There are some tentative experiments in sculpture, too, before we move onto the bolder creations.Īlthough West is known for huge, snaking aluminium structures, painted in his signature baby blue and bright pastel pink, many of his works were made from more fragile materials. They are silly and slapstick, funny and dirty bespectacled, straight-faced men watch naked women dance, and two collaged faces are added to a lively, cartoony drawing of a couple having sex. His early drawings, made, we are told, to please his mother, provide the perfect introduction to his sometimes bawdy practice.
In the early days, much of West’s time was spent living like a beatnik bohemian, getting drunk and taking drugs in the Vienna’s bars and cafes. She knows exactly what his art needs in order to shine, subtly tweaking the galleries of the Blavatnik building so that the guard ropes tone in with his favourite colours and the partitions look like extensions of the work.įranz West. Lucas, whose own work deals with sex and humour, is the perfect woman for the job. The Tate Modern has fully embraced West’s eccentricities in this, the first posthumous retrospective of the artist’s work, by inviting his friend and collaborator Sarah Lucas to help design the show. But now West is regarded as an innovator, and, in 2012, a year before his death, he was awarded the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale.
For years the art world scratched and shook its head. Who, after all, builds a sculpture from papier-mâché and then displays it on a cardboard box. Mad, irreverent, fun and experimental, Franz West’s work wasn’t taken seriously at first – it just wasn’t made of the right stuff.
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