ABSTRACT
Many commentators on Messerschmidt's Character Heads have remarked puzzlingly that they are relentlessly frontal in orientation and symmetrical in how they present the facial features. This lends the heads an architectonic quality that for some viewers contributes greatly to their strangeness. Messerschmidt draws attention to his manipulation of the formal language of art quite self-consciously; he wants his viewers to see it, to see how he uses the language of art to make a striking creation, and further wants viewers to recognize how sculpture repeatedly crosses the line between form and representation. Eighteenth-century sculptors routinely used wax modeling to plan their sculptures; it was a comparatively inexpensive medium in which to work and design elements could be perfected in it before making the final sculpture out of more precious materials. Messerschmidt carved the wood into the general shape he desired for the head and appears to have then overlaid a layer of wax onto it.
