
On view at
LACMA March 12,
Franz West, To Build a House You Start with the Roof: Work, 1972-2008, features more than a hundred objects that reflect the acclaimed Austrian artist's extraordinary innovations in sculpture, design, and paper. Here, Tom Eccles, Executive Director of the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, sits down with the artist to discuss growing up in a culture that embraced Nazism, the Viennese avant-garde, and his Adaptives—small, portable sculptures that are only completed as artworks when the viewer picks them up and carries them around.
What was your experience growing up in Vienna?When I grew up in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, it could only be described as a time of darkness. Many of the houses and buildings were bombed out, and as children we played in ruins rather than on the grass. There was either dirt or ruins to play in. It was more than dirty—filthy. But I would describe it as a time of really essential living. It was real contrast to the sixties, when I was in my twenties, and probably more so to the seventies, with children watching television in their rooms, glued to the TV. We wondered how they would grow up, perhaps what kind of artists they might become: certainly cleaner than my generation.
I'm also interested in your experience of being a child in a city and a culture that had embraced Nazism.There was always that shadow; a dark shadow that you could not completely identify. You didn't have words for it. Just about everyone had been a Nazi. Otherwise, why didn't they run away?
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