Franz West and the Absurd Creation

Albert Camus compares the absurd life with the artist’s life, writing that “the essential fluctuation from assent to refusal is what defines the art- ist and his difficult calling.”1 A closer look at Franz West’s artis- tic trajectory hints precisely at this fluctuation. Setting up a keen interdependence between participation and observation, and be- tween function and abstraction, his work continuously shifts be- tween two divergent notions in sculpture: the autonomy of the functional piece and the abstract artwork as furniture.
Read essay here…