'In 1781, the scholar Friedrich Nicolai, luckier and more inquisitive than most, was permitted to examine the sculptor Franz Xaver Messerschmidt's small workshop on the bank of the Danube, the entire furniture of which consisted of a bed, a flute, a tobacco-pipe, a water pitcher, an old Italian book about human proportions and the drawing of an armless Egyptian statue. Messerschmidt, once assistant professor of sculpture at the Imperial Academy of Vienna, now necromancer and recluse, was in his forty-fifth year.
'Since the onset of mental illness in 1771, Messerschmidt had neglected his work as a portraitist, though he still received and accepted occasional commissions, and had concentrated his great industry on the production of a series of heads of very strange aspect. Although he still received and accepted occasional commissions, he had concentrated his great industry on the production of a series of heads of very strange aspect.
'Nicolai found him busy with the sixty-first of these heads. He observed that it, like all the rest, was a self-portrait. The sculptor worked in front of a mirror. Pinching himself from time to time under the lowest right rib, he would cut a terrifying grimace scrutinise his face in the mirror, sculpt, and after an interval of about half a minute repeat his grimace with remarkable precision.
'When the courteous Nicolai asked him to explain his method, Messerschmidt, somewhat hesitatingly, gave him a confused account, the gist of which can be summed up as follows: although he had lived chastely since his youth, Messerschmidt was often visited by ghosts who caused him pains in the abdomen and thighs. Fortunately, he had managed to devise a system for warding off these tormentors.
'This system was based on knowledge of universal proportions, learned through the study of the Egyptian Hermes Trismegistos—of whose armless statue he always kept a drawing about him. His knowledge of proportion gave Messerschmidt the power to resist the spirits. For all things have their proper proportion, and all effects come from a sufficient cause; whoever can reproduce in himself the proportions of another being should be able to produce effects equal to the effects of the other.
'All this, in Messerschmidt’s opinion, amounted to a momentous discovery which, not surprisingly, had aroused the envy of the Spirit of Proportion, the chief of his ghostly persecutors. Undaunted by the pains which the spirit inflicted on him, he resolved to delve deeper into the mystery of proportion, in order to be victorious in this contest. By observing the pains which he felt in his lower body as he worked on the faces of his busts, he came to the conclusion that if he pinched himself in different parts of the body and accompanied this with grimaces which bore the exact Egyptian proportion to the pinch, he would reach perfection in the matter of proportion. Pleased with his system, Messerschmidt resolved to pass it on to posterity by means of his sculpted heads, of which he planned to execute sixty-four, since there were sixty-four canonical grimaces.
'The third and largest group of heads, comprising 54 busts at the time of Nicolai’s visit, consisted of the convulsively grimacing heads which are still the best known of the series. All seemed to be self-portraits. Nicolai noticed that in many of them the mouths were tightly shut and the lips drawn in so as to form a thin line. Messerschmidt explained this curious feature by pointing out that men should not show the red of their lips, since animals never showed theirs—and animals, as he reminded his visitor, were superior to men in their perception of the hidden aspects of nature.
