Acquisition: Franz West at Baltimore

One of the things I like about Franz West's epoxy-resin-and-fiberglass sculptures from the late '90s and '00s is that they're specifically ambiguous. They bring to mind lots of familiar shapes and even art historical references, but before you can nail them down to any one thing, they slither away.

At left is West's Swimmer (2005), which the Baltimore Museum of Art has recently acquired in advance of the museum's presentation of the first American West retrospective.

In this series of work, West's references begin with the body. Swimmer starts as a friendly, fleshy, gummy vagina dentata? Unless it's an open mouth. Is it ecstatic or anguished? Or maybe it's another orifice altogether.

But body references aren't all that West plays with. After he leads with a potentially vulgar shape or implication, he abstracts away from it until the sculpture touches on other points of familiarity. I think of the body being for West what the landscape was to American abstract expressionists: A place away from which to work. (In a related story, is Dorit a sex toy... or is it a clever riff on seriality? Another recent Baltimore acquisition, Violetta (below, with Swimmer), is a jarringly comfortable lavender intestine-cocoon-sofa.)

One of the hallmarks of West's best work is that it resists immediate identification with anything, a trait he shares with many European and American artists of his generation. West was born in 1947 and spent his formative years during the years pop art and minimalism were king (or at least ducal). West's work often seems to be a reaction against the tidy shapes of minimalism or the ready imagery of pop.

Swimmer is a good example: The surface recalls Oldenburg papier-maches. There's the bright, poppy color that recalls both McCracken and Pepto Bismol. And please don't fetishize the art object: You can sit on Swimmer, which is fantastically democratic, but also a little creepy. (There's no reason to think that West would have thought one whit about Copley's Watson and the Shark, which is at the National Gallery of Art, but I sure do.)