West began making drawings around 1970 before moving on to painted collages incorporating magazine images that showed the influence of Pop Art.

"[5] For his early sculptures, West often covered ordinary objects—bottles, machine parts, pieces of furniture and other, unidentifiable things—with gauze and plaster, producing "lumpy, grungy, dirty-white objects".

"[5] For the season 2009/2010 in the Vienna State Opera Franz West designed a large scale picture (176 sqm) as part of the exhibition series "Safety Curtain", conceived by museum in progress.

[12] Around 1980 West started to create "plaster objects, usually a few feet long, meant to be placed over the face, worn around the waist or held in the crook of the neck.

Although they suggest masks and props for the commedia dell'arte, their shapes are usually ambiguous: no matter how figurative and sexual Mr. West's objects may be, they remain abstract.

"[13] His friend Reinhard Priessnitz called these "Passstücke", which was rendered into English as "Fitting pieces"; but West came to prefer another translation, "Adaptives".

[20] The archive had previously sued the private foundation, as well as Gagosian Gallery and Galerie Eva Presenhuber, for selling the artist's furniture and photographs, claiming it owns the sole license for those works.