Madness and Messerschmidt

Franz Xaver Messerschmidt. A Hypochondriac. After 1770. Austria. Lead. The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
http://www.mfa.org/

Austrian sculptor Franz Xaver Messersmidt (1736-1783) seems to be one of the few artists whose potential insanity overshadows his work. Maybe this is because most of his early work is lost, or simply because of the sixty-nine portraits found in his house after his death that exhibit various extreme facial contortions and expressions. Additional claims that he saw ghosts because of his chaste lifestyle, and had upset the spirit of proportion through his discoveries of proportion understandably led some to question his mental health. At some point, Dr. Ernst Kris, art historian and psychoanalyst, wrote an article discussing both his art and its relation to Messerscmidt's mental condition.

Franz Xaver Messerschmidt. 1770-83. Ill Humored Man. Lead. Private Collection. Image via Web Gallery of Art.
http://www.wga.hu/index.html

However, having been left with a crippling inability to speak German, I have not yet managed to read this. Strangely enough, all my academic resources seem to have dried up in the two weeks I have been out on vacation. And all the online versions I have managed to find have been both fragmentary and in foreign languages.

Margot and Rudolf Wittkower in their fascinating book Born Under Saturn: the character and conduct of artists suggest that Messerschmidt's insanity should at least be questioned considering the relatively normal works he produced in his later years, as well as his various illustrious patrons at the time. His social position and lack of education coupled with the occult beliefs of the 18th Century suggest that he was simply a unique product of his times that became misinterpreted by intellectuals for generations.

Franz Xaver Messerschmidt. The Beaked. 1770. Alabaster. Österreichische Galerie, Vienna. Image via Web Gallery of Art.
http://www.wga.hu/index.html

Regardless, these portraits have a certain modern aesthetic. While they're not something I would want to come across in a lonely room at night, (as more benign sculptures have been known to send me into cardiac arrest) they would definitely look nice on some brooding intellectual's mantelpiece.

Maria Potzl-Malikova. "Messerschmidt, Franz Xaver."In Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online, http://www.oxfordartonline.com/subscriber/article/grove/art/t057357

Margot and Rudolf Wittkower. Born Under Saturn: the character and conduct of artists. New York: New York Review of Books: 1963.