Description
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Smirking, dim-witted, grimacing or disgusted - that is how the character studies cast in lead or cut into alabaster appear to viewers: sculptures that do not adhere to any classical ideal of beauty but confront the viewer with a typology of the ugly. The fascinating character heads by the baroque sculptor Franz Xaver Messerschmidt may be indebted to his contemporary Johann Kaspar Lavater, yet, they never cease to amaze with their untimely artistic aggressiveness, modernism even, exposing the flip sides of human expression.
Messerschmidt, who created conventional portraits of dignitaries such as Empress Maria Theresia or Joseph II while teaching at the Imperial Academy in Vienna, began to turn exclusively to character heads around 1770, a fact that quickly gained him the reputation of a maverick. Having taken early retirement due to a psychological disorder that was never clearly defined, he spent the rest of his life as a recluse in Pressburg. This extensive monograph about an exceptional artist attempts an interpretation of the "deeper meaning" of an oeuvre which is as unusual as it is uncompromising.
