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Dystonia in Art: The Impact of Psychiatric and Neurological Disease on the Work of the Sculptor F. X. Messerschmidt

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Dystonia and Dystonic Syndromes

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Abstract

The author poses a hypothesis which strives to interpret the bizarre late work (character heads) of the Austrian sculptor F. X. Messerschmidt (1736–1783). After a promising career at the court of the Empress Maria Theresa, his life took a dramatic downturn in his 33rd year. He settled in Pressburg (Bratislava) where he lived until his death at the age of 47 (1783). Most of his time there he dedicated to the creation of busts with grotesque expressions, whose sense has remained a puzzle for art historians up to now. The author calls attention to a probable occurrence of a psychiatric and neurological disease. The expressions of the statues resemble facial dystonia. The author at the same time draws attention to a conviction (proven by documentation to have been held by Messerschmidt) that it is possible to have control of somebody by imposing certain features upon his face. The author coins a hypothesis that Messerschmidt himself suffered from dystonia as a symptom of his schizophrenia. The involuntary movements of his face he interpreted as being caused by ghosts who tried to gain control over him by imposing upon him the same facial features as they themselves possessed. The exact record of his own dystonia as a proportion of the “ghosts” represented the sculptor’s defence against them. Messerschmidt’s work thus would not have been only an artistic act but also a way of struggling with his own hallucinations and delusions. The extrapyramidal manifestations featuring in the work would explain why all attempts to adequately interpret the expressions he gave to his sculptures have so far failed.

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Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Prof. Maria Pötzl-Malikova for the valuable comments from an art historian’s point of view and for the help with procuring otherwise inaccessible documents. I would further like to thank Dr. Evzen Nespor for preparing the English version of the text and Melanie Steynberg BA. B.Ed for revising the final version. The author also gratefully acknowledges the helpful comments and suggestions of the reviewers, which have significantly improved the presentation.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. National Psychiatric Hospital Bohnice, Prague, Czech Republic

    Michal Maršálek

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  1. Michal Maršálek
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Correspondence to Michal Maršálek .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Neurology, Palacky University Medical School University Hospital Olomouc, Olomouc, Czech Republic

    Petr Kanovsky

  2. Sobell Department of Motor Neuroscience and Movement Disorders, University College London Institute of Neurology, London, United Kingdom

    Kailash P. Bhatia

  3. Department of Neurology and Psychiatry, The Royal and Pontifical University of Santo Tomas, Manila, Philippines

    Raymond L. Rosales

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Maršálek, M. (2015). Dystonia in Art: The Impact of Psychiatric and Neurological Disease on the Work of the Sculptor F. X. Messerschmidt. In: Kanovsky, P., Bhatia, K., Rosales, R. (eds) Dystonia and Dystonic Syndromes. Springer, Vienna. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-7091-1516-9_15

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-7091-1516-9_15

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Vienna

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-7091-1515-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-7091-1516-9

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