In 1995 the Austrian Franz West transformed the terraces of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles into a glorious salon, with ranks of metal sofas draped with bright African fabrics: a new kind of public art for weary museum visitors. Drawing inspiration from the history of art (reclining icons such as Manet's Olympia), psychoanalysis (Freud's sofa in West's native Vienna) and a socially interactive type of art, his work is at once both personal and public. As one of Europe's best-known sculptors, West is regularly invited to such major surveys as Skulptur Projekte in Munster and Documenta. He has gained particular recognition for incorporating the bodies of his spectators into his sculpture, producing oddly-hued forms called Passstucke ('adaptives') -- plaster sculptures designed to be worn, and which contort the wearer into bizarre positions.

Product Description: This publication presents a selection of Herbert Brandl’s paintings from the early 1980s onward, alongside his most recent works created for a retrospective at the Bank Austria Kunstforum in Vienna. The book also explores Brandl’s affinity for the paintings of Altdorfer, Titian and Rubens in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, which have provided enduring inspiration for his work...read more

Product Description: Since the mid-1960s, Franz West (born 1947) has been finding new ways to balance his art on the line between beauty and ugliness. At the age of 14, West--living in bombed-out, post-Nazi Vienna--attended an event organized by the Viennese Actionists, at which Hermann Nitsch smashed a lamb cadaver against the wall of a basement room in a tenement building: "it was incredibly shocking and really depressing," West said...read more

Product Description: Artwork by Chris Burden, Kiki Smith, James Turrell. Contributions by Jan Hoet.