Investing in art pays dividends!

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We British are a complex race and nowhere does it show more than in our various approaches to art and culture. While people moan about the eccentricities of some of our contemporary art and theatre, hard economic facts in a time of financial hardship get attention. Earlier this year the Arts Council argued that the culture industry is an ‘undeniably vibrant sector’, providing good returns on investment. It commissioned an independent economic study, which found that the sector currently makes up 0.4 per cent of GDP from just 0.1 per cent of investment. For every £1 of subsidy given to the arts, the sector made a £7 contribution to GDP. No doubt there is a similar return in many other countries.

In Cassone we try to feature as many different types of art, design, architecture and visual studies as possible and like the arts in general, we give a good return on the small investment of the price of a subscription! For this issue our writers have had a busy summer attending various exhibitions.

Ros Ormiston interviews David Boyd Haycock, the curator of the very successful show at Dulwich Picture Gallery, ‘A Crisis of Brilliance 1908–1922’, and he tells her that a picture of the artists who are the subjects of the exhibition, picnicking in 1912, was the inspiration for the exhibition. Their tutor Henry Tonks was also the subject of an article in August’s Cassone.

Sue Ecclestone went to the exhibition of the portraiture of Laura Knight at the National Portrait Gallery; Knight was the first woman to be a Royal Academician since the 18th century, and the first female artist to be made a Dame.

Alexander Adams reviews the exhibition of more than 70 loans from Russia, Switzerland, and Paris of the work of Chagall now at Tate Liverpool while Susan Grange went to the National Gallery to review ‘Vermeer and Music, The Art of Love and Leisure’.  Stephen Bury reports on the Le Corbusier show at the Museum of Modern Art, in New York, and Ros Ormiston thinks Charles Saatchi has not lost his touch when she saw some new British art with a trace of humour at the New Order: British Art Today exhibition, on at the Saatchi Gallery until the end of this month. Late last year, Larry Silver visited an exhibition in Washington on the art of Renaissance Germany - this exhibition opens in Texas next month, so Larry's informative review will be a useful primer for those able to visit it now, and a taste of what we are missing for the rest of us.

In our Perspectives section, Jonathan R. Jones writes on the work of Canadian artist Mathieu Beauséjour, currently working in London.

Also in this issue Jenny Kingsley explores the art of puppetry and visits the Little Angel Theatre, in London. Finally Karen Hasin Bromley says the Art Fund Prize for Museum of the Year has deservedly gone to the William Morris Gallery in Walthamstow, which she tells us is one of the hidden gems of London.