Gottfried Helnwein and the comic culture
x_cy...@hotmail.com
about Gottfried Helnwein and his involvement with the comic culture
(especially Donald Duck, Disney and Carl Barks):
Helnwein talks with Carl Barks
July 11th 1992, Oregon
Helnwein: How would you like the idea of building an actual Duckburg
one day?
Barks: Who can tell what Duckburg really looks like?
Helnwein: If one studies your work carefully, there are a lot of
indications. The money bin for example.
Barks: Yeah, the money bin is probably the outstanding building in
Duckburg. But I remember one in which the opening panel was a picture
of the ducks up on top of a sky-scraper, looking down onto a big busy
city with tall,mighty buildings, a wide river and steamboats.
Helnwein: I remember, yes.
Barks: But that wouldn't be the Duckburg that people should remember.
It would have to be a smaller Duckburg, with Daisy's and Donald's
house in it and a few blocks further, Gladstone Gander's home; and
naturally there would have to be Gyro Gearloose's workshop.
Helnwein: With all his absurd inventions, machines and robots. . .
Barks: And then up on the hill -- the gigantic money bin...
Helnwein: On one side the Beagle Boys would be drilling a hole into
the exterior walls where the money would roll out. And inside the
money bin everything would be guarded by traps these old canons, for
example, that pop out of the ground. I would construct them in such a
way that they would all function as you walk in.
Barks: oh yeah, one could have a lot of fun with such a money bin.
Helnwein: Since my childhood, I have dreamed of being allowed to
wallow in Uncle Scrooge's coins.
Barks: In Germany they are still printing a lot of these duck stories,
aren't they?
Helnwein: Yes, I think Germany is the greatest market for Donald Duck
comics worldwide. There you'll also find the most fantastic fans.
Have you ever heard of the Donaldists?
Barks: The Donaldists?
Helnwein: It is an association. Or better, an order, which sees itself
as the keeper of the grail of the eternal and pure spirit of Donald.
They believe that Duckburg actually exists.
for the full interview, go to:
http://www.helnweincomic.homestead.com/index4.html
here is the german version of the interview:
http://helnwein-info.tripod.com/gottfried-helnwein/
ZeitMagazin, Hamburg
Essay by Gottfried Helnwein
MEMORIES OF DUCKBURG
English translation of "Erinnerungen an Entenhausen" ("Micky Maus
unter dem Roten Stern")
Opening one of these comic books felt like seeing the daylight again
for someone who had been trapped underground by a mine-disaster for
many days. I blinked carefully because my eyes hadn't gotten used to
the glistening sun of Duckburg yet, and I greedily sucked the fresh
breeze into my dusty lungs that came drifting over from Uncle
Scrooge's money bin.
I was back home again, in a decent world where one could get flattened
by steam-rollers and run through by bullets without serious harm. A
world in which the people still look proper, with yellow beaks or
black knobs instead of noses. And it was here that I met the man who
would forever change my life - a man who, as the Austrian poet H.C.
Artmann put it, is the only person today that has something worth
telling us - Donald Duck.
for the full essay, go to:
http://www.helnwein.com/texte/international_texts/artikel_398.html
here is the german version:
http://www.helnwein.com/texte/international_texts/artikel_191.html
Gottfried Helnwein organized the first museum retrospective exhibition
of the works of the Great Comic Artist CARL BARKS.
1994 - 1997
Carl Barks - retrospective
UND DIE ENTE IST MENSCH GEWORDEN
The Show "Die Ente ist Mensch geworden - das zeichnerische Werk von
Carl Barks" consisted of more than 400 original art works, 290 from
the collection of Gottfried Helnwein.
http://www.helnwein.com/news/calendar/artikel_95.html
Roy Disney about Helnwein's Carl Barks retrospective
VORWORT BY ROY DISNEY
Wir sind Gottfried Helnwein zu grossem Dank verpflichtet, dass er die
erste bedeutende Ausstellung von Carl Barks' Kunstwerken und den damit
verbundenen Katalog ermöglicht hat. Gottfried Helnwein, selbst ein
anerkannter Künstler, hat der Kunstwelt mit diesem Projekt einen
grossen Dienst erwiesen, indem er über 300 Arbeiten des Künstlers
für
dieses wirklich bedeutsame Ereignis zusammengestellt hat.
