A retrospective of Austrian artist Franz West at the Centre Pompidou in Paris begins where most biographical tales perhaps should – with his mother, Emilie West. Born to a well-to-do Viennese Jewish family, she espoused communist ideals and the artist’s father, Ferdinand Zokan, a Serbian coal merchant. The family lived in a public housing complex, out of which Emilie ran a private dental practice. Her clients included many artists and poets, among them Reinhard Priessnitz, a poet and theorist who would give the name Paßstücke (Adaptives) to West’s most iconic series of sculptures. This early contact with Vienna’s artistic milieu would have a profound impact on the young West’s later career, as would the sounds of whirling drills and the image of his mother creating white and pink moulds of teeth from plaster and resin.
