The Cass Sculpture Foundation in Goodwood.
Review by Andrew Graham-Dixon.
The only work ever to have been stolen from the Cass Sculpture Foundation, near Goodwood, was an abstract-mythological bronze - an evocation of Venus by the brilliant but still rather underrated senior British sculptor, William Turnbull. The piece had been installed close to the sculpture park's perimeter fence, where the thieves must have parked some kind of four-by-four vehicle, most probably a flatbed pick-up truck, in the adjoining field. One day the sculpture was there; the next morning it was gone.
"It must have taken them a while to remove it," reflects Wilfred Cass, the extraordinarily energetic 82-year-old director of the foundation that bears his name. The work was never recovered but Cass has his theories about who took it. "It was a collector, for sure, and I have my suspicions about a bloke I can't name. Whoever it was, they obviously wanted it a lot. It's probably in the garden of some villa in Crete, right now. Some collectors will do anything to get a piece if they think it will impress their friends - even if they can't afford it. Most of them really are bonkers, you know." Then he brightens and says, with a typical sense of mischief, "still, I suppose it's a good sign - at least it shows that British sculpture, nowadays, is in demand." His tone of voice suggests that he remembers a time, perhaps not too long ago, when you could barely give the stuff away.
Cass might think most collectors are bonkers, but back in 1992 most of his friends were saying the same thing about him. He had just called time on a successful career, first as an engineer, then as an entrepreneur who specialised in reviving the fortunes of ailing businesses. But instead of retreating into a prosperous, uneventful retirement, Cass decided to invest his entire fortune in a most unusual charity dedicated to the promotion of new British sculpture. Together with his wife, Jeannette, he purchased a house complete with a twenty-four acre estate in a spectacularly beautiful tract of ancient woodland not far from Goodwood racecourse. They removed a multitude of weed trees, as well as the carcasses of many a giant oak and elm blown down during the great storm of 1987. Working with landscape designer Victor Shanley, they created a series of woodland clearings carpeted with wild flowers that were intended to work as outdoor galleries for sculpture. Having seen a number of overcrowded sculpture parks - Cass tactfully declines to name them - they decreed that every work was to have at least a quarter of an acre to itself.
Their idea was not to create a conventional sculpture park but a kind of outdoor gallery, to which people might come not only to look at art but also to purchase it. Cass had long been interested in sculpture, having been a close friend of Henry Moore for many years (the two had met when Moore approached one of Cass's companies, an art-supplying business, looking for a particular type of paint). He and his wife had collected Moores, as well as the works of Elisabeth Frink and Michael Ayrton, among others. All were sold to fund the new venture, which had its roots in the conviction that British sculpture was insufficiently visible.
The basic idea was straightforward. Every year the Cass Foundation would commission up to 15 new works of British sculpture, some from well established artists, others from promising younger sculptors. The foundation would pay all the costs of creating each work, itself a significant charitable gesture - the price of making a sculpture, compared to a painting, is a formidable deterrent to many younger artists who might otherwise wish to work in the medium. As soon as they were finished, the works were to be put on display in the Sussex parkland, at prices broadly ranging between £20,000 and £700,000. Every time one was sold, the foundation was to subtract its own overheads and costs and pay out the remainder to the sculptor who had created it.
The business model was entirely untried, although the idea of a sculpture park itself was certainly nothing new. Before creating their own, the Casses spent two years travelling the world visiting sculpture parks, gardens and trails. They went to America, Australia and Asia, to Scandinavia and all over mainland Europe. They were particularly struck by the collections of monumental modern sculpture in the 500 acres of Storm King, in New York State, and by the enormous sculpture park at Hakone, in the foothills of Mount Fuji, a short hop from Tokyo on the bullet-train.
If he were himself Japanese Wilfred Cass might have been designated a National Treasure, such has been the success of his foundation. When he started, back in 1992, the consensus in the British art world was that he was a naïve enthusiast whose utopian plans were bound to fail. Buyers would not materialise, the cost of creating each new sculpture would plunge the foundation deeper into the red, and sooner rather than later the whole venture would collapse. Fifteen years on, and the place is evidently thriving. Cass calculates that he has commissioned approaching 170 original works of art and paid out more than £7m, in total, to living British artists. That sum amounts to a little more than 95% of all the money that the foundation has received from the proceeds of selling the work - a considerable improvement on the 50% generally returned to artists by the galleries that represent them.
About 70 sculptures can currently be seen in the grounds of the foundation, which looks at its best during the summer months. Despite its enormous success as a charitable venture - a kind of nursery garden for the cultivation of sculptures destined to be sold to collectors the world over - the park still attracts fewer visitors than its director would like. That will doubtless change, but it is precisely the fact that the Cass Foundation is rather off the beaten track that makes it such a pleasure to visit.
The sculptures are laid out in the grounds rather like the follies in a great eighteenth-century garden like Stowe or Stourhead. Cass is under no illusions about the quality of the work that he has commissioned over the years, which he frankly admits is uneven. It is inevitable that any collection of contemporary art will contain its share of duds, but overall the Cass Foundation's hits greatly outnumber its misses. There are unusual and exciting works to be found, like secrets, in many of the garden's quiet and green corners. There is a cluster of outstanding sculptures by Tony Cragg, including what looks like a wriggling stainless steel spermatozoon - created just after the artist had been cured of a life-threatening malady, this piece is simply and exuberantly entitled I'm Alive. There is a brilliant, sensual work in black Pennsylvannia granite by Jon Isherwood, who used to run Anthony Caro's workshop but has become a seriously gifted sculptor in his own right. There is a wonderfully surprising work by Douglas White, a palm tree formed with alchemical wizardry from the relics of a mass of torn and tattered lorry tyres.
The sculpture park is a little bit like an adult version of a children's easter egg hunt. There are false trails but lots of good things to seek out too. Cass himself, the creator if not only begetter of the Foundation, seems himself to take a continuing, almost child-like pleasure in seeing the collection change and evolve. "The best thing about having a selling collection is the fact that it's never the same, so I never get bored." He is proudest of all of the archive that he has built in the grounds, a low and elegant building in concrete and steel. It contains books, documents, drawings for sculpture and numerous maquettes - not just for works commissioned by Cass himself, but for many other sculptures, such as Rachel Whiteread's delicate, jelly-like mould designed for the Trafalgar Square plinth a few years ago. The Cass Foundation archive has quickly grown into one of the world's outstanding resources for anyone - teachers, academics, artists - interested in the field of modern British sculpture.
Looking forward, Cass says he would like to see more Russian and Chinese collectors buying work. The main problem, he adds, is winkling them out of London. What about hiring a helicopter to fly them to Sussex, a service readily available to the super-rich when they visit neighbouring Goodwood races? The thought instantly seems to appeal to him. How much does a helicopter cost, he wants to know. He'd rather buy than rent and it would be far cheaper if he could fly it himself. How long does it take to learn to fly one? How much does it cost to have lessons and are you allowed to take up flying in your eighties? It seems improbable, but perhaps, by this time next year, at the grand age of 83, he will indeed be a magnificent man with his flying machine. Wilfred Cass really does seems capable of anything he puts his mind to.
Article by Andrew Graham-Dixon, first published in The Sunday Telegraph's Seven Magazine, 2nd September 2007.