'Messerschmidt was neither in tune with his time, nor entirely alienated from it. His artistic personality was injured, but not debilitated, by sickness; the conflict within him irritated his imagination and concentrated his energies: it was the fortunate flaw which raised his later above his earlier works and above those of his more ordinary contemporaries. Messerschmidt was able to combine representation with rigid stylisation, expression with abstract pattern, and preserve, at the same time, both the anatomical structure and the character of portrait. To bring these divergent elements into harmony was the work of a powerful artistic intelligence.' -- Lorenz Eitner, The Grand Eccentrics
Franz Xaver Messerschmidt 'Self-Portrait'
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Media
Hakan Topal 'Franz Xaver Messerschmidt', a Documentary
Animation
Marino Vagliano 'F-X. Messerschmidt' (1991)
Klaus Karlbauer 'Sei ein Sternspritzer'
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Further
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Show
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p.s. Hey. So, it's cleaning/exile day here at the Recollets which, as usual, means the p.s. will be speedy-ish and may show up kind of late depending on when the crew decides to throw me out. Otherwise, ... ** David Ehrenstein, Thank you, sir. Oh, since I'm behind on email, as pretty much always, let me tell you now that the wonderful thing you sent me will be appearing here on the blog on this coming Saturday. Thank you again, and even more kindly. ** Nick, Hey, Nick! Thanks for being here. Sure, Fifty Foot Hose and Os Mutantes are awesome. Kind of late-psychedelic, proto-prog explorers of the highest order. You good? ** Pilgarlic, Yeah, serial killer has become a pretty catch-all and fuzzily bordered term. Genres always seem to do that. Everyone seems to want their favorite genre to be as big as possible. I bet 'Rock' was a fairly small genre at one point. Serial seems to have vagued out and come to mean multiple in that context. I think 'Love Machine' was Atomic Rooster's sell-out moment, if memory serves. Very cool that you met Bill Payne. I don't know if you read Mojo, but they had a great, long article about Lowell George a few issues ago. ** James Greer, Greerster! Imagining Mr. Pollard being able to negotiate a computer, see that post, and post a laudatory comment just about killed me and revealed the manner in which I would most like to die, man. So, uh, thanks? I managed to get your friend request somehow. I'm accepting your kind offer today. Everyone, James Greer, the human-shaped epitome of awesomeness, has rejoined Facebook. Go find and Friend him, you fellow FB-housed Greeromaniacs. I so want to read what you write about 'The Pale King'. Casey, if you're there, Greer + 'TPK' = whoa, imho. ** MANCY, Hey, man. Glad you liked the post. Family is one of my favorite bands, so, yeah, highly recommended. At this point, it's probably best and easiest to start with a compilation. I would go with 'Old Songs, New Songs', which is the best and most comprehensive one. It goes for about $25, generally, but it's 4 discs and very worth it, and you're not going to pay much less for the individual albums. Sucks about not getting to France, but, yeah, money, I hear you. I'll cross my fingers re: a miracle. ** Sypha, Cool that you liked it. I was thinking you might. On getting into Magma, TDFG's recommendation totally nailed it. I haven't read 'Dahlgren'. It's a real hole in my reading experience, and I've always intended to. Between my basic non-interest in the fantasy/sci-fi genre when it comes to fiction and the novel's huge length, I've always put it off, but pretty much everyone whose opinion I respect loves it. 'Franny & Zooey' I have read, and it's fantastic in my opinion. ** Steevee, Those weren't footnotes, just a continuation. I ran out of time and energy at a certain point when I was making that post. I was going to do proper squibs on each of the entries originally. Thanks for the tip on Resurrection. Sounds interesting. I'll check them out. And bad/sad news about the no-go on the Herzog interview. You're probably right that you'll get another chance since he and his work are very around of late. ** Davidpeak, Hi, David! It's a pleasure, and, of course, I'm really chuffed that you liked the post. Oh, that was a great gift! Thank you a lot. Let me share it. Everyone, courtesy of commenter and amazing author David Peak, here's a link to the great Robert Wyatt's tune 'Little Red Robin Hit the Road' from the sublime LP 'Rock Bottom'. Enjoy.. Yeah, thanks a ton, David. What's going on with you and yours? ** Tender Prey, Hey, Marc. Oh, there were tons of omissions from the post. Those selected bands were