“If Neuroses Were Visible, This is What They Would Look Like”
Chalk-white extensions of the human body, huge hot-pink sausages, furniture teetering on bony legs: West’s sculptures give form to both neurotic and relaxed frames of mind. This began in the 1970s with his “Adaptives,” imaginary prostheses fashioned of paper maché and plaster one can carry around, hold in front of the face, or place against the body. They were followed by spindly lamps, chairs, and sofas inviting users to relax and interact. The 1990s saw cheerful outdoor sculptures that looked like brightly coloured pieces of excrement or heads wrapped in colourful bandages. They became popular gathering places, coupling practical utility with social intercourse like everything West created.
West was born 1947 in Vienna. His father was a coal monger, his mother a dentist (it was in her practice that West discovered the glowing pink of dentures and learned how to make paper maché). The family lived in the public housing estate Karl-Marx-Hof, also known as the “Versailles of workers,” whose length of 1,050 meters makes it the world’s largest contiguous residential structure. West’s parents rubbed shoulders with local artists: His father would give them jobs, while his mother offered treatments at a discount. As a boy, Franz began haunting coffee houses to hawk drawings he had made. This being the heyday of the “Vienna Actionists,” he came across one of their radical performance-art “actions” at the age of 16. The experience plunged him into a three-week depression, but he pulled himself together and went right back. In 1968, he attended Kunst und Revolution, the happening featuring Otto Muehl, Oswald Wiener, Peter Weibel and others later known as the “University Debauch”: 300 spectators were confronted with masturbation, flagellation, and defecation taking place on the stage. When it was all over and an awkward silence had descended, West is said to have spontaneously taken the floor, thanking the artists for a great evening and inviting the audience to applaud.
It was this casual irony, coupled with a curiosity for bodily needs, that characterized West’s work from the outset. He was 30 by the time he started studying at the Fine Arts Academy under Bruno Gironcoli – whose otherworldly aluminum and polyester figures were a far cry from performance art – but was soon making his own mark on art history with his “Adaptives.” “If neuroses were visible, this is what they would look like,” is how he described his amorphous, intentionally imperfect plaster objects, which could be worn on the head, under the arm or as vestments. They carried interaction and dialogue into the artistic space, which all of a sudden could be anywhere. Viewers became users, handling these somewhat organic sculptures – as if art consisted of exuberantly proliferating mutations of body parts, excretions, and psychoses that brazenly make their way into the world. This punk attitude makes West more akin to the likes of Martin Kippenberger than to the Actionists seeking to defy bourgeois conventions by blood-soaked stage rituals, but who left the audience in its time-worn passivity.
“West was never about autonomous artistic products,” explains curator Veit Loers, “he was interested in discreet interventions: surreal productions in the Austrian cultural landscape that was still authoritarian and had dictated to art its proper role: It was to manifest the antithesis of a society that wanted only peace and serenity, to the point of favoring the soporific. Yet West loved to stage himself as part of this social set, having himself photographed as an artiste reclining, reposing, or daydreaming – making contemplation integral to his work.”
From 1973 until his passing in 2012, West created hundreds of sculptures, many of which were shown at the world’s leading exhibitions, e.g. at the Skulptur Projekte in Münster, at the Austrian Pavilion of the Venice Biennale, at Documenta IX, at the Schinkel Pavilion in Berlin, or at the Centre Pompidou in Paris. His works have never become outdated. On the contrary: Thanks to their unfinished look and practical usability, also as a means of communication, they impact daily life instead of being unapproachable artistic statements. Thus, West’s work lives on in a way that gives him a lingering, almost ghostly presence.
The Franz West Privatstiftung has made it its mission to show his work internationally and to showcase his visionary significance. “Franz West was an unusual human being to be sure, incredibly open and accessible, but also incorruptible and intractable. He was highly focused; art pervaded his life,” recalls Ines Turian, who began working for him in 1997 and is now one of the two managing directors of Werknutzungsgesellschaft mbH, a subsidiary of the Privatstiftung. The foundation is headquartered in West’s former studio at Esteplatz 3 in Vienna and opens its doors to the public every first Thursday of the month from 11 am to 1 pm. Already visible from afar are the looming, epoxy resin sculptures on the plaza: elongated heads that seem to commune with one another while inviting passers-by to join the colloquy – and to pay a visit to someone who gave completely new meaning to art and leisure.