Franz Xaver Messerschmidt 1736–1783: From Neoclassicism to Expressionism

Neue Galerie, New York

Through Jan. 10

“A small but potent retro­spective” at New York’s Neue Gallerie sheds a fascinating light on the strange case—and even stranger art—of Franz Xaver Messerschmidt, said Holland Cotter in The New York Times. By the time Messerschmidt was 18, in the 1750s, he had already established himself as a “brilliant young sculptor” working at the imperial court in Vienna. By 41, though, he was washed up and struggling to make ends meet in distant Bratislava. His career foundered, in part, because he went mad. Messerschmidt claimed to be tormented by “malign spirits,” and could find only one way to keep them at bay: by confronting them with frightening sculptures. Thus he produced his “character heads,” a collection of disturbing yet naturalistic visages that are “among the more outlandish artifacts of the Age of Reason.”

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Messerschmidt’s sculptures “represent a sustained level of emotional intensity” rare in sculpture of the time, said Eric Gibson in The Wall Street Journal. Works such as The Ill-Humored Man and A Hypocrite and a Slanderer capture details of facial structure with an accuracy that exceeds most contemporary court portraiture. Yet the anatomical precision was only incidental to Messerschmidt’s main purpose—depicting “extreme states of being at the moment of maximum intensity.” Unlike most traditional portrait sculptures, Messerschmidt’s figures seem also somehow to acknowledge the presence of the viewer. That can make this exhibition particularly creepy. “To be in the presence of a crowd of sneering, scowling, and laughing faces is to become suddenly aware that the normal relationship between artwork and viewer has been overturned.”