This week’s Modern Art Notes Podcast remembers Austrian artist Franz West, who died two weeks ago at age 65. West was one of European art’s most Puckish innovators. His art was playful and sly — he often encouraged viewers to pick up and play with or to sit down on his work — but it was also deeply rooted in the intellectual history of Vienna, his lifelong hometown.
Vienna is also the hometown of Sigmund Freud… and what could be more Freud-referencing than a couch, and an uncomfortable one to boot?
Joining me to discuss West’s life and work — and his uncomfortable couch-cum-sculptures — is Darsie Alexander, the chief curator at the Walker Art Center. In 2008 Alexander curated West’s only American retrospective, which opened at the Baltimore Museum of Art and traveled to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
To download the program directly to your PC/mobile device, click here. Subscribe to The Modern Art Notes Podcast via iTunes or RSS. See images of artworks discussed on the program.
Image: Franz West, Leige, 1989.
Yesterday I posted a picture of Franz West’s late masterpiece The Ego and the Id (2008), one of the most exuberant sculptures in recent memory. The image I shared was from the debut of the work, the installation of the work indoors at the Baltimore Museum of Art on the occasion of West’s first American retrospective in 2008.
The next year, The Ego and the Id traveled to New York, where the Public Art Fund took it outdoors, to Central Park.
This week’s Modern Art Notes Podcast remembers Franz West, who died two weeks ago at age 65. West was one of European art’s most Puckish innovators. His art was playful and sly — he often encouraged viewers to pick up and play with or to sit down on his work — but it was also deeply rooted in the intellectual history of Vienna, his lifelong hometown.
Joining me to discuss West’s life and work is Darsie Alexander, the chief curator at the Walker Art Center and the organizer of that 2008 retrospective.
To download the program directly to your PC/mobile device, click here. Subscribe to The Modern Art Notes Podcast via iTunes or RSS. See images of artworks discussed on the program.
Image: Franz West, The Ego and The Id (detail), 2008 as installed in Central Park, New York, by the Public Art Fund.
This week’s Modern Art Notes Podcast remembers Austrian artist Franz West, who died two weeks ago at age 65. West was one of European art’s most Puckish innovators. His art was playful and sly — he often encouraged viewers to pick up and play with or to sit down on his work — but it was also deeply rooted in the intellectual history of Vienna, his lifelong hometown.
Joining me to discuss West’s life and work is Darsie Alexander, the chief curator at the Walker Art Center. In 2008 Alexander curated West’s only American retrospective, which opened at the Baltimore Museum of Art and traveled to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
In the second segment, artists Steve Roden and Stephen Vitiello join me to discuss their recent collaboration in Houston. In association with the exhibition “Silence,” in which both artists are represented and which is on view at The Menil Collection through, Roden and Vitiello performed a sound piece at The Rothko Chapel. Roden and Vitiello have also provided an extended audio clip from their improvised performance, The Spaces Contained in Each.
To download the program directly to your PC/mobile device, click here. Subscribe to The Modern Art Notes Podcast via iTunes or RSS. See images of artworks discussed on the program.
Image: Franz West, The Ego and The Id, 2008.
Franz West, Selbiges (The Thing Itself), 1987.
Does Usain Bolt’s signature victory pose share its roots with a major Franz West sculpture?
