Franz Xaver Messerschmidt
German, 1736–1783
The Vexed Man, After 1770
Alabaster
Messerschmidt explored the expressive potential of the human face in a series of sixty-nine “character heads,” including this grimacing bust. The artist had no intention of displaying these heads in public, having apparently sculpted them to ward off his own mental demons. The bust received its title after the artist’s death, and the precise emotion that Messerschmidt depicted in the concentrated muscular tension of the sitter’s face is still debated.
