Contemporary Art Society

Contemporary Art Society (CAS). A society formed in London in 1910 to promote contemporary art and to acquire works by living artists for gift or loan to public museums in Britain (and later in the Commonwealth and occasionally elsewhere). It was envisaged as the counterpart, in the modern field, of the National Art Collections Fund, which had been founded in 1903 to assist public collections in purchasing works of art. Originally it was planned to call the society the Modern Art Association, but the present name had been adopted by the time the CAS was formerly inaugurated on 18 May 1910 at 44 Bedford Square, the home of Philip Morrell, a Liberal MP, and his wife Lady Ottoline Morrell (1873–1938), a celebrated hostess and patron of the arts. They were members of the original committee, which also included Charles Aitken (then director of the Whitechapel Art Gallery, later director of the Tate Gallery), Clive Bell, Roger Fry, and D. S. MacColl. Later members of the committee have included many distinguished figures in the art world, notably Kenneth Clark, whose energy and financial generosity were important in helping the society to survive the Second World War.

In 1991 a book was published to mark the 80th anniversary of the CAS: British Contemporary Art 1910–1990: Eighty Years of Collecting by the Contemporary Art Society. In the introduction Sir Alan Bowness wrote that ‘The intentions and procedures of the Contemporary Art Society have changed little since its formation in 1910 … Paintings and sculptures, not more than twenty years old, were to be acquired, exhibited as widely as possible, and then presented to national and municipal collections. Funds were to come from these municipal galleries, in expectation of receiving gifts of modern works of art, and from individual subscribers’ (corporate patronage began in the 1970s). By the time Bowness wrote these words, the CAS had presented more than 4,000 such works, mainly but not exclusively by British artists. In the final essay of the 80th anniversary volume Edward Lucie-Smith wrote: ‘For purely financial reasons, works by major artists—Hockney and Bacon for instance—have nearly always been bought early in their careers. Late Hockney and late Bacon have always been well beyond the Society's reach … On the whole the buyers have got matters right far more often than they have got them wrong. From the standpoint of 1991 they have bought many more good works of art than bad ones. Where British art is concerned, while they have bought some good artists rather late, there have been very few whom they have neglected altogether.’

Other countries have established Contemporary Art Societies, although not invariably with the same type of purpose as the British CAS. In Australia, a CAS was formed in Melbourne in 1938 in opposition to the Australian Academy of Art, founded the previous year, which was considered by its opponents to be a bastion of conservatism. Opposition to the Academy was led by George Bell, who issued a leaflet entitled To Art Lovers in which he proposed forming ‘a society which will unite all artists and laymen who are in favour of encouraging the growth of a living art, who are determined both to prevent any dictatorship in art and to nullify the effect of any official recognition acquired by a self-constituted Academy'. In its early years the CAS was split by disputes among members, but it established branches in Sydney and Adelaide and then in other states and through its exhibitions became the main channel for transmitting knowledge of avant-garde art. In 1961 the Contemporary Art Society of Australia was formed.

In Canada, a Contemporary Art Society was founded in Montreal in 1939 by the painter John Lyman (1886–1967) and ran until 1948. It held annual exhibitions and aimed to promote an international outlook in contrast to the nationalistic concerns of the Group of Seven and the Canadian Group of Painters. The artists who exhibited with the Canadian Contemporary Art Society included Borduas and Riopelle.