The show includes films and photos of his friends dancing with, wearing or playing with them. West described them as a Freudian “attempt to give form to neurotic symptoms” and returned to them over and over again throughout his career. His “Passstücke” (“Adaptives”), various objects made of painted plaster and steel, were meant to be picked up and manipulated by others in any way they wished, creating spontaneous happenings wherever they were shown. West was into “interactive” art before his time. That didn’t stop him either from becoming one of the leading contemporary artists of his time, represented by big-time art dealers like Zwirner and Gagosian. Something of a hippie in his youth, the supposedly lazy West traveled to the Near East in the late ’60s and did time in rehab and even prison for drug use. “Group with Cabinet” (eight sculptures, 2001). And he made a very good living from it, judging by the photo of him leaning against his Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow in 2007. ![]() The 200 works (out of the 6,000 he produced in his lifetime) in the exhibition are proof, however, that he did do something – a lot, in fact. I took a liking to Franz West (1947-2012) as soon as I entered the exhibition at the Centre Pompidou and saw this quote by him: “I’ve always thought that the ideal is to do nothing and still be able to make a living out of it.” Next to the quote was a photo of the young West lying face down in bed in his parents’ apartment in Vienna, taken by his lifelong friend Friedl Kubelka, who was documenting his preference for “lying down and doing nothing.” Photo courtesy Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Zurich/New York
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