Franz West – Biography and works of the Viennese artist

At the time of writing, it is summer vacation in Germany, in Berlin it is just the 15th day of 45 wonderful, relaxed days in a rather empty city, and tourists from elsewhere will not return until autumn.

The author still has two-thirds of her “contemplative summer rest” ahead of her, during which she leaves the summer holiday resorts to families as naturally as she leaves the shopping opportunities between 5 and 8 pm to working people bound to fixed working hours.

While she is planning the article about Franz West's life and work as a remembrance of the cheerful, summery artist who unfortunately left our world almost exactly 2 years ago, on July 25, 2012 (currently the 17th day of the Berlin summer holidays), the first reports with holiday experiences are coming in, including holiday experiences from the field of art.

From the popular holiday resort of Sankt Georgen in the Black Forest, reported not only that the holiday apartment is really cozy and village-like and the air is wonderful (the mother), that the in-house grill works perfectly (the father) and that there is a private pond in front of the house (the daughter), into which Leopold (the dog) has already fallen, but also that the whole of St. Georgen is full of art, by Isa Genzken and Martin Kippenberger , Reinhard Mucha and Albert Oehlen, Tobias Rehberger and Heimo Zobernig (again the mother, with an interest in contemporary art).

The answer to the riddle of what all these world-class artists are doing in St. Georgen, a town with just over 12,000 inhabitants, is the Grässlin Collection, a significant private collection of contemporary art .

In addition to works by the aforementioned artists, the collection includes artworks by Tim Berresheim and Werner Büttner, Fischli & Weiss and Günther Förg , Asta Gröting and Georg Herold, Mike Kelley and Hubert Kiecol, Michael Krebber and Meuser, Markus Oehlen and Christopher Williams , Kai Althoff and Cosima von Bonin, Clegg & Guttmann and Mark Dion, Christian Philipp Müller and Andreas Slominski, Ina Weber and Joseph Zehrer, Michael Beutler and Stefan Müller and about a dozen other artists, an outstanding collection of modern art of our time, which awarded the ART COLOGNE Prize in 2010 .

Also outstanding is the way in which the art is presented Grässlin collection

Firstly, since 2006 there has been the “Kunstraum Grässlin” , a minimalist concrete building that is not at all suffering from cuckoo clock culture and includes the “Restaurant Kippys”, whose name of course refers to Martin Kippenberger, who is a close friend of the Grässlin family, and in which Sabine Grässlin, trained in top gastronomy in southern Germany, serves imaginative, Mediterranean-inspired bistro cuisine.

Since 1995, the collection has also been regularly working to conquer its surroundings and the six-figure number of tourists who visit: As part of the "Spaces for Art" , artworks from the collection are temporarily scattered throughout St. Georgen, vacant storefronts of former retail businesses are used as exhibition spaces, and in 2014 there were over 20 external "Spaces for Art" that could be viewed during a walk through the town.

Franz West is also included; his art is even a kind of “milestone” in the Grässlin collection – three of his “sitting deserts” were the artworks with which the second generation of Grässlins documented that they had found their focus for continuing the collection at the turn of the millennium.

Furthermore, the situation in which the brightly colored seating cubes appear to the viewer fits Franz West's attitude towards art so well that this appetizing glimpse of the Grässlin collection became the introduction to the article about him: The seating cubes are simply placed in the garden of the family villa, and participants in a guided tour are sometimes invited by members of the Grässlin family to sit on the colorful aluminum cubes in the grass – it doesn't get more "art in everyday life" than that, something Franz West would surely have appreciated, and you will now learn more about his life and work:

Franz West is one of Austria's most important contemporary visual artists , who has given us much more than the aluminum seating bulges in the Grässlin family's garden.

He was born on February 16, 1947 in Vienna, in an environment that at first glance did not necessarily suggest that he would rise to become one of the most important artists of his time and the world.

The father was a coal merchant, often written as “small coal merchant”, the apartment was in a district on the very outskirts of Vienna, in a municipal housing complex, i.e. social housing…

At second glance, one can discern a cosmopolitan education and thorough “early artistic upbringing” in his childhood home: According to the available reports about him, the coal merchant was evidently educated and politically interested; he lived with his wife, a dentist, in a sensational construction project of the Vienna city administration: the Karl-Marx-Hof, which is around 1,100 m long and thus still the longest continuous residential building in the world today; and the district on the very edge of Vienna is the 19th Viennese district Döbling, an upscale district in the northwest on the edge of the Vienna Woods, where there were and still are fewer social housing units than villas.

