FRANZ WEST: WHERE IS MY EIGHT? 13 JUNE – 14 SEPT 2014 FREE – SUGGESTED DONATION £1
INTRODUCTION Franz West (b. Vienna, 1947 – d. 2012, Vienna) is one of the most influential artists of our time. He achieved international acclaim with his Passstücke (Adaptives) and furniture as art, as well as his brightly coloured sculptures for interior and exterior spaces. Language also played a vital role in West’s practice with many works holding very specific titles and often accompanied by text. The focus of this exhibition is West’s combination works, in which the artist combined various individual pieces to create a single work of art. These works include Adaptives, painting, sculpture, videos, furniture and works on paper from different periods as well as work by other artists. He would also frequently recombine these configurations, highlighting his fundamental conviction that the meaning of a work of art depends on its context and is subject to change each time it is exhibited.
The exhibition also investigates the connections between the work of Franz West and Barbara Hepworth. With an intervention into The Hepworth Family Gift gallery, this exhibition places both artists’ work in conversation regarding the use of the everyday materials of plaster and papier-mâché; the significance of the studio environment; the repeated return to reconfiguring and adapting previous work; and the emphasis on relating a work of art to the body.
BIOGRAPHY
The exhibition title was chosen by the artist himself, a further example of his practice of combination and recombination. It was inspired by a gouache painted over a magazine page dating from 2004, depicting a woman putting on a pair of trousers which, following a successful diet, are now much too big for her. West omits the ‘W’ to transform the title Lost Weight into Lost Eight, before finally arriving at Where is my Eight? By leaving the question unanswered, he invites the viewer to make his or her own associations.
When he started making art in 1970 it was important to him from the outset to not put forward definitive theories or impose anything on his audience in an authoritative manner. He kept his thinking determinedly open, accepting that several views can exist side by side and rejecting thinking in absolute terms, such as ‘right and wrong’ or ‘true and untrue’, in favour of openness, individuality and flexibility. West’s art is always participatory, seeking to enter into dialogue with its recipients and considering their various reactions as necessary to the completion of the meaning of the work.
Born in 1947, Franz West grew up in Vienna, a city then haunted by the aftermath of World War Two. From his teenage years onwards he moved in the art scene circles of the Viennese coffee houses and discotheques, but only started working as an artist in 1970. Although he held a studio at the Vienna Art Academy from 1977 to 1982 he was not formally enrolled and was basically self-taught.
Left: Franz West Kasseler Rippchen 1991/1996 Installation with metal, wood, canvas, plaster, plastic, paint; consisting of 13 works by various artists Dimensions variable (WEST 2231). Hauser & Wirth Collection, Switzerland. Photo: Stefan Altenburger Photography Zürich. Right: Franz West, NYCNAC, 2008 Photo: Lukas Schaller. Courtesy of Franz West Privatstiftung, Vienna.
West’s initial engagement with the art world began in the 1960s when the Vienna Actionists dominated the art scene in his hometown. He felt alienated by such movements that involved heroic idealism and utopian visions, often driven by a dogmatic and political approach to art. West described them as Beeindruckungskunst (art designed to impress) and was deeply offended by their dictatorial approach. West’s Adaptives and furniture pieces invite active physical use, while in the case of other sculptures and works on paper, dialogue is intended to take place on an intellectual level, stimulated by the works’ titles, as well as by accompanying texts. Playful and ambiguous, West’s work is also deeply rooted in his involvement with philosophy and psychoanalysis, particularly the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889 – 1951) and Sigmund Freud (1856 – 1939).
GALLERY 1
GALLERY 5 & 6
THE HEAD AND THE HAND
PASSSTÜCKE/ADAPTIVES*
ORDINARY LANGUAGE
CONVERSATIONS: WEST AND HEPWORTH
‘Sculpture communicates an immediate sense of life – you can feel the pulse of it. It is perceived, above all, by the sense of touch which is our earliest sensation; and touch gives us a sense of living contact and security.’
