The results were furniture works where ‘form follows function’ becomes reversible, interchangeable and downright confused. In the 1980s, the artist took viewer involvement to new heights. Feeling self-conscious? Fear not, two curtained cubicles ensure that whatever happens between you and West’s Passstücke sculptures is entirely your own business.Īrtist’s Palate: Franz West’s pork belly pancake (opens in new tab) Tate obliges, providing four sculptures (replicas) for visitors to swing, poke and fondle at leisure without being escorted off the premises. For him, audience input was non-negotiable. One thing West was serious about was flouting the sour-faced institutional doctrine: ‘Please don’t touch the artworks’. It’s even harder to distinguish the humour from sincerity. It’s difficult to follow the artist’s train of thought. ‘In early years he wasn’t given the opportunities,’ says Godfrey, ‘but by the mid-1980s he was adamant to be taken seriously.’ Here, West is honing that sharp, satirical wit, through self-parody and the slating of his elders in the Viennese Actionist movement. Tate walks us through early maquettes collages and illustrations covering seedy sexual encounters, isolated figures and urination. A combination of singular vision, feisty temperament and weakness for alcohol left him largely unacknowledged on Vienna’s oversaturated 1970s art scene. Rrose Drama (2001), Kugel (2006) and Omega (2008), bolstered in aluminium, resist the elements but not it seems, an inevitable plague of selfies. The only reason they’re not utterly repugnant is down to their candy-coloured resin lacquer. These pneumatic lumps, gobstoppers and twisted tumorous tubes are phallic, fecal, intestinal or testicular depending on your angle or mood. © Estate Franz West and Archiv Franz West)īack at the Tate Modern, West’s immense outdoor sculptures inflict a visual onslaught before we’ve even reached the Blavatnik Building doors. (Image credit: Courtesy of Franz West Privatstiftung/Estate Franz West, Vienna.
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