German Donald Duck Comic: Duckburg Citizens praise Helnwein
Walt Disney's Micky Maus, Ehapa Verlag, Stuttgart
DIE PANZERKNACKER
Ein schlapper Fall
"Die neue Ausstellung von Gottfried Helnwein soll ja phaenomenal sein,
die Kritiker ueberschlagen sich fast."
"Hab' davon gehört ! Werd' ich mir bei Gelegenheit ansehen müssen.
Ist ja Pflicht!"
click here to see the comic strip:
http://www.helnwein.de/presse/deutsche_presse/artikel_110.html
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Heather Whitmore Jain
Curatorial Associate, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
THE DARKER SIDE OF PLAYLAND, CHILDHOOD IMAGERY FROM THE LOGAN
COLLECTION
Helnwein's "Mickey I" at the SFMOMA
(excerpt) Other works in the exhibition present the dark side of
cartoon characters. The prevailing narrative structure of many
cartoons is a cycle of one's character's unrelenting attacks on
another. Yet the violence of these scenarios is subverted and humor
achieved by the lack of any permanent injury to the victim and the
gleeful nonchalance of the adversary even during the most aggressive
assault. Static representations of wounded or menacing cartoon
characters can expose the violence and eliminate the humorous punch
line. In Gottfried Helnwein's painting Mickey (plate 24), Mickey
Mouse's physical features, which usually contribute to his appeal
become a thin veneer of looming attack. Blown up to a monster scale
and rendered in an austere gray palette, Mickey's smile is deceptive.
go here for full text and to see the painting:
http://www.helnwein.de/texte/international_texts/artikel_109.html
THE MICKEY MOUSE CLUB
James Montgomery
Surface Magazine (September/October 2003)
Shock-rocker Marilyn Manson has worn many hats atop his eternally pale
dome -including but not limited to self-mutilating Goth monster, media
bogeyman, and glammed-up asexual space creature. So it should come as
no surprise that for his latest album, The Golden Age of the
Grotesque, he's changed yet again-this time into a leering, ghoulish
version of Mickey Mouse.
The transformation is the result of Manson's yearlong collaboration
with Austrian artists (and fellow burr in conservative America's
saddle) Gottfried Helnwein.
"Many things in Manson's mind are very similar to things in mine,"
Helnwein says.
"He's an icon that everyone on the planet would know. He's become a
corporate identity. You look at Manson as Mickey Mouse, and it's the
American dream turned into a nightmare."
go here for full article and pictures:
http://www.helnwein-music.com/article1401.html
Disney and Dada
omega19x.tripod.com, August 2003
Blending Art and Music:
With the The Golden Age of Grotesque, Manson has attempted something
not seen since Disney's unusual masterwork, Fantasia. Fantasia, the
collaboration between Walt Disney and Leopold Stokowski, was Disney's
first attempt to combine low art (his animation) with high art
(classical music).
Manson's collaboration with world renown artist Gottfried Helnwein can
be viewed in the same way: a combination of low art (rock music) with
high art (painting). Manson was well aware of this, as he mentioned to
NY Rock, "We grew up with the idea that entertainment is some lesser
form of art, less valuable, less sincere, less worthy of our
attention. I don't agree with it at all."
go here for full article and pictures:
http://www.helnwein-photography.com/article1379.html
University Press of Jackson, Missisippi
Donald Ault, Editor
CARL BARKS - CONVERSATIONS
Helnwein talks with Carl Barks, Oregon, June, 11, 1992
Disney artist Carl Barks (1901-2000) created one of Walt Disney's most
famous characters, Scrooge McDuck. Barks also produced more than 500
comic book stories. His work is ranked among the most widely
circulated, best-loved, and most influential of all comic book art.
Although the images he created are known virtually everywhere, Barks
was an isolated storyteller, living in the desert of California and
preferring to labor without public fanfare during most of his career.
