![]() ![]() West avoided having his pants pulled down by the public because his works suggested that they were already around his ankles The impression of lightness is enhanced by the fact that West never attempted to disguise the hollowness of his structures – a material honesty that remains unusual in public sculpture, which still tends to rely on looking solid and expensive in order to command attention. Made from bent and welded sheet metal, his giant shits, guts and sex toys have the look of patched up DIY inflatables a far cry from the statues of imperial eagles, emperors and military commanders typical to Vienna, where he grew up. Nobody could accuse West of sucking the joy from a park or square. ![]() If this makes him sound boorish, in reality his work is an object lesson in geniality. Near-literally, in the case of Etude de couleur, a pissoir with a lake view installed as part of Skulptur Projekte Münster in 1997. In part, West avoided having his pants pulled down by the public because his works suggested that they were already around his ankles. ‘Is the purpose of art in public places to seal off a route of escape, to stress the absence of joy and hope?’, a clerk from a nearby building enquired during the trial. Consider the thefts of Henry Moore sculptures, melted and sold for their value as scrap metal, or the fate of Richard Serra’s Tilted Arc (1981), an ominous wall of steel that divided Foley Federal Plaza in Manhattan throughout the 1980s, until a judge ordered its removal at the request of local workers disgruntled by the imposition upon their lunch spot. For the outside observer, the spectacle of art going toe-to-toe with the very people on whose behalf it is ostensibly made has offered ample opportunity for schadenfreude. The world beyond the gallery can be an unforgiving place: if your idea isn’t overwhelmed by the environment, or irreparably dulled by regulation, chances are the public will come for you. Producing outdoor sculpture is doubtless one of the hardest tasks an artist can take on. Courtesy Public Art Fund, New York, and the collection of Amalia Dayan and Adam Lindemann The Ego and the Id, 2009, aluminium, steel, lacquer, dimensions variable. And then there is Dorit (2002), currently standing outside Tate Modern, London, a sculpture that looks like an erect string of anal beads painted a shade of piggy flesh West was fond of using. In 2009 The Ego and the Id was installed in Central Park, New York, two 6m-tall spiralling frames on which visitors are invited to sit as if perching on lengths of cartoon intestine. West’s interests extended up the gut, and to objects that enter the anus as well as those that leave it. ![]() Among my favourite of his outdoor works are the Sitzwurst (2000), giant, party-coloured aluminium turd-forms that have made appearances on lawns including at Schlosspark, Vienna, and Regent’s Park, London, revealing at a grotesque scale what is usually already lurking in the grass. Yet to my mind, his most remarkable quality was a capacity to see the joy and universality of shit, and to recognise its efficacy as the basis for public sculpture. Few could rival his dignity-puncturing collages of meat, porn and unsuspecting figures cut from the pages of magazines – fewer still could give a lump of papier-mâché the air of a drunk attempting a pirouette at the end of a heavy night. West, who died in 2012, was an artist of many virtues. I found these fetid additions to his outfit oddly compelling, and instead of wrinkling my nose I smiled. Faced with the responsibility of looking after multiple dogs at once, often miles away from the nearest bin, he had devised a pragmatic but unusual solution: tying the poo bags onto the belt loops of his jeans. By the time we had finished our walk my friend’s waistband was decorated with brightly coloured sacks that swung in time with the rhythm of his hips. ![]() I grew up with pets and so consider myself unflappable when it comes to ‘picking up after them’, but that afternoon I experienced the ritual in a new light. A few months ago I spent an afternoon on the job with a friend who works as a dog walker. ![]()
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