ONCE UPON A TIME, corporate art in Britain meant portraits of past and present chairmen displayed in the boardroom, and perhaps a modest flourish of 19th-century prints to give gravity to the lobby.

Since the 1970s that attitude to art and corporate culture has been fast disappearing. Large companies have been buying art as never before, and for a very particular purpose: to make the workplace — from the smallest and most intimate of meeting rooms to the most grandiose of lobbies — a more stimulating environment in which to work. This week an exhibition opens in London that will show off some of the art acquired in recent years by some of the top corporations in this country: Deutsche Bank, Hiscox, Clifford Chance, ING, J P Morgan, Unilever and Monsoon.

The collections differ widely from each other. The Hiscox collection grew out of Robert Hiscox’s private passion for works by the Russian Constructivists, and the show will include works by the likes of Kasimir Malevich and Ilya Grigorevich Chashnik.

The Deutsche Bank collection consists of works on paper. Deutsche Bank was one of the pioneers of the new attitude to corporate art collecting — to buy for staff, and not primarily for investment.

“We formed a group back in the 1970s,” comments Alistair Hicks, the collection’s curator. “It was a collective vision — not only bank employees were involved in the discussions, we also included professors of art. The challenge was this: how to bring the outside world into the office? How to break down that ivory tower mentality?”

Why works on paper? There were two reasons for this: they cost less (the average purchase price of each work is about £1,000), and works on paper seemed, according to Hicks, “more approachable. Artists work through their ideas on paper. You see their ideas evolving.” The idea of the contemporary was very important too. It helped with recruiting young staff. When young recruits saw young art on the walls, they came face to face with reflections of their own preoccupations.

There is something quite rigorously, if not almost chillingly, didactic about certain aspects of the Deutsche Bank approach to bringing art and its employees together. Over at corporate headquarters, the twin towers building in Frankfurt, “one of the briefest attempts at art history ever made can be seen in the lifts”. Every one of its 55 floors is named after a particular artist, and when you reach, say, floor B — Beuys — you get “ the inevitable picture of him in his felt hat”, a statement about his work, and various works on paper. “Travelling down the building the artists get younger and younger,” comments Hicks. “The floors are arranged chronologically.”

Clifford Chance, in common with other corporations, wants the appreciation of art gained in the offices to ripple outwards. They have an Art Club — 500 of their employees belong to it — which offers employees information about galleries, opportunities to attend private views, and a regular lecture programme — the “famous and glamorous” Sam Taylor-Wood drew an audience of 120 recently, Keith Salway, accountant and general manager, tells me.

Clifford Chance also sponsor an annual print maker award to stimulate interest in the work of young print makers and to support emerging artists. What is most pleasing about the Clifford Chance approach, as expressed through Salway, is the pleasingly un- pretentious way in which he talks about the value of having art in the office. “These are things that will make the day go better,” he says.

Buying art for a corporation is not so easy, though. There are pitfalls to be avoided. “In the USA — and probably here too — you would never put a nude on the wall of a corporate building,” comments Selina Skipwith, keeper of art to the Fleming-Wyfold Art Foundation and overall curator of this show. “In fact, even figurative work is potentially problematical because if you represent someone — say, a woman — someone else is almost bound to start saying that she’s too fat or she’s too thin.” So if you want to stay out of trouble, abstraction is the thing. That way, you can avoid getting accused of representing anything even mildly contentious.

Then there is the problem of bankers. “You know, bankers are very superstitious people,” Skipworth muses. “One bank won’t have red on the trading floor because that means losses on the market, and then they sometimes complain that the art — or the way it’s displayed — is at odds with the feng shui of the building. It can all be quite tricky. . .”

Certain kinds of works can be particularly difficult. Cat Newton-Groves, an art consultant to Unilever for the past six years, would not recommend purchasing time-based works such as videos because you need time to stand and stare at videos, and these spaces are not, after all, galleries.

And what has been the single most contentious work that Unilever has purchased? “Twelve photos of couples kissing, all unidentified, though, because of the camera angles.” And why was that so contentious? “People kept saying: ‘Why kissing? Why Unilever?’ Well, Unilever is into personal hygiene and beauty products, creating images for young people, so I thought it was fine. Everybody does it. It will never go out of fashion. And it’s a form of communication, isn’t it?”

• Corporate Culture: A History of Corporate Art Collecting runs until September 3 at the Fleming Collection, 13 Berkeley Street, W1 (020-7409 5730)