Madness Is Still Avant-garde

Franz Xaver Messerschmidt is one of the most controversial sculptor in the eighteen century.The weird sculpture so called “character heads” which created during the last couples years of his life aroused a widen wave among art field.Moreover,there are some art theorists regarded these heads as the beginning of modern art.These group of sculptures not only different from the Baroque style which was dominant in the eighteen century but also the Neoclassical style which emerging in that period.Thus,we can not evaluate these works by putting them into a general development of the art history.Since the time that these works created coincide with the time that the artist was suspected of suffering from mental illness,it has caused people to debate whether his mental abnormality affect his creation.Among these various discussions,the confrontation between the psychoanalyst Ernst Kris and the art historian Rudolf Wittkower is the most prominent.This confrontation not only reflects that the different opinions about the special case between the two theorists,it also shows the tension between the psychological analysis method and the traditional art historical research methods.Kris analyzed the psychological causes of these works in details,that is,the artist uses image magic to resist the attack of schizophrenia and tries to recover a kind of normal communication with outside.Based on this inference,he believes that the “character heads” should be regarded as the symptom of schizophrenia of the artist;As a traditional art historian,However,Wittkower refutes Kris in the view of art history and culture history.he believes that the “character heads” is a kind of special expression of the artist's personality.This article attempts to demonstrate that the rationality of Kris' s view by expounding Wittkower's criticism for Kris' s view and appearing the foresight of this criticism contained in Kris' s earlier argument,and proving that the “character heads” are regarded as a kind of personal expression or the beginning of avant-garde art is the result of the projection of modern art conception;on the other hand,through Kris' psychological insights about this case,we'll try to discuss the key difference between madness and the avant-garde in art——whether the psychological regression represented by image magic is controlled by the “ego” and the degree of socialization and rationalization of their creation.