‘Hands up who’s been to Burning Man?’ The Duke of Devonshire asks gamely, though the question rouses no movement amongst the crowd assembled in Chatsworth’s Great Hall. One imagines the target audience for the annual event in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert might be rather different from that of Chatsworth House, the seat of the Cavendish family since 1549. And yet, it is here that eight monumental sculptures have landed amongst the rolling landscaped grounds for the season, with four more being created on-site by local makers, visitors and community groups over the coming months.
The idea is to draw new audiences to Chatsworth. If that was achieved what would they see? Approaching up the sweeping drive, the first sculpture to come into sight is as unmissable as the house itself, a 20-foot steel head with books flying out of the top of it like thoughts in flight. Christina Sporrong’s Flybrary represents the idea ‘that contemplation within a surreal setting and circumstance inspires new ways of seeing things, expanding one’s view from within to affect one’s view without.’
This concept seems completely apt for what is going on at Chatsworth. 2022 is the current Duke and Duchess of Devonshire’s final year living in the house, before they pass it along to the next in line. To mark the occasion there are two exhibitions running concurrently – Radical Horizons: The Art of Burning Man at Chatsworth outside, and Living with Art We Love inside. This puts on display the Modern British art and contemporary pieces amassed over the 56 years of their marriage.
To take a look around is to understand the open-minded nature of the Devonshire’s. In the chapel, a Damien Hirst stands opposite a Poussin. In the bedroom the Duchess’ hat collection is strung from the ceiling, as if thrown in the air from the four-poster bed. In the Great Chamber, ceramics – a great favourite of the Duke – by Pippin Drysdale pick up the colours from the Baroque ceiling above. Both old and new are seen in a new light.
Some of our favourite pieces in the collection include the Duke and Duchess’s desks, both striking and contemporary. The Duchess’s is made by John Makepeace from bleached English burr oak and straight-grained oak that might have grown in the surrounding landscape, whilst the Duke’s is a great example of upcycling, entitled Salvaged Wood by Piet Hein Eek. It’s easy to imagine them writing their letters sitting at them. There’s also a collection of 12 Lucian Freud paintings as well as drawings and prints that showcase his connection with his patrons, the 11th Duke and Duchess of Devonshire and there are even some tubes of paint leftover from his days painting at Chatsworth.
Then there’s the best plate wall we’ve ever seen where fine porcelain is hung alongside Fornasetti and Anthropologie in a wonderful hodgepodge. And in the next room, a tiny Picasso sketch of himself arriving in Paris in 1902. ‘The exhibition is a marker in time, a record of two people’s passion but it has no pretension to any enduring importance,’ the couple say. And yet it’s all the better for this. It’s a joy to discover their genuine love for art and to see how their interest in commissioning and supporting artists and makers has kept the house vital and alive.
In the unexpected juxtapositions there is also sense of fun, which continues outdoors to the Burning Man sculptures. There’s Lodestar, a WW2 jet with a bar at the top strung with disco balls. There’s Wings of Glory, a flying horse whose wings are operated by the motor of an ex golf buggy. There’s a strokable bear and cub made from penny coins. Stone 40 by Benjamin Langholz is a site-specific installation that includes a spiral of floating stones, each gathered from a quarry near Chatsworth. Visitors are encouraged to climb on them and ‘float’, gazing out at the horizon. Looking ahead is what it’s all about, yet it seems to nod too to the Chatsworth rockery and the landscape itself, and so includes the past and feels like a hopeful continuation.
A Little Bird Loves
