Franz West
"In Swanns Welt (Swann's Way)", 1983
Collage and newspaper on paper in artist's frame
Unframed: 10 3/4 x 22 1/4 inches (27.3 x 56.5 cm)
Framed: 20 3/4 x 26 5/8 x 1 1/2 inches (52.7 x 67.6 x 3.8 cm)
Signed, titled, and dated recto
 

Courtesy of David Zwirner Gallery

Selected by The Drawing Center

Emerging in the early 1970s, Austrian-born artist Franz West (1947-2012) developed a unique aesthetic that engaged equally high and low reference points and privileged social interaction as an intrinsic component of his work. By playfully manipulating everyday materials and imagery in novel ways, he created objects that serve to redefine art as a social experience, calling attention to the way in which art is presented to the public, and how viewers interact with works of art and with each other. As described by Darsie Alexander, "there is a distinct look to West's work that defies quick visual digestion. Fundamentally sculptural in construction, it veers frequently towards the biomorphic and the prosthetic, mines the intellectualism of Freud and Wittgenstein, and possesses an awkward beauty that speaks with equal fluency to the aesthetics of painterly abstraction and trash art...[W]ith its alternately crumbly or sleek surfaces, the work beckons human touch in an environment where such demonstrative reactions are strictly forbidden."1

Throughout his career, West made collages that shared the irreverent aesthetic and humor of his sculptures, and that frequently employed found imagery. According to Veit Loers, "In Franz West's early collages [from the mid- to late-1970s,] individual figures from advertising pages were left untouched while the rest of the image was painted over to form an abstract background. [...] In collages from the early eighties West placed cut-out figures into a stage-like space as if they were actors in a 'theatre of the absurd.' [...] The collages from this period provide interesting references to the spaces West produced in the eighties and nineties—and their psychological implications."2

The present work, which takes its title from the first volume of Marcel Proust's “In Search of Lost Time”, comprises gestural brushstrokes of red, purple, blue, and white paint that surround and at times obscure the figures of two nude women, producing an image that is at once dynamically charged and humorous.

1. Darsie Alexander, "Franz West: What To Do?" in Alexander, ed., “Franz West, To Build a House You Start with the Roof: Work 1972-2008” (Baltimore: The Baltimore Museum of Art, 2008), p. 49.

2. Veit Loers, "Franz West's Art of Midwifery," in Franz West. “Collector's Choice. Artist's Monographs. Friedrich Christian Flick Collection. Vol. 5” (Cologne: Dumont, 2006), pp. 20-22