The late Austrian artist Franz West (1947–2012) was one of the most influential artists of the past 50 years. His retrospective at Tate Modern explores his irreverent sensibility and irreverent approach to art and materials, bringing together almost 200 works including abstract sculptures, furniture, collages and large outdoor works Austria’s Kunsthistorisches Museum, like the Burgtheater and Vienna State Opera, occupies a special place within the country’s high culture. More than an ordinary exhibition venue, it is a flagship. In his novel "Old Masters" (1985), Thomas Bernhard pushed this quality to the extreme, equating the institution with the country as a whole before launching into one of his infamous tirades: ‘the whole of this Austria, when all is said and done, is nothing but a Kunsthistorisches Museum, a Catholic-National-Socialist one, an appalling one ... A chaotic rubbish-heap, that is what today’s Austria is, this ridiculous pygmy state which drips with self-overestimation and which, 40 years after the so-called "Second World War", has reached its absolute low only as a totally amputated state’. Museums have great merits, but Bernhard managed to give his comparison between state and museum a vitriolic quality. Read more at Tate.
Franz West in his studio, 1995