Monday 6 December 2010

Gauguin self-portraits


Following on from the sculptured heads by Franz Messerschmidt, for which he used his own face as a template, I thought I'd run a little series on self-portraits.

Having been to see the big Gauguin exhibition at Tate Modern last month (which incidentally convinced me that Van Gogh was the superior painter) I'll begin with Gauguin's. I'm sure that we're all familiar with his more famous Polynesian works so I think a look at his self-portraits would be a good place to start.

Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin was born in Paris 7 June 1848 and is considered one of the leading painters of the Post-Impressionist period. He died of syphilis at the age of 54 on 8 May 1903 at Atuona, Hiva ‘Oa, Marquesas Islands, French Polynesia. The last portrait shown here was the last one he painted, in 1903.


























Friday 3 December 2010

Franz Messerschmidt sculptures

Watched BBC 4's new series presented by Art Historian Andrew Graham-Dixon "The Art of Germany" the other night. He covered the Gothic period in the first episode, and had a look at the remarkable sculptures of Franz Xaver Messerschmidt (1736-1783). We only saw a few of them on the programme so I thought I'd post a few more of them.

Messerschmidt was German-Austrian, and sculpted the heads in 1770-72. At this time he suffered from delusions and hallucinations, or a “confusion in the head” as his employer, the Viennese Academy of Fine Arts, described it. In 1774, Messerschmidt was expelled from the academy.


In 1781, Messerschmidt stated that the heads had been created as a record of his facial expressions on pinching himself to alleviate the pain of an illness he suffered, known now to be Crohn’s Disease. He intended to sculpt the 64 “canonical grimaces” of the human face using his own as a template.


Messerschmidt also claimed that he was physically tortured by “the Spirit of Proportion”, an ancient being who guarded the knowledge of harmony and who was angered by Messerschmidt’s disharmonius work. Personally, I think they're tremendous works, and wouldn't look at all out of place in an exhibition of contemporary work today.