Showing the Austrian maverick at the temple to Britain's greatest female sculptor reveals what a complex and joyous artist he was
If you stand among Barbara Hepworth's carved and rounded plaster and wood shapes at the Hepworth in Wakefield for long enough, you feel that time will wear a hole right through you. Hepworth's art seemed to aim for a kind of timelessness. But time is all I feel among these soothing shadows and hushed planes. I feel eroded in their presence.
Among these prototypes for her bronzes sit three rough, crumbly hollow lumps. The invigilators might want to keep an eye on them. They look like they've wandered in, up to no good, slack-mouthed and conspiring. Franz West's uncouth papier-mâché forms are a great counterpoint to the reserve and sanded-down refinement of Hepworth.
Part of an excellent survey of the late Austrian artist's work that has travelled to Wakefield from Frankfurt and Vienna, West's 1988 ensemble Das Geraune (Murmuring) is the only work at the Hepworth placed in direct relationship to the British modernist. Where Hepworth's art encourages a sort of mute contemplation, West's is all about how objects speak and have their way with us. His sculpture, objects and collaborations with other artists feel part of the world rather than apart from it. "It doesn't matter what the art looks like but how it's used," West said.
Much of the show is devoted not just to West's own works but also to the arrangements he made both of them and the paintings, drawings and sculptures he swopped with other artists. These are interesting, but in my view more so as insight into friendship patterns and artistic fellow feeling than as full-blown collaborations.
Since his death in 2012 at the age of 66, there has been a flurry of exhibitions devoted to West, sometimes juxtaposing him with entirely different artists. One recent show in London put him together with Hans Arp. The exhibition highlighted not only what an inventive sculptor West could be, but also how crazy Arp was.