Marc Quinn and Franz Xaver Messerschmidt: meeting in Vienna
Marc Quinn Emotional Detox II - Franz Xaver Messerschmidt Character Head No33Marc Quinn - Fear of Fear - 1994
From 24 February to 3 July 2022, the Belvedere in Vienna presents "Face to Face", an exhibition juxtaposing Marc Quinn's contemporary sculptures with the famous "character heads" of the Baroque sculptor Franz Xaver Messerschmidt.
Image: Marc Quinn, "Emotional Detox II", 1995 (© Marc Quinn Studio) and Franz Xaver Messerschmidt, "Character Head No.33", 1777/1783 (© Belvedere, Vienna). Image courtesy of Marc Quinn Studio ·· Marc Quinn, "Fear of Fear", 1994 Image courtesy of Marc Quinn studio
Created during the last years of the artist's life (between 1770 and 1783), Franz Xaver Messerschmidt's "character heads" are among the most original and enigmatic sculptures in Baroque sculpture. Sometimes regarded as satires on the society of his time, with which Messerschmidt was deeply disenchanted, several recent studies -mentioned by the Belvedere on the occasion of the exhibition- suggest that the artist may have suffered from dystonia and that the exaggerated expressions of his "characters" are a representation of his involuntary muscle spasms. In any case, the unusual expressiveness of these heads has made them among the most popular sculptural works today, both among the general public and among contemporary artists.
Among the contemporary artists who were fascinated by Messerschmidt's "characters" is the British artist Marc Quinn (London, b.1964), today best known for his large-scale sculptures, generally conceived for outdoor installation, such as his Sphinx, based on the supermodel Kate Moss, or his recent, vindictive and controversial A Surge of Power (Jen Reid) 2020. But in the early 1990s, Quinn created a series of eight sculptural self-portraits largely inspired by Messerschmidt's sculpture The Strong Smell, on display at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London.
This series, known as Emotional Detox, was created during a period when the artist was in the process of recovering from his addiction to alcohol, and reflects the effects of withdrawal on the artist's body and mind. The juxtaposition with Messerschmidt's works (which, as we have seen, are also a first-person testimony to the artist's physical difficulties) is therefore particularly enriching. The Belvedere, which has the largest collection of "character heads" by Franz Xaver Messerschmidt, seems an ideal place for this encounter.

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