Franz West
"Franz West" by Cathérine Hug, Fall 2008, p. 138
Franz West began his career in the 1960s in the intense climate of “Wiener Aktionismus” or Vienna Actionism, an influential performance movement that involved figures such as Hermann Nitsch, Günter Brus and Valie Export and was the impetus behind a whole generation of Austrian artists. West eventually distanced himself from the movement’s more dramatic and lugubrious characteristics, but held on to its notion of sculptural performance and its emphasis on rough-hewn materiality.
Ironically, it is Actionism’s most distinctive trait that West has been keeping track of ever since: the formal affinity for the “fleshy” side of surfaces. In one sense, all of West’s artistic production, from his “Paßstücke” (or “Adaptives”) to his “Legitimate Sculptures,” either embraces the anthropomorphic or is a straightforward invitation to become an organic part of the sculpture itself. West diagnoses prosthesis everywhere in the material world. Our activities within this multi-faceted environment are dependent on artificial “limbs,” and we are in a continuous process of adapting to them. For West, the painful reality that the body is a lifelong—but still cherished—prison is not a source of exasperation.
West presented several new works in this solo show, titled “Asymmetrical Art.” Offhand work titles such as Gartenpouf (garden pillow), Biblisches Motiv (biblical theme) and Idee (idea) illustrate the artist’s ironic, nonchalant attitude. For him, the human stain refers not only to personal destiny but to an omnipresent social fact. West’s approach to human tragedy is nurtured by writers such as Curzio Malaparte, who describes the rawest of realities but keeps them supple and lubricated with a kind of sarcasm. Everything in West’s work becomes texture and flesh; even colours often have a material dimension.
In a published interview with the curator Bice Curiger, West offered a summary of his approach: “Horkheimer said that he would prefer it if life were more intense and art less interesting—not that there were no art, just that art were less meaningful, and that’s what I like about public art. Art that people have hanging around, that stands about in spaces with other people—that’s the kind of art I want to do.”
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