Franz West: White Elephant - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 8492480807 ISBN 13: 9788492480807

Publisher: RM, 2010

Synopsis

Since the mid-1960s, Franz West (born 1947) has been finding new ways to balance his art on the line between beauty and ugliness. At the age of 14, West--living in bombed-out, post-Nazi Vienna--attended an event organized by the Viennese Actionists, at which Hermann Nitsch smashed a lamb cadaver against the wall of a basement room in a tenement building: "it was incredibly shocking and really depressing," West said. His own art over the past four decades has eschewed such nihilism: his Adaptives, which he has described as "neuroses made material" (with a nod to Darwin as well), are sculptural objects for viewers to engage physically, using them as ungainly temporary prostheses, appliances, accessories, and instructional tools. White Elephant documents these, as well as West's important works of furniture and collage, and his marvelously awkward sculptures, which seem lumpily homely and unbalanced, or gangly and hopeful as a blemished teen.

About this title

About the Author

Franz West was born in 1947 in Vienna, Austria, where he still lives and works. His art has been exhibited extensively in Europe and the Americas, including shows at the Dia Center for the Arts (New York), the CAPC Musee d'art contemporain (Bordeaux), the Museum of Contemporary Art (Los Angeles) the Tate Modern (London), and the Museo Tamayo (Mexico City). West began his career in Vienna in the mid-1960s when a local movement called Actionism was in full swing. His earliest sculptures, performances, and collages were a reaction to this movement, in which artists engaged in displays of radical public behaviour and physical endurance meant to shake up art-world passivity. In the early 1970s, West began making a series of small portable sculptures called adaptives.A" He has the ability to make comfortable and colourfully upholstered couches and chairs which transform galleries, museums, and public spaces into lounge-like, sociable environments for viewing art.

About this edition

• Publisher: RM
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 8492480807
• ISBN 13: 9788492480807
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 64