass is a remarkable, single-minded visionary with infectious energy who lives and breathes contemporary British sculpture. Now established in its irresistible formula, the Cass's sustainable and low-cost Foundation, with its uncomplicated and financially stable business model, should prove to be the enabling resource for British sculpture throughout the twenty-first century.
Article by Andrew Davies, first published in the 2007 issue of
AXA Art Review.