Franz West's parents shared the communist ideas of the namesake of their housing complex; the coal merchant was known for helping out any revolutionary intellectual with a casual job; his mother worked as a dentist in the municipal housing complex and had a reputation for fixing the teeth of the perpetually broke Viennese art scene at a low cost, which they gladly accepted.

His half-brother, Otto Kobalek, who was 17 years older, was a well-known “worker-poet” who moved in the circle of the cabaret artist Helmut Qualtinger; Franz West was thus introduced to the Viennese art scene by his parents and brother as a young man.

Franz West showed his artistic talent early on

It is said that as a teenager, Franz West constantly accompanied his mother to the inner city, where the art scene met in several establishments around Bäckerstraße, and even as a young man, Franz went from table to table in the artists' taverns to offer his own drawings; he ordered food himself in the taverns and, of course, had to pay his bill somehow.

Franz West was therefore quite thoroughly “artistically predisposed”; if it was enough to pay the bills, there was obviously also talent there (the works that West sold in the restaurants back then cost at least €20,000 today), he already had his first studio in the Karl-Marx-Hof, and as a teenager he got to know the art of the Viennese avant-garde of the time up close, right up to the brutal animal actions that Hermann Nitsch staged in Viennese cellar restaurants at the time and which West later described as traumatic experiences.

Franz West's late training as an artist

Franz West was already an established artist when, at the age of 30, he began studying sculpture under Bruno Gironcoli . He likely chose this teacher deliberately; Gironcoli had studied the works of Alberto Giacometti and had just been appointed head of the sculpture school at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts when West began his studies with him.

The path to your own style

Franz West's studies with Gironcoli quickly shaped his first independent artistic expression. From the mid-1970s onward, he began creating his "Adaptives," bone-like objects made of plaster and papier-mâché, which exhibition visitors are meant to actively handle and adapt to their own bodies, for example, by placing them on their neck or inserting them into an armpit, so that the viewer becomes part of the sculpture. According to Franz West, this sculpture embodies a neurosis, and the viewer is meant to experience this neurosis firsthand.

Companions, influences, role models

During his time at the Academy of Fine Arts, Franz West came into contact with the forms of expression of contemporary art and the artists who executed this art, who dominated the scene in Vienna at that time:

The Vienna Group around Gerhard Rühm and Oswald Wiener engaged with the Baroque, Dada and Surrealism, read Wittgenstein and Hegel and developed a consistently critical skepticism towards contemporary culture; the Viennese Actionists around Günter Brus, Otto Mühl, Hermann Nitsch and Rudolf Schwarzkogler attempted, with equal intensity and in spectacular actions, to allow the individual and society to be cathartically purified and reborn, which was expressed in strange orgiastic practices and rituals.

West calmly observed the work of the then “idols over 50, the old, bald, skinny men” and made his own thing out of it, first with the subtle irony expressed in the matching pieces, which was well received; these “neuroses to wear” were to become the first “core of the West brand”.

He also studied Wittgenstein and even created art from this study (“Wittgenstein quote”, 1986), but was not inspired by the “bald men” of his hometown, but by the artists who interested him much more, in the case of Wittgenstein by Cy Twombly’s “grey pictures” , then his interest was in the early work of Robert Rauschenberg and Claes Oldenburg .

The artistic breakthrough

With the spectacle offered by his fitted pieces, West – very much in keeping with the spirit of the times – had won the hearts of the Viennese, and from then on, there was hardly any way to stop his career. Franz West subsequently built up a thoroughly professional studio operation, and he began producing truly large-format works, with which a contemporary artist, then as now, proves that he can achieve real success.

Franz West then began designing sculptures for public spaces, a kind of reclining excrement or phallic symbols , which were celebrated by the art professor and curator Kasper König, who was just then rising to prominence in the German academic art world, as a “renewal of sculpture” at the beginning of the 1980s. This was the breakthrough for Franz West; foreign collectors slowly showed interest, and the first solo exhibitions followed later that same decade.

What kind of art did Franz West create?

Franz West is usually described as a sculptor because he has made a name for himself primarily through three-dimensional design. his sculptures , environments, and installations are not the only form of his expression; he began with graphics, drawings, and collages, which he continued to create, and posters, prints, and performances are also part of his oeuvre.

Inspired by Viennese Actionism , Franz West found great acclaim as an artist for his interactive artworks , which included sculptures and installations.

In his earliest works, he experimented with unusual materials and combined them with everyday objects to create, for example, a cola bottle wrapped in gauze or large aluminum sculptures shaped like sausages.

