Franz Xaver Messerschmidt - More than Character Heads

Grotesque, ambiguous, fascinating: Despite their worldwide fame, Franz Xaver Messerschmidt's so-called "Character Heads" remain a puzzle to this day. This publication undertakes a re-contextualisation as reflections of an Age of Enlightenment. Since the twentieth century it has been popular to interpret Franz Xaver Messerschmidt's "Character Heads" from a psychopathological perspective, as affect studies or even products of a mentally disturbed mind. Yet this is a narrow lens through which to view the objects, which ignores the fact that the sculptor was responding to the profound social and scientific changes of the eighteenth century.