![]() ![]() A room with a more conducive atmosphere could be another welcome weapon in the anti-white-cube curator’s arsenal. ![]() ![]() While the sound and low light is at cross purposes with the room’s supposed function and the effect quite irritating, perusing the books on offer allows for more insight into West’s mind. There are two sofas and a couple of bookshelves containing works from West’s library. In the last room a video or a conversation between West and other artists, including Sarah Lucas, is projected on the wall, its colours tweaked to garish, its soundtrack a deliberately cacophonous. Sarah Lucas cracking up in conversation with Franz West. It is interesting how initially subversive work such as West’s punk sculptures or, even more powerfully, Mike Nelson’s Re-examined Territories or Urs Fischers You , in seeking to undermine the cube can in fact reinforce it whereas a collection of unprepossessing bits of furniture might have a longer term effect. ![]() A seed is sown: ‘I can sit, I can relax, I don’t have to look or take part, I can just be.’ In this simpilest of ways the viewer begins to inhabit the show. Though they which reference another famous Viennese – Sigmund Freud – their primary power is in their direct function for they are surprisingly comfortable and roomy and, after dutifully taking in the work in front of the couches, the viewer begins to relax, flicks through one of the catalogues provided, checks their phone or talks to their companion. They face a large print of one of West’s works in situ flanked by two monitors showing an experimental film by West. The couches arranged in three rows are covered by a variety of rugs draped practically rather than aesthetically. As a collection of metal couches covered in shabby Persian rugs, first staged at Documenta in 1992, Auditorium at first is underwhelming. It is Auditorium which does the most to break down the space. The scale and colour of Epiphany on Chairs (2011) and Smears (2010) beckon to the inner child – even more so when you realise they refer to intestines and faeces…poo in the gallery!īut that cartoon-like facade and non-interactiveness underlined by the prowling security and ankle-high fencing means their impact fades quite quickly. Later sculptural works, particularly his Lemurenköpfe, 1992, may have been interesting in their original sites are here reduced to theatrical props. The unabashed use of wine and whisky bottles – West was at one point heavy drinker – is refreshing too, a ‘leaning in’ to that destructive myth of the dissolute artist. The combination of wackiness, colour, materials and processes in West’s early sculpture raises a gleeful finger to the modernist canvas and plinth. Still, West’s the absurdity and subversiveness is present throughout the show. Having said that the donuts which greet the viewer at the shows entrance seem to more successfully tread the line between function and art though one could see them lose their novelty quite quickly. Some earlier pieces shown here ultimately look like furniture and as such lack the wonder of the functionless. Surprising as that impulse seems not to have developed in his later large scale sculptural work. Perhaps that impulse fed into his hybrid art/furniture pieces. Earlier interactive pieces or Passstücke (Adaptives) – papier-mâché pieces made to be picked up and moved – are surprisingly, some of the few works in this show that invite direct, unscripted interaction. West’s ‘punk aesthetic’ provides enough colour, initially at least, to offset the cube. No matter how many artists bring a different aesthetic to it or even snub it, it morphs and maintains a certain dominance, or at least a central role, even when that role is to stay in the background. It can define and protect art but it can leech the artistic process of life and, as market-orientated, it stands in opposition to much of what the arts tries to embody. This ‘pristine space’, the ‘white cube’ has long been a source of fascination. The Tate blurb says Franz West the Viennese artist (1947-2012) ‘brought a punk aesthetic into the pristine spaces of art galleries’. I didn’t know much about West’s work which is possibly the best condition in which to approach a show. I was in London a few weeks back specifically to attend a lecture on Phyllida Barlow’s Cul de Sac – a show at the Royal Academy which I will post about next – but my first stop was Franz West’s retrospective at the Tate Modern. ![]()
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