Franz West - Contemporary Art London Thursday, June 21, 2007 | Phillips

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  • Provenance

    Art Conseil, Panama

  • Exhibited

    Donaueschingen, Fürstenberg Sammlungen, Ahead of the 21st Century – The Pisces Collection, June 2002 – October 2004

  • Catalogue Essay

    Of Franz West’s wide-ranging oeuvre, his sculptural works are not only his most important but also his longest and deepest artistic preoccupation. Ever since the early 70’s, West has been coupling ‘readymade’ objects with awkward looking plaster and papier-mache creations. For the present lot, Das Rohe und das Gekochte (The Raw and the Cooked),West appropriated a set of drawers to which he has attached in a comical, haphazard manner a spoon like plaster sculpture and declared the ensemble a work of art.
    “Early on I realized that the purely visual experience of an artwork was somehow insufficient. When I started to work as an artist, I wanted to expand the traditional boundaries of sculpture and found inspiration in Fluxus… I wanted to go beyond the purely optical and include tactile qualities as well. My works aren't things one just looks at, but things that the viewer is invited to handle. That's a crucial aspect of the series of works that I call Passtucke - which means pieces that fit into something else, like cogwheels. The term is taken from engineering, but when I was giving shape to these objects I was also inspired by Viennese building ornament… One may think that I try to bring the art object out into the world since my works sometimes appear to have a practical function, but really it's the other way around: Things in the world can, under certain special circumstances, enter the realm of art. And, in fact, once they have entered this realm they are art.” (F. West, “A thousand words: Franz West—includes related article on the audience impact of Franz West's art—mixed media art”, ArtForum, February, 1999).

59

Das Rohe und das Gekochte (The Raw and the Cooked)

1982 - 1983
Painted wood and plaster.
69 3/4 x 31 x 19 in. (177 x 78.7 x 48 cm).
Signed “Franz W” on the top.

Estimate
£25,000 - 35,000 ‡♠

Sold for £48,000

Contemporary Art

22 June 2007, 4pm & 5pm
London