Franz West, To Build a House You Start with the Roof: Work 1972–2008

This catalogue was published inconjunction with the exhibition “Franz West, To Build a House You Start with the Roof: Work, 1972–2008”. A book that makes clear why Franz West is not only Vienna's most influential living sculptor, but one of the most entertaining and cerebral contemporary artists anywhere. There is no easy way to define Franz West's art: it is fundamentally sculptural in its construction, veers frequently toward the biomorphic and prosthetic, mines the intellectualism of Freud and Wittgenstein, and possesses an awkward beauty that speaks with equal fluency to the tradition of painterly abstraction and the aesthetics of trash art. West's distinctive vision has resulted in one of the most remarkable bodies of work produced since the 1960s. This book, with more than 160 color images, offers a comprehensive look at West's work from the 1970s to the present. A unique blend of illustration, essays, interviews, and artist's pages, it accompanies a major retrospective organized by The Baltimore Museum of Art, and includes a new piece created specifically for the exhibition.