On Nietzsche's Moustache

Not Vital: Nietzsche's Schnauz (1993)

Aluminium (70 x 140 x 40 cm)

Image via Galerie Nordenhake

 

'Thus the gentlest and most reasonable of men can, if he wears a large moustache, 

sit as it were in its shade and feel safe there ...' [1]

 

 

I. 

 

Understanding as he did the importance of first impressions, Nietzsche highly valued the protective and deceptive nature of his exuberantly styled facial hair. 

 

He even noted in one of his middle period books that a formidable moustache allows a gentle soul to mask their sensitive nature and be perceived as an "easily angered and occasionally violent" [2] military type and thus treated with more respect than is often shown to mild-mannered university professors. 

 

 

II.  

 

The style of 'tache adopted by Nietzsche as soon as hormones allowed, is known as a walrus moustache. It is characterised by thick, bushy whiskers that droop over the mouth and resemble the whiskers of the large marine mammal from which it takes its name. 

 

Nietzsche, of course, was not unusual in choosing to have a Schnurrbart of this type, as they were extremely popular among men in the latter half of the 19th century when he was doing his thing (revaluing values and so on).  

 

Soldiers, scientists, politicians, and poets - not just rogue German philosophers - favoured this rugged style regarded as a symbol of masculinity and, in Poland, a mark of nobility and traditionalism [3].     

 

 

III. 

 

Now, I have to confess, personally, I don't like this moustache - hate it, in fact.  

 

Nevertheless, I do like Nietzsche and I am interested at the moment in the work of the contemporary Swiss artist Not Vital who, in 1993, created a surreal aluminium sculpture titled Nietzsche's Schnauz ... 

 

Retrospectively asked about the piece in a conversation with the curator, critic and art historian Hans Ulrich Obrist - a longtime friend of the artist - Vital recalled:  

 

"When I first went to the Nietzsche-Haus in Sils Maria, what impressed me most about the death mask, drawings and photographs of Nietzsche, was this moustache that grew bigger throughout his life. In the end, you couldn't even see his mouth. That was fascinating: that this moustache would take over his face. So I made a sculpture of his moustache, and placed it in his bed. [4]

 

By isolating the facial hair, Vital's sculpture - part of a wider series exploring memory, identity, and the blurring of human and non-human forms - enables the moustache to assume a kind of object-autonomy. 

 

And, hearing Vital discuss how the 'tache appeared to take over Nietzsche's face, one is put in mind of the parasitoid entity (Manumala noxhydria) that attaches to the face of Kane (played by John Hurt) in Ridley Scott's Alien (1979).

 

Fortunately, the facehugging moustache didn't prove fatal to its host and, according to Nietzsche's own philosophy, whatever didn't kill him made him stronger ... [5] 

      

Notes

 

[1] Nietzsche, Daybreak, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Cambridge University Press, 1997), IV. 381, p. 171. 

 

[2] Ibid.

 

[3] Some readers may recall that Nietzsche often claimed descent from an aristocratic Polish family (although there seems to be no genealogical evidence available to support his claim). 

 

[4] Not Vital, in conversation with Hans Ulrich Obrist (14 April 2021). The transcript can be read on the Thaddaeus Ropac (London) website: click here. The interview also featured in Wallpaper and can be read on their website by clicking here.  

[5] See Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, 'Maxims and Arrows' (8). 

 

 

Readers who enjoyed this short post might like to check out an excellent essay on Nietzsche's moustache available on the website nietzschesbody.com. The site is administered by Robrecht and I'm guessing this is the independent Nietzsche scholar, translator, and cultural critic Robrecht Vandemeulebroecke (apologies to both parties if I'm mistaken). 

      What this essay does well is bring home the fact that Nietzsche knew his moustache was distinctive and would become iconic: "Though not exactly unique, Nietzsche's whiskers were uncommon enough in intellectual circles to become something of a trademark, a fact of which he was not unaware." 

 

Reflections on Not Vital's Self-Portrait as a Table (2025)

Not Vital: Self-portrait as a Table (2025) 

Marble 115 x 65 x 50 cm [1]

 

'The table as autonomous object is not merely the sum of its parts 

and the ear is not merely a passive cavity or vacuous opening ...' 

 

 

I. 

 

Sometimes, you go to a gallery for one artist and leave haunted by the work of another ...  

 

So it was I returned to Thaddaeus Ropac for the opening of a show by Liza Lou full of previously shared expectations [2] and, while her hyper-colourful fusion of glass beads and oil paint didn't disappoint, it was the concurrent exhibition by Swiss artist Not Vital [3] - bringing together a selection of sculptures with his latest series of painted self-portraits - that captured my curiosity. 

 

Specifically, it was his obsession with the human ear as a motif that I found intriguing ...    

 

 

II.