One of his most impressive artworks is undoubtedly the Adaptives series , which consists of plaster objects designed to be worn over the face or around the waist. Although these objects are reminiscent of theatrical props and masks, their ambiguity makes them extremely fascinating.

West also gained recognition for his collages , which consisted of overpainted objects such as advertisements and newspaper articles. He further impressed with his use of unusual materials like papier-mâché and foam to create sculptures that bore the influence of Expressionism .

For Franz West, art was not a simple representation or mere staging, but rather a special form of communication . With his works, the artist wanted to engage the public and spark an interactive dialogue in order to set things in motion.

With the exhibition “Autotheater”, Franz West went even further, asking visitors to undress and keep company with his sculptures.

The artist had a particular fondness for a certain shade of pink , the kind used for denture elastics. He may have inherited this preference from his mother, who worked as a dentist.

What art style did Franz West represent?

The most fitting description would probably be for a self-determined, cheerful, ironic style that is not dependent on the judgment of a critic.

West has intellectual extremism as well as the unbearable proliferation of avant-garde cultural circles, and the omnipresent philistinism anyway; within all of this, he has developed his own unique and very sovereign individuality with his positive intelligence and healthy skepticism.

In doing so, he understood how to both transgress the boundaries of his decade and involve and bring along his surroundings in these transgressions, and in this rather enormous undertaking, he always made it look as if he were simply, undeterred and in a rather good mood, creating exactly the art that came to mind.

Famous works of art by Franz West

There are several famous works of art by Franz West, and you can encounter them in many places in public spaces, e.g. on the Stubenbrücke in Vienna (where four “lemur heads” made of aluminum and white lacquer can be admired), in the garden of the Abteiberg Museum in Mönchengladbach you can come across a “Flause” made of aluminum “Kvadratur des Kreises” can (finally!) be visited.

From 1987 onwards, Franz West began designing furniture, armchairs and other seating of all kinds, made from recycled metal, distorted and, as always, ironic. These and other pieces of furniture by Franz West would travel far and wide; some even made it to New York, where they stood in front of Central Park, inviting people to take a seat (2009, “Ich und dem It” , a six-meter-long pink loop made from an aluminum tube).

In “Diwans” for documenta IX , a series of three-seater sofas, a kind of middle ground between a Freudian couch and an ottoman aiming for oriental serenity in the living room; these are still famous today, as are the lemur heads (fetish-like, minimally reduced head shapes with wide-open mouths), which were presented to a wider audience at this documenta.

Until the next documenta participation in 1997, there was one solo exhibition after another, and one work after another was created that still has a name today.

Franz West achieved a completely different kind of fame in 2007 when he organized Venice Biennale “The Hamster Wheel” , on the other side of the river opposite the Arsenale, where Franz West’s artwork participating in the Biennale was exhibited.

The “hamster wheel” was not part of the Biennale; West had rented the building opposite himself and invited artist friends to participate in this artist project, which was not to be reviewed by a curator.

“Three – From Process to Temperament” created by Franz West as part of the “Iron Curtain” exhibition series , caused a sensation at the Vienna State Opera

“Extroversion” took place from 2000 to 2011 and was presented at the 54th Venice Biennale in 2011.

Outstanding in the life's work of Franz West

Perhaps that is precisely what is truly outstanding in Franz West's life's work: that he has shown that even as a contemporary artist of today, one can simply make art without having to bend over backwards too much, and that one can remain a pleasant person interested in one's surroundings.

It is recorded that Franz West started out in exactly this way: At the "Art and Revolution" event at the University of Vienna in the "revolutionary year 1968", famous for its uproar, Franz West was already present and watched as the artists and writers tried to break all sorts of taboos, with public masturbation and "popping" on stage, with insults against politicians and urinating while singing the national anthem.

Franz West was already as cool then as he would later be; he addressed the agitated and bewildered audience with the following words: "I believe the gentlemen deserve some applause," which immediately lightened the mood but also reduced the entire pathetic pretension of the avant-garde spectacle to a simple plea for attention.

West later freed himself from the judgment of artistic institutions with the same consistency and composure by simply declaring curating to be part of his artistic method.

His versatility is certainly outstanding, suggesting immense creativity. It was this versatility that made him "Austria's most important art export ," and Franz West is probably also Austria's most expensive art export, as his calm demeanor has quietly led to ever-increasing financial success.

