The Franz West show at Tate Modern is great. Manic, fun, full of ideas and totally enthralling. But it’s also a little stuffy, a little academic and a little too reverential. All of which are things you feel Franz would have absolutely hated. He was a barfly, a hilarious, anarchic Austrian drunk, and something about the reverential quiet of being in a big museum just feels a little off.
But one of the great things about London is that whenever a major museum shows an artist, that artist’s gallery will put on a small free show to go along with it. And over in Mayfair, the gallery that represents West’s estate has pulled together a show that rights some of the Tate wrongs.
The Zwirner exhibition has a lot of what the Tate’s got: early drawings, sexy collages, some brilliant passstücke, a carpet-covered sofa and a handful of big papier-mache sculptures. Something about West’s art just seems more at home squidged into this Mayfair townhouse. Here, you can get really close to a small handful of works, rather than staring admiringly at countless things on plinths behind ropes. It’s a more intimate art viewing experience.
The whole show feels a bit thrown together, slapdash, nonsensical. And that suits it, it suits Franz. The sculptures upstairs, all neon and gloopy, are fantastic, but there’s plenty here for West lovers. It’s not that it’s better than the Tate show, it’s more like the after-party to the main event, the place where the real fun happens. And old Franz probably would have liked that.
@eddyfrankel