 

As the title of his exhibition indicates, Vital doesn't want people to merely look at his work, but listen also to what it is telling us about the art of representation and the "intersections between painting, sculpture and architecture" [4]. 

 

And in order to encourage us to attend with our ears rather than just view with our eyes, it's the former that feature prominently on several of his works; playfully protruding from canvases or, in the case of his Self-portrait as a Table (2025), adorning a polished marble surface.   

 

As a Deleuzian philosopher and forniphile who has an interest in the becoming-object of the human being, I naturally found this piece irresistible. 

 

It isn't just art as furniture (or vice versa), but a zone of indiscernibility; i.e., a space wherein boundaries dissolve, differences blur, and transformative connections proliferate. Just as the artist becomes table, the table starts to sprout ears and become a new type of listening device.  

 

 

III. 

 

The English physicist A. S. Eddington famously argued there were two types of table: the tangible everyday object that we eat our dinner off; and the scientific or quantum table that is understood conceptually in terms of fast-moving atoms and empty spaces [5].  

 

But Not Vital presents a third table; the table we discover in art and which excites the interest of object-oriented ontologists like Graham Harman; the table that is neither reduced downward to invisible particles, nor upward to a series of properties, effects, and functions [6]. 

This table we encounter in art lies somewhere between (and beyond) these two. Picasso envisioned it from multiple simultaneous perspectives [7] and Vital - amusingly - attaches ears to it. The key thing, however, is this: great artists aren't content to pull up a chair at just any old table; they want one that stands in the mytho-poetic fourth dimension (i.e., the realm of true relatedness between all things and into which every straight line curves) [8]. 

 

 

IV. 

 

Finally, I'd like to say something about the ears sticking out from the surface of Vital's marble table, forming "irrational, dreamlike anatomies" [9] and prompting us to wonder why it is that since a table already possesses legs, it shouldn't also one day grow lugs ...  

There's something rather touching about the thought of old-fashioned (analogue) objects evolving the Momo-like ability to listen with genuine, time-giving sympathy and not merely the artificial intelligence of Alexa.

 

We desperately need a new ethics of listening, so that we might learn once more to acknowledge (and liberate) the Other in their otherness. It's poignant to imagine that Vital's table doesn't only encourage us to attend to it, but is attentive to us and prepared to lend an ear.   

 

Although, having said that, there's always the danger that a table with ears open to every sound and sigh might eventually become monstrous ... 

Notes

 

[1] This work by Not Vital is included in the exhibition Listening + Looking (10 April - 23 May 2026), at Thaddaeus Ropac (London): click here for details. 

 

[2] See the post dated 19 March that I published in anticipation of Lou's FAQ exhibition which is also showing at Thaddaeus Ropac (London) from 10 April until 23 May 2026: click here.

 

[3] A comprehensive biography and CV for Not Vital is available on the Thaddaeus Ropac website: click here.  

      In brief, he was born in Switzerland in 1948, but has spent much of his adult life travelling and living in foreign countries including China, Brazil, and the USA and his work is inspired by his nomadic lifestyle. Vital studied visual arts in Paris from 1968–71 and then moved to New York in 1974, where he began his artistic career: 

      "Exploring the boundaries between abstract and figurative forms, his work is marked by a particularly intimate relationship with materials, including plaster, steel, marble, ceramic and organic matter. [...] The physicality of his approach, combined with an innate understanding of his chosen materials' essential properties, results in visually challenging works that are often destabilising in their striking scale and presence."

 

[4] This from p. 1 of the Thaddaeus Ropac press release for Listening + Looking - click here. One assumes it was written by Nina Sandhaus (Head of Press). 

[5] Eddington proposed his two table theory in his Gifford Lectures delivered at the University of Edinburgh in Jan-March 1927. These lectures formed the basis of his seminal text The Nature of the Physical World (Cambridge University Press, 1929). See the Introduction, pp. xi-xix. 

      Readers who are interested, can find this work published online as a Project Gutenberg ebook (2013): click here.  

 

[6] See Graham Harman, The Third Table / Der Dritte Tisch, Number 085 in the dOCUMENTA (13) series '100 Notes - 100 Thoughts / 100 Notizen - 100 Gedanken', (Hatje Cantz, 2012). See my synopsis and critique of Harman's essay published on Torpedo the Ark (10 Mar 2018): click here.  

[7] I'm referring here of course to Picasso's 1919 collage La table. Created in a Cubist manner, the work attempted to represent the object on a two-dimensional canvas from all sides at once, by breaking it down into geometric components: click here. 

 

[8] See D. H. Lawrence writing in 'Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine', in Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine and Other Essays, ed. Michael Herbert (Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. 347-363. 

 

[9] Thaddaeus Ropac press release for Listening + Looking, p. 2.