Franz West started to make Adaptives from the mid 1970s onwards. These objects foregrounded the idea that a work of art could be handled and used rather than only looked at. Adaptives were made from plaster and other material and were often plain white, but sometimes painted in colour. Early pieces resembled familiar objects that have a relationship with the body such as pedestals, walking sticks, crutches, hats, musical instruments or drinking bottles. Eventually the Adaptives became completely abstract in order to emphasise the importance of not imposing a predetermined response. Users were invited to handle them as they saw fit, adapting them to their bodies or their bodies to them. And, as the Adaptives may be carried easily, West originally intended the users to do this wherever they wanted.
Ordinary Language, 1995, is an installation of twelve sofas and two monitors. You are invited to sit and consider the gallery as a place for conversation, social interaction and association. Additional stimulation is provided by the video program Das bestellte Oval (The Ordered Oval), 1992/3, a film by Franz West, Johannes Schlebrügge and Bernhard Riff featuring various participants in the international art scene talking. As a further prompt the work is also accompanied by a short text: a conversation that questions the nature of reality and whether you can trust what you see. Personale, 1995/7, displayed on the wall and consisting mainly of works from artist friends (among them Martin Kippenberger, Heimo Zobernig, Jean-Marc Bustamente, Fischli and Weiss, and Raymond Pettibon), highlights West’s practice of combination and re-combination. This was based on his rejection of the individual artist as a single creator in favour of assembling multiple voices in a work that holds potential for change, reconfiguration and reinterpretation. Ordinary Language is available to be used by local groups for meetings and discussions. Please contact ordinarylanguage@hepworthwakefield.org with any enquiries.
PLASTER ‘I have often been called puritanical or cold or geometric, but it is the significance of human and spiritual response to life around us which obsesses me at all times.’ Barbara Hepworth, 1961
On first impressions the work of Barbara Hepworth and Franz West appears to be very different. Yet, when considered within the context of The Hepworth Wakefield’s holdings of Hepworth’s plaster working models, links between these two artists become apparent. As a material, plaster has an inherent fluidity as it holds the potential for change by means of addition, subtraction and added colour. As with West, who used this material for a great number of his Adaptives, Hepworth’s plasters hold a vigour and life force, particularly as their final form is not yet determined through the rigidity and fixity of the casting process. Their openness to interpretation is in some ways an extension of their fluidity of form. We know that participation and dialogue are key to West’s work and it also seems as though the status of Hepworth’s plasters as ‘working models’ also allows a comparison with West’s rejection of predetermined fixed meaning.
Barbara Hepworth, 1959
In the work of both Hepworth and West a correlation between intellectual and physical experience was paramount. Both had a deep understanding of the relationship between the object and the viewer, creating sculptures to be experienced through touch as well as sight and mind. Physical interaction plays a direct role in the work of West as demonstrated in the photographs of people using his Adaptives. For Hepworth, the importance of ‘head and hand’ is understood not only through her writing and thinking but via the photographic portraits of the artist interacting with her plasters. Here we can imagine Hepworth’s plasters as Adaptives and as a temporary expansion of the boundaries of the body, their meaning developing and extending through this physical exchange. It is through this simple interaction and ideas of co-authorship that we also understand both artists’ desire to bring life and art together. For West this desire is very straightforward: absorption of art into our everyday experiences, or art as an extension of our own body and character. Hepworth’s ideas too, comprise an appreciation of the importance of human relationships: the relationship between two people, the synergy of a crowd; her humanitarian and ideological hopes for a harmonious society, and art’s assimilation into the world.
