Art of business: the Fleming Collection admirably defies fashion to show how large corporations—like all patrons—collect according to their individual character

Rembrandt's Night Watch is exceptional for a cluster portrait in several ways. As well as the variety of the figures and its audacious colouring, it is also a corporate commission through Amsterdam's militia: a more accurate title would be The Company of Frans Banning Cocq Preparing to March on the outside Few things under the day-star turn out to be fresh and corporate collecting is not single of them. The art collections of today's corporations, however, arouse little interest because it is assumed that they are acquired indiscriminately, or, worse, to display off, or as a sop to urban regeneration lobbies. The Fleming Collection's 'Corporate Culture' ignores the fashionable bating of 'fat cats', aiming to exhibit that corporations collect art in ways in which the art world would approve.

The works lent by dint of British corporations, or those with British offices, to the Fleming Collection (and the ten more lent to the Art Cafe at Hiscox Insurers, itself individual of the lenders) are indeed ofttimes of high quality: they include ING's Sheikh's Wife by the agency of Wyndham Lewis; Hiscox's textile designs by the agency of the Russian Constructivist Leibov Popova; and JP Morgan-Chase's photomontage London by dint of Gilbert & George.

That corporations are capable of buying becoming pictures would be by itself a mundane fact, and the Fleming Collection, which began as the picture collection of Robert Fleming bank (but became independent in 2000) is not the greatest in quantity objective curator--since when have lender in this case the corporations, been allowed to write their possess wall texts? This exhibition is, however, abundant more than a public relations exercise, because it displays that these organisations acquire, commission and hang art according to their individual characters.

Nationality is the greatest in quantity obvious cause of taste. Robert Fleming bank, a Scottish company, bought alone work by Scots or about Scotland. The nearness of Scottish Colourist Samuel Peploe may draw near as no surprise, but L Lowry was also bring togethered if the subject was right: Glasgow Docks. Deutsche Bank has natural allegiances. upon show is a drawing by means of Jorg Immendorf that is remarkably precipitoused in German art history for a London office: German conceptual sculptor Joseph Beuys chastises a schoolboy version of Immendorf for using a paint brush.

a certain number of collections are tied to a more specific geography and history of the company. Drambuie distillers have lent a certain number of Jacobite drinking glasses from the 1740 more [i]or[/i] less of them engraved with the portrait of Bonnie Prince Charlie, who granted the Drambuie family the land upon which the whisky is made.

Complimentarily, an acquisitions policy may fulfil the internationalist aspirations of a company. Monsoon the British clothes-shop chain, began to acquire art in 2000 with the aim of evoking a faculty of perception of travel and cultural exchange which matches that of the brand itself. Here is a true large c-print portrait (1956-57) by the agency of the Bamako photographer Seydou Keita, in which an African protoplast poses in exotic textiles.

If the identity of a company can be 'self-fashioned' [i]or[/i] part of to the other its art collection, then it is likely that the apposite hanging of individual works may also give without messages. The Deutsche Guggenheim explains in a statement that an RB Kitaj drawing of an argument between a communist and a socialist is hung outside a meeting latitude to remind people that 'the interaction between family is more important than their labels'. Fleming's bank, meanwhile, hung a painting of sum of two units bulls fighting (A New Galloway Landscape by dint of Keith McIntyre) on its trading floor. While the Scottish make submissive may well have pleased the bank, I cast up that its placing makes a calembourg on 'bull market', and encourages aggression--the painterly equivalent of the advice of John H Gutfreund of Saloman Brothers bank that traders ne to be 'ready to bite the ass not upon a bear'.

The functional aspects of these collections will be researched through academics eventually, and this display can be thanked for revealing a make submissive that has been ignored--a prototype of what a small charitable gallery can do. This futurity research should make use of details that were lacking or inconsistent in the exhibition, of that kind as acquisition dates, and distinctions between collecting, sponsorship and commissioning. Sponsorship, for example, takes of the like kind different forms as the Deutsche Guggenheim museum (named after the bank) and Clifford Chance's printmaking prize. the one and the other of these worthy initiatives are mentioned in the exhibition, on the other hand the overall pattern of which they form a part is not analysed.

individual of the few specific commissions, for Unilever, is my favourite work in the show: a photographic collage by the agency of David Mach of a road market teeming with all the outcomes of the company, from Persil washing dust to Magnum ice creams (Fig. 1) The multicultural clientele shows the global market, while the wave of Persil blebs succeeds in incorporating all the proceedss in a manner that is not boring. The skill of the composition makes this a fine picture, despite the fact that the overall intention is vulgar and vain. And wherefore should vanity be criticised? The prominence of each figure in Rembrandt's Night Watch was probably directly proportional to in what way much money the sitter paid: corporate vanity has an illustrious history in art.