The influence of Barks's work on such filmmakers as George Lucas and
Steven Spielberg and on such artists as Gottfried Helnwein has
extended Barks's significance far beyond the boundaries of comics.
go here for the full text:
http://www.helnwein.com/kuenstler/bibliografie/artikel_1369.html
www.eclectica.org
Donald Ault, University Press of Mississippi
Kevin McGowin
review
CARL BARKS: CONVERSATIONS
Helnwein talks with Carl Barks
For me, the real highpoint of Conversations is the 1992 interview with
Gottfried Helnwein, the Austrian-born creative genius whom Donald Ault
has justly called "One of the greatest conceptual artists of the past
hundred years."
His interview engages Barks in a spirit of imagination and play, and
Barks responds to it: What if there were a real Duckworld? What would
its layout be?
If anyone can take this idea into the 21st century in current
available media, it's Helnwein, whose surreal Duck portraits reveal a
dark undercurrent probably always present to one degree or other in
Barks's own work-Helnwein's ducks are surreal, haunting, yet
strangely
funny at the same time. A parody of the dark side of the comic, the
work reminds one of Chris von Allsburg, WeeGee, Jim Jarmusch, David
Lynch, others. And this is just where the influence is most obvious,
in paintings of Donald Duck.
go here for full text and pictures:
http://www.helnwein.com/presse/local_press/artikel_1358.html
The University of Arizona Museum of Art
Tucson
COMIC RELEASE: NEGOTIATING IDENTITY FOR A NEW GENERATION
group show
The exhibition is curated by Vicky A. Clark and Barbara J. Bloemink
for the Regina Miller Gouger Gallery, Carnegie Mellon University and
organized and toured by Pamela Auchincloss/Arts Management, New York.
Zines were curated by Richard Gribenas, and comics and graphic novels
curated by Ana Merino
With power and a zap, cartoon imagery has recently exploded. Artists,
graphic novelists, and zine makers everywhere are taking advantage of
the potential to tell stories in a recognizable and familiar language.
Today, artists use cartoon imagery to address problematic issues that
are difficult to assimilate into the mainstream through purely
realistic depictions. In the process of taking on difficult social
issues, they participate in the construction of identity in its many
guises, weaving aspects such as race, gender, sexual orientation,
violence and war, loss of innocence, and the commodification of
identity into complex, layered tales. And at times, they make us laugh
at ourselves.
http://www.helnwein.com/news/update/artikel_1047.html
'Comic Release: Negotiating Identity for a New Generation'
Although cartoons and caricatures have played an important role in
Western culture since the Middle Ages, the development of the comic
strip and comic books are a unique American phenomenon and has
contributed significantly to American visual culture.
...Gottfried Helnwein's "American Prayer," which is a large
hyper-realistic painting of a boy kneeling in bedtime prayer to a
large and looming Donald Duck.
About Helnwein's piece: Clark says, "In many ways, this is the
signature piece for this whole show, because it shows how cartoon
imagery has entered our culture, our world, our daily life."
see the painting here:
http://www.helnwein.com/news/update/artikel_472.html
University Press of Missisippi
Donald Ault. Editor
HELNWEIN-INTERVIEW IN NEW BOOK ABOUT CARL BARKS
At the same time that Barks was touring Europe 1994 with his Carl
Barks Studio managers, Gottfried Helnwein's traveling retrospective
exhibition of Barks's artwork was beginning its four year journey
through Europe. One elegant answer to the question with which I opened
this essay - "Who is Carl Barks?" - appears in Helnwein's catalogue
for the exhibition. "Wer ist Carl Barks?" reproduces page after page
of Bark's drawings - revealing an astonishing variety of the
expressions and bodily postures that Barks concocted and executed for
the situations he put his characters into - often blown up to
full-page size to reveal the energy of Bark's pencil work and the
intricacy of his variable pen line and brush strokes. For those
wanting to see immediately Barks's genius as a visual artist, the
drawings in this book speak for themselves across all linguistic
barriers.
And finally, from Gottfried Helnwein, artist extraordinaire:
"In the Donald Duck of Carl Barks we recognize our fears, our
uncertainties and weaknesses - our stupidity, our vanity, our
depravity, our jealousy and our simple-mindedness. But also the very
same stubbornness with which we stand up again and begin freshly after
every defeat and every catastrophe.