The gallery owners came to him more than he came to them; in the end, precisely for this reason, he was represented by arguably the most important gallery owner in the world at the moment, Larry Gagosian in New York.

Important exhibitions and awards of Franz West – an overview

Franz West participated in the International Sculpture Exhibition in Sonsbeek Park in Arnhem, Netherlands, in 1986, in documenta 9 in 1992, designed the Austrian contribution to the Venice Biennale in 1993, was exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art of the Ludwig Foundation in Vienna in 1996, and in 1997 at the Fundaçao de Serralves in Porto, the Museum of Modern Art in New York and at documenta 10 .

And so it continued around the world, in 1998 to the Middelheim Open Air Sculpture Museum in Antwerp, in 2000 to the Renaissance Society in Chicago and the Center for Art and Media Technology in Karlsruhe, in 2001 to the MAK in Vienna and in 2002 to the Deichtorhallen in Hamburg, in 2003 to the Kunsthaus Bregenz and the Whitechapel Art Gallery in London, in 2004 to the Galeria Juana de Aizpuru in Madrid and in 2005 to the Gagosian Gallery in Beverly Hills, California.

In 2006, his work was exhibited by the Gisela Capitain Gallery in Cologne, and in 2007 by the Mario Sequeira Gallery in Braga, Portugal. In 2008, his work was exhibited again at the MAK in Vienna, the Eva Presenhuber Gallery in Zurich, and the Baltimore Museum of Art. In 2009, it was shown at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Fondation Beyeler in Basel. In 2010, it was shown at the Museum Ludwig in Cologne, the Museo d'Arte Contemporanea Donna Regina in Naples, and the Kunsthaus Graz. He also participated several times in the "SkulpturProjekte" in Münster.

The last exhibitions were in 2011/12 in London, at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, in 2013 at the Museum of Modern Art (MUMOK) in Vienna and afterwards at the Museum of Modern Art (MMK) in Frankfurt am Main and at Inverleith House in the Royal Botanic Garden in Edinburgh; this selection alone shows that Franz West has visited the entire world of contemporary art at some point.

Awards for Franz West

He also received numerous awards, including the Otto Mauer Prize for Fine Arts from the Archdiocese of Vienna in 1986, the City of Vienna Prize for Fine Arts in 1988, the Sculpture Prize of the Generali Foundation (Museum of Contemporary Art in Vienna) in 1993, and the Wolfgang Hahn Prize from the Museum Ludwig in Cologne in 1998. In 2011, West received the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the Venice Biennale and, in the same year, the Austrian Decoration for Science and Art.

The artist's lifestyle

Unspectacular, refreshingly normal, curious, interested in young fashion in bright colors and in new music like techno, endowed with a progressive Viennese aversion to Biedermeier idylls…

Franz West is described as a pleasant, unfussy person who nevertheless repeatedly caused a stir with his idiosyncrasies, such as in 1995 when the police appeared at a techno party in West's studio because of the volume of the music and were put in their place by the lawyer of the German collector Friedrich Flick.

West is known for inviting colleagues to joint projects, where he prioritizes the general reference and context over the expressiveness of the individual work, and he is known for having made SMS his preferred form of communication around the turn of the millennium.

Scandals surrounding Franz West

Unlike other avant-garde artists, Franz West was never involved in any scandals, only minor ones; he was never in the mass media anyway because he avoided them, he was not a Viennese folk artist that “everyone” knows.

When he acted as a provocateur, it was usually in a relaxed and casual way, using witty linguistic associations rather than genital-obsessed theatricality like the Viennese Actionists. His art is often subtle and playfully ironic, like the “Gerngross Column” made of stacked trash cans in Vienna’s Rahlgasse, erected in honor of the Austrian architect Heidulf Gerngross.

Regarding their establishment, Franz West remarked in 2004:

I spent a day that turned into an odyssey with the architect Gerngross, who likes to organize large exhibitions near the Naschmarkt. The Herculean effort (Odysseus, at least in the Divine Comedy all the way to the Pillars of Hercules) of realizing this exhibition in such a hurry has landed Ulysses Gerngross with this column, which he would gladly erect in a public space.

The artist's private life

As I said: Unspectacular, refreshingly normal, curious, Franz West is considered by close observers to be one of the most original artists of the post-war period, an extraordinary thinker and a lovable person.

He is known for his many friendships with other artists and his unique openness and curiosity towards the views of these artists; the entire practice in his studio, his participation in exhibitions and projects carried out together with other artists were characterized by constant dialogue.