just kind of a random sampling. I guess Goblin are prog, yeah, although I weirdly have never lumped in that category. No, I haven't done a post specific to Post-Rock as a genre, actually. That's a great idea. I'll get on that and make something nice or try. How are you, man? ** Alan, Hi. I second you. Paul/Bill, I second Alan: your collab piece on LIES/ISLE is gorgeous! ** Christopher/ Mark, Yes, it makes sense that you would have known the Henry Cow guys to some degree. HC was probably the brainiest of the so-called prog units and a big fave of mine. They were really interesting artists to a one, many of them still making really good work now. ** Allesfliesst, I wish I could remember the name of the actual piece I saw. Maybe it was an adaptation of a existing, known work. I would imagine that if there are books covering their work with images, it will be among them since it was obviously very interesting visually. I was into Neue Slowenisch Kunst too. The reason I got to see Red Pilot was because there was a big NSK festival in Amsterdam when I was living there, and I got to hang out with some of them a bit, and they invited me to come visit them and maybe collaborate, but then what happened to Yugoslavia happened. IRWIN, the visual art group/ component of NSK did really striking work as well. Good luck with the search. Let me know what you find. ** The Dreadful Flying Glove, I was hoping it would seem a treat. Yeah, those first three or four Peter Gabriel albums are really something. I kind of stopped following him when he went huge and poppier in the 80s. Gong were trippy fun, yeah. I saw them play once. Trippy/messy. I should go re-investigate Crimson 'cos it's been a long time, and, again, I stopped paying attention at a certain point just after 'Red', I think. I got to see them on their first US tour at the tiny Whisky-A-Go-Go when they were still playing while sitting on chairs and wearing hoods over their heads. I only know a few songs of the Alex Harvey band, strangely. Hm. I'll check them out. Rick Wakeman has given really funny, excoriating, self-excoriating interviews about the prog days that I almost included in the post. Excellent tip on Magma to Sypha, as I said. ** Paul Curran, I wouldn't mind having whatever Lemmy took or still takes. Or select things. He may be the most shockingly still in tact 70-something guy I've ever seen. Talk about illogic. ** Math, Hey. Yeah, I see. Great. And awesome that you're posting the additions and permutations. I'll read them properly as soon as I'm off-blog. Everyone, Math has written/ generated new and continuing works re: her piece in the workshop last weekend. Check them out. Here's (2) Adapter [a selection process], and here's (3) Ranger [leisure], just for example. ** Jonny Liron, Hi there, Jonny! Great to see you, man! Yeah, really sad about Paul Violi. A really lovely, lovely poet. And such an incredibly nice man. When I was a young poet, and I went to NYC hoping to meet my great heroes of the time -- roughly the so-called 'Second Generation New York School Poets', Violi among them -- he was by far the nicest and kindest of them to the wide-eyed, starstruck me. I haven't seen that new La Bruce film yet. I don't think it has played here, or, if it did, it probably played in some festival I missed. They showed the Christophe Honore film I'm in? Cool. Anyway, that festival sounds to have been terrific. You'll be here in June? Fantastic! I should be here, I'm pretty sure. Is the British Modern Poetry symposium open to the public? Anyway, I want to hang out for sure. John Wieners is one of my very favorite poets ever and one of my biggest influences as a poet. So, yes, I'm hugely into him. Have you read him? What do you think? ** James, Hi, James. I didn't know or read that yesterday was the anniversary of Cobain's death, strange. So, no, I don't think the occasion was marked here, although, of course, I only saw a tiny fraction of everything French yesterday. It is being noted over here that it's ten years this month since Joey Ramone died. Great that you've posted thoughts on DFW and 'TPK'. I'll definitely go over and read that when I'm done here. Everyone, here's the fine writer and d.l. James: 'I posted a few thoughts about David Foster Wallace on my blog last Sunday night, basically in support of The Pale King, and stating how all the DFW haters out there need to back off. I think it is super awesome that a new DFW novel will be dropped on us in less than two weeks' time. (You) can check out my DFW-friendly post here. Please do, obviously, folks. I'm a huge lover of DFW's work too, as I'm sure you know, and I'm certainly excited to read 'TPK'. It seems to have been very edited, which makes me a bit nervous, and which I intend to keep in mind, but still. ** Inthemostpeculiarway, Hi, pal. Yeah, mondo films a la 'Mondo Cane' or, even more, a la 'Mondo Trasho'. The book looks real good. I really wish my French was a lot better. Love covers non-fashion stuff, yeah. Beth Ditto is on the current cover, although, since she models for Gaultier, I guess that makes sense. Cool culture stuff is their thing, basically, I think. This is the magazine's website, if you want to see what it's like. I agree with you about the latter, falling off part of 'Two Girls Fat and Thin'. 