Monday, December 13, 2010

It's all in the Head

The Neue Galerie in New York currently has a wonderful exhibition of twenty busts by the 18th century sculptor Franz Xaver Messerschmidt (1736–1783). The article "It's all in the Head" by 
Willibald  Sauerländer  in the New York Review both places Messerschmidt's work in its historical context [to the extent that such strange and original work can be placed] and offers a well placed jab at the psychoanalytic reductionism that presumed  [and perhaps still presumes] to explain everything.