West was asked by the architect Hermann Czech (born 1936) to make a sculpture to go near a bridge Czech had designed in the Stadtpark in Vienna, and so began to research historical sculptures. The catalogue for West’s Secession exhibition included a short text explaining the genesis of the work. It was the largest work in the exhibition, the largest sculpture West had made up to that point, and the most ambitious of his 1980s papier-mâché ‘Legitimate Sculptures’ – a term he had invented the previous year to distinguish his new work from the earlier Adaptives (Paßstück), which were smaller objects intended to be handled by visitors (see Adaptive 1977, Tate T15699).

The sculpture was made in 1987 and first exhibited in the exhibition Franz West: Ansicht at the Vienna Secession in October that year. The surface is rough, as was typical of West’s sculptures of the time, and in most places the gold paint does not disguise the work’s papier-mâché construction. The work leans backwards at what feels like a precarious angle, but is stabilised by one of the rods at its base that balances its weight. The body of the work is mostly constructed from papier-mâché over a metallic core, and this has been painted in gold paint. With his enthusiastic scale and friendliness, Franz West sets aside the trap of static abstraction with brightly-colored structures such as the present work, which command and animate their environment.Untitled (Model for a Metal Sculpture) 1987 is a tall wedge-like sculpture that stands on a metal base composed of radiating square-section metallic bars. The filaments of post-war European art can be traced throughout his work from the lengthy figures of Alberto Giacometti, to Dieter Roth’s objects, and the plaster surfaces of Jean Fautrier.

The present work vibrates with the spirit of the avant-garde without drowning in it, in turn rejecting and embracing object-based art practices. Such works express the artist’s intention to release the aesthetic experience from pre-established rules.Ĭreated toward the end of his life, the mysterious and playful forms of the present work invite further investigation and contemplation while maintaining the friendliness and viewer interaction which characterizes West’s oeuvre. Designed to be manipulated to reveal its densely layered surface, Untitled recalls West’s celebrated Paßstück (‘Fitting Pieces’): a series of small scale papier-mâché works, assembled from found materials that demonstrate his understanding that art is part of the everyday. Birnbaum, ‘A thousand words: Franz West’, Artforum, New York, February 1999, p.84). With its lumpy, granular and apparently inchoate surface, Untitled invites the viewer to reach out and touch it, thus subverting the idea that art is ‘untouchable and sacrosanct’ (F. Placed on top of an iron base, the work exudes elegance and dynamism, emphasized by the twirled shape of the axis. cat., The Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, 2008). Alexander, Franz West, To Build a House You Start with the Roof: Work, 1972-2008, exh. And you can live with it without being afraid’ (F. You can make it at home without too many complications. I came to this material because it’s cheap and easy to use. Throughout his practice, West has employed this medium extensively – as he explained, ‘I have been working in papier-mâché for many years. The amorphous mass is coated with multi-chromatic striations of acrylic paint that the artist dripped directly on the papier mâché structure. Made of papier-mâché and acrylic paint, the present work displays a highly textural surface with indented edges.

Combining elements of painting, sculpture and installation, Untitled is an outstanding testament to Franz West’s distinctive and multifarious practice.

Franz west untitled 1973