Character head

There is a short story by HG Wells called The Green Door.  It tells of one of those unobtrusive doors we discover quite unexpectedly, through which we enter into a marvellous and unsuspected realm.  In this jaded age of experience overkill, when every feeble novelty is seized upon just because it is a novelty, it is a rare and signal event to come across a rich and unimaginable world that simply did not exist, even as a rumour, before the first encounter with it.  For me, the character heads of Franz Xaver Messerschmidt are just such a unlooked for miracle of a world.

Of the 60 or so heads created in the 1770s and 1780s, 49 survive. They are mostly in lead; a few are in marble or alabaster.  Thereafter, they beggar description.  They are known now by titles given to them after Messerschmidt's death in 1783, which attempt to categorise them by the expressions on the faces, Thus there is 'The seriously wounded man in agony', 'A childish weeper'; other names claim to dig deeper, and discern in the features 'The difficult secret' or 'An intentional buffoon'; some, like the splendidly improbable 'A constipation sufferer', are clearly just desperate attempts in the face of an intractable enigma. 

To be surrounded by even just twelve or thirteen of the heads is an extraordinary experience.  Where a single head could be dismissed as a curiosity, the product of a moment's whimsy, the group achieves something grander.  It is as if the heads together attain a kind of critical mass, unleashing forces qualitatively different from those of a single bust.

Their curiously symmetric forms look oriental and timeless; they are not obviously located within any one tradition.  Close up, they appear as wild curves and rills; the mouth and eyes act as foci of these whirlpools of flesh.  Where most sculpture is intent on showing us the bones and planes beneath, these heads are all quivering surface.  They also differ from other figurative art by their preoccupation with expression, which they explore obsessively: in comparison, conventional sculpture and painting seems almost hieratic in its stylised and limited modes.

It is this unique violence which makes the heads so disturbing: we have probably literally never come across such images before - unless it is in real life.  And there, we are spared the sight of the unnaturalness of the human face in extremis by the transitoriness of the effect.  Fifty or sixty times Messerschmidt rubs our noses and his characters' entire physiognomy - in the rude reality we squeamishly ignore.

Forced to this contemplation, we begin to realise how untrustworthy our faces are.  For many of these character heads, it is impossible - despite their traditional names - to decide whether they represent the ultimate of joy or sorrow: they remind us, therefore, how close the two may often lie.

But Messerschmidt's greatest gift to us is the sheer unexpectedness and inexplicability of his vision.  Without precedents or forewarning, we can come to it with a pristine receptiveness we have long lost for most other art.  His last works, whatever the reason for their creation, open up one of those rare green doors to a rich if disquieting new world.

(16.1.88)

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