West saw the Adaptives as a temporary expansion of the boundaries of the body that change continually in the process of handling the objects and therefore constantly affect the user’s state of mind. Used by different individuals at different times, and in different settings, these objects allow for an endless range of experiences. *The term Passstücke was coined in 1980 by West’s poet friend, Richard Preissnitz. For a long time it was translated as ‘Fitting Pieces’, an expression that West always disliked. In 1994 West consulted a dictionary in the British Library and discovered the term ‘adaptor’ for ‘Passstück’, which he immediately found more appropriate. In particular he saw an affinity between his Passstücke concept and the idea of the ‘bio-adaptor’ as envisioned by the musicologist, author and scientist Oswald Wiener (b.1935, Vienna) in the 1960s. The bio-adaptor was an early form of cybernetic suit that could intervene between the body and mind. On the occasion of his first retrospective in 1996, West decided on Adaptives as the translation for Passstücke.
Otto Kobalek with Adaptive by Franz West 1974 in Karl Marx Hof, Vienna. Photo: Friedl Kubelka.
Hepworth at work on Oval Form (Trezion) (BH 304) in the Palais de Danse studio, St Ives, 1963. Photo: Val Wilmer. Courtesy Bowness, Hepworth Estate.
GALLERY 7 FURNITURE ‘... after all an armchair is also an Adaptive.’ Franz West, 1998
From the 1980s West began to further develop the concept of the Adaptive by creating furniture pieces, which also invite physical use. Even though their use was more predetermined, and the pieces could not be moved and transported as easily as the Adaptives, they also present possibilities for adaptation and can effect a change in the user’s perception of the work of art and consequently in their experience of the world. West’s early furniture pieces were essentially larger Adaptives made out of plaster. However in the late 1980s he began building them out of metal. Initially these were hard and uncomfortable but they were eventually made more comfortable with cushions and covers. COMBINATION AND RECOMBINATION Unlike the original Adaptives, the furniture pieces were difficult to move from one place to another. In response to this West started to think about these works in specific surroundings, creating or selecting pre-existing settings for them that offered further incentive for association and dialogue. West combined his furniture with Adaptives, paintings, works on paper and sculpture to create new works and experiences.
Within these combination works it is significant that the furniture is often positioned so that the user has his or her back to the artwork. The art here is part of an atmosphere and not an object for contemplation, therefore it is not necessary to perceive it through sight. Rather it can operate as a given presence, much like our experience of ornaments and pictures in our home or in a restaurant.
This group of sculptures suggests a vocal gathering and recalls the democratic ideal of parrhesia in which there are many ways of thinking and seeing, but none that are universally valid.
From early in his career West began to make arrangements out of his individual pieces and intensified this practice in the 1980s. At this time he also started exchanging works with other artists. These were then combined with his own work in a salon-style hang, creating new connections between once independent artistic positions. Later these combinations would increasingly include sculpture or furniture, forming environments accompanied by texts, which he would frequently reorganise again to create new recombinations.
Franz West continued throughout his career to make work with participation and combination at its core. Pieces became larger over time and in 1996 the artist began making work for the outdoors, using aluminium and epoxy resin in bright colours.
GALLERY 8 & 9 West intended all of his sculpture to by used, thereby changing the traditional role of the spectator from passive beholder to become part of the work of art. Although many of the works originally intended for use may no longer be touched by exhibition visitors today, the couches and tables in Gallery 8 can be used and provide a space to look at books on the artist and reflect on the work. Parrhesia (Freedom of Speech), 2012, consists of 7 head-like forms, mounted with spikes on plinths designed by the artist. The title Parrhesia is Greek in origin and implies not only freedom of speech but that one is obliged to speak the truth, even if that involves a degree of risk.
GALLERY 10 LATE WORKS
West was an avid reader, particularly in the fields of philosophy and psychoanalysis. He studied the work of the Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889 – 1951) closely, referring to it throughout his life. Wittgenstein’s thinking and writing was often conceived through a process of dialogue and association, characterised by creating a ‘criss-cross’ of thoughts and ideas to create possible interconnections. West created a number of large seating sculptures in which he transformed Wittgenstein’s concept of the ‘senseless loop’. The ‘senseless loop’ was described in the philosopher’s Lectures and Conversations on Aesthetics, Psychology and Religious Belief (1938) and represents the meaningless and ungraspable nature of life and death. The users of these twisting sculptures could look at each other and engage in conversation through the physical manifestation of this ‘senseless loop’.
