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Franz Xaver Messerschmidt
"Franz Xaver Messerschmidt (1736–1783) is one of those elusive eighteenth-century figures
who confront us with the nocturnal side of the enlightenment. In the eyes of his
contemporaries, he was not only a madman but also a mad artist. At the same time that he
began to withdraw from society, he started to work on the project that would isolate him
artistically as well, the Kopfstücke, or “character heads,” in which he concentrated his efforts
to depict the passions and emotions of humanity. The trivial titles assigned to them by an
anonymous writer ten years after Messerschmidt’s death—Afflicted by Constipation, A
Hypocrite and Slanderer, The Incapable Bassoonist—are nothing but an attempt to resist their
social illegibility." - New York Review of Books, Willibald Sauerländer
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| The Artist as He Imagined Himself Laughing, 1777-1781 |
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| Matthias Rudolph Toma: Messerschmidt’s “Character Heads,” 1839 |
Franz Xaver Messerschmidt Transformed No 2
Getty Museum
Edward Rose and Nick Reynolds respond to Franz Xaver Messerschmidt so-
called "character heads."
Franz Xaver Messerschmidt, an eighteenth-century German sculptor active in
Austria, is best known for his series of dramatic "character heads." The metal
and stone busts are often disturbing in their extreme expressions. They have
long prompted critics and scholars to speculate that the artist made them in
reaction to an undiagnosed mental illness.
Learn more about Messerchmidt's "character heads": http://bit.ly/11G2EMD
Read a short biography of the artist: http://bit.ly/11G3DfN
See an example of one of Messerschmidt's 69 "character heads" in the Getty
Museum's collection: http://bit.ly/92iYZU
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