Art for May

Associated media

NEW JUNE CONTENT IS ON ITS WAY!

In April the art Insurers Hiscox published their Online Art Trade Report 2014. The findings point to a major change in how people are buying art. There is now an appetite amongst all buyers to buy contemporary art online, without seeing the actual work, with 71% of the survey respondents saying they had bought art this way, and 26% saying they had spent over £59,000.

The online platform is seen as less intimidating to buyers who view the established art world as exclusive and inaccessible. The largest share of buyers (45%) had bought in the £1000–£10,000 range. Major auction houses and galleries do have online sites, but for a younger generation art online is proving to be the way to purchase art and limited edition prints are a popular entry point for many online buyers. These younger purchasers will have to be wooed and cultivated which could be a problem for the art establishment, especially now Amazon has also become a player in the art market, shortly to be joined by eBay, mainly in the £100–£1000 range.

Cassone, as an online art magazine, can see the attraction of buying online, but cannot recommend too highly actually getting out and viewing art in all its physical glory and to this end we have some very good exhibitions covered in this month’s issue.

Roy Clarke went to the exhibition ‘Staying Power’ at the V&A. This exhibition which closes on 24 May, is taken from the V&A collection and showcases a variety of photographic responses to black British experience from the 1950s to the 1990s.

‘Painting Paradise: The Art of the Garden’ is on at the Queen’s Gallery Buckingham Palace until 13 October. Katie Campbell  attended the press view  and says ‘With 150 exhibits covering 400 years, the sheer range of garden-inspired objects from the Queen's collection demonstrates the enormous role that gardens play in the British consciousness …the exhibition will be fascinating to garden historians interested in artefacts and documentary evidence; it will also be a delight to garden lovers and “royal watchers”’.

Julian Freeman writes on a new book on Leslie Moffat Ward, which accompanies an exhibition at the St Barbe Museum and Art Gallery Lymington  which closes on 6 June. Julian says that ‘“An English Idyll” is important not just because it charts Ward’s artistic progress as a painter-printmaker, but also because, more generally, it points to the continuity, importance and vitality of local arts activity in the UK’.

Janet Tyson went to the ‘Diego Riviera and Frida Kahlo in Detroit’ exhibition. This is on at the Detroit Institute of Arts until 12 July 2014. She says this show was some 10 years in the making, and ‘would be exciting and thought-provoking under any circumstances’. Read her review to find out why.

Susan Platt writes on the internationally acclaimed artist Ai Weiwei, who is not allowed to travel outside China. He has, though, been able to continue to create work all over the world in absentia. She writes that ‘“@Large, AiWeiwei on Alcatraz”, an extraordinary installation inside the former Federal prison, expands on his personal experience to call attention to and honour political dissidents detained in countries all over the world’. Read her review and hear how she visited China and how events took place that meant she was extremely relieved when the time of departure came to get on a plane and leave the country. Ai Weiwei is not so fortunate.

Patricia Andrew writes ‘It’s all change at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, with three new exhibitions based on the permanent collection’. Scotland’s National Gallery of Modern Art occupies two adjacent sites on Belford Road, Edinburgh each set in attractive grounds that act as sculpture parks.  Their permanent collections have been re-hung and Patricia writes on the resulting new exhibitions one of which closes in July, another going on until January 2016.

In this issue Jenny Kingsley discovers in London’s financial district, The Guildhall Art Gallery. She writes ‘The Gallery showcases the art collection of the City of London. The collection, amassed with bequests, acquisitions and commissions, originates from the late 17th century. Its roots are the Gallery’s first commissions: 22 portraits of the “Fire Judges”, those responsible for resolving land disputes after the Great Fire of London in 1666. There are some 4,500 artworks in the collection; and it is still growing.’

Our book reviews are as varied as ever, Picasso and Spanish Modernism, Owning the Past: Why the English Collected Antique Sculpture and A Life’s Work: The Art of Evelyn Williams, being just three.

Learn more about Cassone on our Frequently Asked Questions page

Cookies on Cassone


 Whilst you are browsing our website, to make your experience as fluent and intuitive as we can, we sometimes place small amounts of information on your device, for example, your computer or mobile phone. These include small files known as cookies. They cannot be used to identify you personally but will help you to browse our website easily. We also use this information to track what pages are popular, what website you came from before this and what Internet browser you are using. Again, this is all so we can continually improve our service to you and is not identifiable to you personally. 

These pieces of information are used to improve services for you.

For examlple, we measure how many people are using our website, so it can be made easier to use and more informative to the end user.
Without cookies, you would need to log in again every time you chose to view a new article. Cookies allow you to move from one article to another without having to do this. For more information, see our Frequently Asked Questions page.


Cassone – ca-soh-neh – the elaborately  decorated chest that a wealthy Italian bride of the Renaissance period used to hold her trousseau: a box of beautiful things.