#FRANZ WEST RULES SERIES#

The show ‘Where is My Eight’ was initiated by West in 2012 for mumok, (Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien), in Vienna, where West lived, with the show’s title a play on that of an earlier work. Installation image courtesy The Hepworth Wakefield. Private collection, Austria © Gabriel Szabo / Guzelian and the legal successors of Franz West. Thus those two Viennese titans of modern thought, Freud and Wittgenstein, through the ideas of psychoanalysis and language games, can be seen both to have their share in this comic monster.ĭas Geraune (Murmering) (1998), Franz West. It is also an emblem of the human condition, as well as a joke on our human habit of projection, whereby every large circular object with a hole in it becomes a head, capable of tragedy. This assertively sculptural, hand-made object is thus the progeny of a multiple play on words. In addition, the word ‘lemur’ is sometimes used to designate the ancient middle-class ladies who haunt Viennese coffee shops. West played with the idea of these zombies rising out of the river. At the time of the commission, West was drinking heavily (it was alcoholism that would ultimately precipitate his early death in 2013, aged just 66), and a common Viennese phrase to capture the sensation of waking up with a hangover is ‘seeing lemuren’ or ‘zombies’.

#FRANZ WEST RULES SERIES#

This cartoon head is Lemurenheim (‘Lemur Head’, 2002), a work in plaster made by the Austrian artist Franz West in collaboration with the artist Rudolf Stingel in response to an invitation by the architect Hermann Czech to create a series of sculptures for a bridge in Vienna.

Installation image courtesy The Hepworth Wakefield

Franz west rules