Franz Xaver Messerschmidt was a German-Austrian sculptor most famous for his ‘character heads’, or one could call them a series of studies of mental stress and anguish. I don’t remember how I stumbled onto his work, but it impressed and shocked  me immediately. It was like seeing photo stills from a disturbing dream. He struck me as contemporary to Otto Dix or George Grosz or any number of early 20th century expressionists reflecting on a world being transformed by the industrial revolution, social upheaval or world wars.

But he actually belonged to another age entirely and can be seen in the same light as Vincent Van Gogh, Hieronymus Bosch and Francisco Goya. A small group of pre-modern ‘modernists’ who didn’t have a problem with openly depicting pain, anguish, stress, disease, death, war and madness in an era when most art was still sanctioned and commisioned by the state, royalty, religious institutions or the upper classes. It’s work we remember for its emotional or psychological impact rather than its technical finesse.

As such, Messerschmidt’s work still has a very contemporary feel to it. All you have to do is get stuck in a traffic jam, go to work or some kind of a demonstration and you will see at least one expression reminiscent of these sculptures. Or consider the figures as depictions of an internal anguish or struggle occasionally sedated by pills, television or ‘vacations’ (of the mind).  After all, considering the rate of change and speed of life today, we could call our age ‘the age of stress’ and these nightmarish grimaces perfectly reflect that.