Towards the end of his life West often made scale models accompanied by figures cut from advertising brochures while planning the seating sculptures and large works. These cut-out figures suggest ways of encountering and using the works that would subsequently be made at a far larger size. In Ecke (Corner), 2009, these scenarios are again not displayed as single works but as a collage of many works and therefore propose many possibilities for experiencing the world. OUTDOORS Lemur Head, 2002 The Lemurs Heads were West’s first outdoor sculptures. In 1987 West was invited by architect Hermann Czech to create ‘headstones’ for a bridge in Vienna. During this period he was drinking a lot and regularly waking up with a hangover. A common Viennese phrase likens waking up with a hangover to ‘seeing Lemuren’ or ‘zombies’. West was interested in the idea of these ‘zombies’ emerging from the river. The project was rejected but gave rise to West’s exploration of the oversized anthropomorphic head motif that he used throughout the rest of his career.
Franz West, Parrhesia, 2012. Photo: Atelier Franz West. Louisana Museum of Modern Art, HumlebĂŚk, Denmark. Acquired with funding from the Augustinus Foundation.
EVENTS CURATOR TOUR Weds 25 June 2 – 2.30pm Discover more about the West exhibition in this tour led by curator Dr. Sam Lackey. FREE AN INTRODUCTION TO ART HISTORY: A COLLAGE OF IDEAS, THEORIES & PHILOSOPHIES Weds 30 July 6.30 – 9pm Franz West’s interest in the concepts that surround looking at and thinking about art inform this friendly and supportive discussion exploring selected writings of theorists, critics and philosophers. £5
Where is my Eight? was conceived by mumok and developed in partnership with The Hepworth Wakefield.
CURATOR’S TALK: EVA BADURA-TRISKA Thurs 21 Aug 7 – 8pm Eva Badura-Triska, curator of Franz West: Where is my Eight? will discuss West’s work, her collaboration with The Hepworth Wakefield and the connections and parallels between the work of West and Barbara Hepworth. £5 (£4) SCHMUCK QUICKIES WITH YUKA OYAMA Sun 24 & Mon 25 Aug Drop-in 2 – 4.30pm In her hair salon-like set up, Berlin-based artist Yuka Oyama will draw together odds and ends from her kit of recycled materials to create, within minutes, a piece of highly personalised piece of schmuck (the German word for jewellery) that not only decorates but physically represents the wearer’s desires and personality. FREE
Supported by
Austrian Cultural Forum London
WORKSHOPS CREATIVE WRITING WORKSHOP: PLAY ON WORDS Sat 12 July 10.30am – 4pm Join writer Becky Cherriman to experiment with word games and lyrical tricks inspired by Franz West’s playful use of language. £15 COLOUR/FORM/ MATERIAL: PLASTER Sat 6 Sept 10.30am – 4pm Work with artist Victoria Lucas to explore the materiality of plaster, experimenting with form and colour in response to West’s and Hepworth’s plasters on display in the galleries. £40 HOW TO BOOK To book contact 01924 247360 or hello @hepworthwakefield.org Members get 25% off all talks, workshops and events. Please note, The Hepworth Wakefield is unable to refund payments within two weeks of an event being held. T&Cs can be viewed at www.hepworthwakefield.org
Funded by
Cover: Otto Kobalek with Adaptive by Franz West 1975, in Karl Marx Hof, Vienna. Photo: Friedl Kubelka. All images © Archiv Franz West (Vienna/Austria)/Franz West Privatstiftung, Vienna/Legal Successors of Franz West/Generali Foundation Vienna.
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