Franz West engaged in these dialogues not only with other artists, but also with musicians and writers, designers and philosophers, dancers, and every imaginable creative person. His laughter, his modesty, and his frugality are repeatedly mentioned – qualities that, admittedly, come quite easily "needed a chauffeur for his Maseratis because he didn't have a driver's license."

One of these Maseratis (there were “only” two) experienced genuine Franz West humor when the artist doused it with his favorite color, pink, at an exhibition opening in 2001… every now and then, the Renaissance man West would react with demonstrative destruction of value, which probably made the eccentric's special aura “even more special”, but otherwise he is described as “quite normal”.

Franz West died on July 25, 2012, also “quite normally,” at the Vienna General Hospital. He is survived by his wife, Tamuna Sirbiladze, a Georgian artist, and two young children. His body was buried in an honorary grave at the Vienna Central Cemetery.

How much does a work of art by Franz West cost?

This is where the “normal” ends – Franz West’s works cost up to half a million euros during his lifetime, and because he hasn’t been able to produce anything new since 2012, they will certainly increase in value again in the future.

He is currently ranked 34th on the art bestseller list , with a stable trend that art experts predict will rise significantly around five years after his death.

Where can I buy artworks by Franz West?

Franz West's artworks can be found today in the most prestigious international museums, collections, galleries, and public spaces. In addition to the publicly accessible works, there are also pieces by this 20th-century Austrian artist available for purchase by private collectors and art lovers.

Here you will find the most renowned places to buy sculptures, paintings and object art from his oeuvre :

• artnet – Auctions and purchase on request
• Lempertz Auction House – Auction offers and reference items
• Composition.Gallery – Original signed artworks & limited edition prints

• at the Kinsky auction house in Vienna – art auctions

Remaining effects in today's world

Franz West has long shared his knowledge, for example as a professor at the State Academy of Fine Arts (Städelschule) in Frankfurt am Main from 1992 to 1994.

He has also given many lectures over a long period of time, such as at Columbia University in New York in 1999, and was generally known for maintaining friendships with younger artists as much as with his peers (and for having had a great influence on the younger ones).

Recommended reading about the artist and his time

The best literary recommendation regarding an artist is certainly books written by that artist:

Franz West, “In & Out” , ed. Museum für Neue Kunst, ZKM Karlsruhe, Götz Adriani, texts by Ralph Melcher, Johannes Schlebrügge, Harald Szeemann, Franz West, Alicia Chillida, from 2000, 240 pages, 113 illustrations, of which 106 are in color, ISBN 978-3-7757-9068-0.

Franz West, “Franz West Wrote. Texts from 1977–2010” , edited by Hans Ulrich Obrist and Ines Turian, published by Walther König, October 27, 2011, ISBN-10: 3865609066, ISBN-13: 978-3865609069. This book makes West's so-called “writings” accessible for the first time: texts, notes, annotations, and aphorisms that were among his working tools and are indispensable to his work.

Published by the same publisher in 2005: “Franz West. Collected Conversations and Interviews” , edited by Johannes Schlebrügge and Ines Turian, ISBN-10: 3883756075, ISBN-13: 978-3883756073.

Also of interest:

Franz West: “Autotheater: Köln – Naples – Graz” by Kaspar König, published by DuMont Literatur und Kunst Verlag, 1st edition from December 11, 2009, ISBN-10: 3832192808, ISBN-13: 978-3832192808.

DuMont collaborated with three museums and the Franz West Archive in creating this volume, resulting in a comprehensive overview of the complete works, which analyzes over 100 key works by Franz West in detail.

In 16 chapters, prominent figures from the arts and sciences write about Franz West's installations, sculptures, adaptations, furniture, graphics, and poster designs. Contributions include those from Franz West himself, Eva Badura-Triska, Katia Baudin, Achille Bonito Oliva, Mario Codognato, Robert Fleck, Georg Gröller, Franz Kaltenbeck, Kasper König, Herbert Lachmayer, Veit Loers, Valentin Mertes, Michaela Obermair, Peter Pakesch, Roberta Bertelli, Anthony Spira, Rudolf Stingel, Andrea Überbacher, and others.

Franz West to watch

If you type the name into an image search engine, you'll find countless results for "Franz West to view"; his gallerist's website offers some more detailed information at

www.gagosian.com/artists/franz-west.

Franz West live can be seen from June 13th to September 14th, 2014 at the Hepworth Gallery in Wakefield, West Yorkshire, England: The Hepworth Wakefield , Gallery Walk, Wakefield, West Yorkshire, www.hepworthwakefield.org .