(Vienna 1947–2012) Untitled, late 1980s, papier-mâché, paint, 37 x 40 x 44 cm, (K)

It was painted by Herbert Brandl.

Registered: Franz West Private Foundation Archive, Vienna

Provenance: Private Property Vienna - directly from the artist

Letter to Harald Szeemann c. 1986
Dear Mr Szeemann

As you said I should inform you again about what I recently said with regards to my sculptures and reliefs, namely that after I have created them I see in them shapes (which, taken together, create motifs) from paintings or sculptures (usually fountains) by old or contemporary painters or sculptors (e.g. by Daumier, Warhol, but also Bernini or the “Navicolo”), which had probably impressed me, but in the details, namely which each work reminds me of, probably not wishing to announce this to avoid the character of a spatial “Rebus” (picture puzzle), which I am now doing…
Best wishes, F. West Franz
West schrieb, Texte von 1975 – 2010 published by Buchhandlung Walther König, 2005

Franz West or: a baroque of the soul and the spirit in dried fragments Harald Szeemann

Over the past three years one has been able to come across curious sculptural works at several international exhibitions, often formed from a wooden or steel structure and strengthened with the aid of a stove pipe or even a bettesal, the whole covered by a crude, damaged and creviced crust of papier-mâché, already coloured or painted after having been “modelled”: this universe of shapes, placed on the floor or on a plinth, or sometimes on an iron pole with foot, as if to emphasize the instability of the “structure”, contrast with the customary understanding of the terms “sculpture”. The “structures” are not the final outcome of a long sculptural process; rather they are conditions, gestures frozen during the course of this process. These conditions can take on the most varied of shapes; they can be “bulky lumps”, vaguely reminiscent of a bicycle seat or cannon, their sides open, torn away; of a pointed hat such as that worn by the magician Merlin; of a thousand-year-old helmet, just excavated; of an unimaginable, coloured bone. But as conditions they refuse to be precisely named and given any form of label. They are delicate in appearance and yet very present, these dried fragments of a – one could add, Austrian – baroque of the soul and the spirit.
Franz West, In & Out, Museum für Neue Kunst, Karlsruhe, Hatje Cantz, 2000