'Veronica' is better, I think, but, yeah, I do think the short story is Mary's most natural form and where her work really shines. I don't know Cinemageddon. Can anyone join it? 'Phantom of the Mall', yikes, but it does fun in that particular way. The thing with the birds and trees was swoony beautiful, man. Another 'transfer that to the novel' moment maybe? My day: I mostly stayed home and caught up on stuff as best I could. Like some emails and work I need to do and some fiction experimenting and blog construction since I'm way behind on the blog due to my vacation. Yury went back to work for the first time, and I guess it went okay 'cos he came home a little tipsy from some champagne that his fellow employees uncorked to welcome him back. My editor at HP sent me an image of the cover of the galley of 'The Marbled Swarm' to sign off on, and I'm going to do that today. And he sent me some catalog copy on the book to look over and agree to or improve, and I'll do that today too. I went out and bought some food, but not as much as I should have since I felt lazy or something. It was very spring-like and beautiful out, though. Kiddiepunk, Oscar, and I went to eat an early dinner at Hard Rock Cafe. I had my usual: nachos, veggieburger, iced tea. They had burgers and some kind of bitter lime drink. We ate, talked, and watched the incessant music videos on the hundreds of screens. Most were the typical rock oldies fare, good (AC/DC) and bad (Scorpions). They did play the video for Jesus and Mary Chain's 'Happy When It Rains', which was exciting, and a good video for a Broken Bells song starring that actress from 'Mad Men' and the video for Alice in Chain's 'Check My Brain', which is one of my favorite of theirs. So, it wasn't too bad all in all. Then we walked home 'cos it was so nice out. I bought bottled water on the way, and they bought Amaretto. We discussed our intention to go see the Odile Redon retrospective at the Grand Palais and the upcoming Glenn Branca/ Thurston Moore/ Half Japanese gig at the Sonic Villette Festival. After I got home, I ... hm, did more of what I'd been doing all day, I think, until I felt too sleepy to do that anymore, and then, well, you know, went to sleep and all that. Now it's Wednesday, and you first. ** Misanthrope, Stone Cold too? This is getting way-back-machine weird. If the WWE was really cool, and if he wasn't dead, they'd bring back George 'the Animal' Steel. Congrats on the check, man. And on the NYC trip, but, yeah, get your brakes fixed first. And if you can get overseas, well, I'll be whistling Dixie. Literally. That might be a good excuse for you not to come. ** Killer Luka, Well, wow, hi there, KL. Missed you, don't you know. I figured you were all working and showing hard vis a vis your work, and I've caught some of your updates on Facebook here and there. Obviously, I wish I could be in NYC for your opening and show. Who knows, maybe I can. Maybe I can pull off some kind of traveling-related coup. I did peruse your photos of your muse. I thought him most fetching and muse-like. He reminds me a little of Giton in Fellini's 'Satyricon', which is a compliment 'cos I am a Giton fan. Good to see you, pal, I mean, obviously. I'll hope that here can be wedged into your life and busy schedule whenever possible. ** Alter Clef Records, Hi, Nick! Well, sure, yeah, I know Robert Wyatt's solo work. He's a god. Amazing that you got to talk to him. That's really a wowzer fact. That Bjork thing is interesting. New and interesting news. Hm. I wonder about the Wilson/Abramovich piece. I'm wary 'cos of her not because of him. He's a god. But I'll see it in a heartbeat if I can. Foreward/prologue, me ... thanks! It'll depend on on the when side of things. I'm about to hunker down on the text for the new Gisele piece. But I think I can. I hope so. I'll ask Michael about the timing. Donald Cammell ... David Ehrenstein is the go-to guy on Cammell. David Ehrenstein, Nick Hudson wants to 'know something' about Donald Cammell. Can you tell him something? Thanks!. ** I think we're done. Do you guys know Messerschmidt's heads? If not, check them out. They're your whatever for the day. Take care. See you tomorrow.
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