"In retrospect I would say that from Donald Duck I have learned more
about life than from all the schools I ever attended."
http://www.helnwein.com/news/update/artikel_969.html
The Times-Picayune
Doug MacCash, Art critic
FINE TOONING
New Orleans, Contemporary Arts Center: Comic Release
Austrian artist Gottfried Helnwein's huge photorealist painting of a
Pinocchio-like half boy/half puppet praying to a levitating vision of
Donald Duck is fabulous -- Durer meets Disney.
http://www.helnwein.com/presse/international_press/artikel_1254.html
Sonntagszeitung, Zürich
Roger Anderegg
"WIE EINER DER GROSSEN MEISTER DER RENAISSANCE"
DER ÖSTERREICHISCHE MALER UND FOTOGRAF MACHT SICH FÜR DIE ANERKENNUNG
DER DISNEYSCHEN SCHÖPFUNG ALS KUNST STARK. Helnwein, 46, ein Meister
der Provokation, hält Walt Disney für so bedeutend wie Leonardo da
Vinci und Rembrandt.
SZ : Herr Helnwein, was hat dieses Jahrhundert Walt Disney zu
verdanken?
HELNWEIN : Walt Disney hat völlig neue Medien entwickelt, den
Comic-strip, wie wir ihn heute kennen, den Zeichentrickfilm,
Disneyland - eine neue ästhetische Sprache - insgesamt eine völlig
neue Kunstform dieses Jahrhunderts, so wie Leonardo da Vinci oder
Rembrandt ihr Jahrhungert prägten
SZ :Leonardo, Rembrandt und Disney in einem Atemzug - das ist wohl
eine Helnweinsche Provokation?
HELNWEIN: Überhaupt nicht! Disney hat ja genauso gearbeitet wie die
grossen Meister der Renaissance, nach dem Werkstattprinzip, wo der
Meister, - eine Art Universalgenie, neue Welten, Universen erschafft,
die dann von einem Heer von Künstlern realisiert werden.
SZ : Die Bedeutung von Walt Disney als Universalgenie blieb uns bisher
verborgen.
HELNWEIN : Dass grosse Neuerungen zur Zeit ihrer Entstehung verkannt
werden, war in der Kunstgeschichte immer so. Trotzdem hat seine
Kreation unsere ästhetischen Werte verändert. Und inzwischen haben
viele Menschen die Bedeutung von Disney erkannt. Sie strömen in Massen
in Disney-Filme und konsumieren zu Millionen die Comics.
SZ : Deshalb wird das alles auch längst industriell hergestellt.
HELNWEIN : Was stört Sie daran? Auch in den Werkstätten der
Renaissance wurde industriell gefertigt. Rembrandt und Rubens zum
Beispiel haben viele Künstler ausgebildet, damit sie exakt in ihrem
Stil und nach ihrem Standart arbeiten, Viele Bilder die ihnen heute
zugeschrieben werden, haben sie gar nicht gemalt - die haben ihre
Schüler gemalt - die Meister haben nur signiert.
SZ : Der Künstler ist doch ein Individualiist, ein Einzelgänger.
HELNWEIN : Nicht zu allen Zeiten. Geschichtlich gesehen wurde Kunst
die meiste Zeit industriell gefertigt. Denken Sie an die Chinesische
Kunst oder die Ägyptische Kunst mit all diesen seriell gefertigten
Wandmalereien und Reliefs oder an die beeindruckenden Bauwerke des
alten Rom!
SZ : Aber Kunst als kreative individuelle Äusserung...
HELNWEIN : Oder nehmen Sie Andy Warhol, der ganz bewusst den Begriff
der "Art Factory " geprägt hat, der "Kunstfabrik". Obwohl ich die
Bedeutung Warhols nicht schmälern möchte - die wirkliche Kunstfabrik
dieses Jahrhunderts hat Walt Disney gegründet.
SZ : Seine Kunst kommt vom Fliessband.
HELNWEIN : Die Künstler haben immer nach Möglichkeiiten gesucht, ihre
Werke zu vervielfältigen: als Holzschnitt, Kupferstich, Radierung,
Lithografie und so weiter. Sie haben sich dazu immer der jeweils
modernsten technischen Mittel bedient. Und das 20ste Jahrhundert hat
eben einem Genie wie Walt Disney das Werkzeug in die Hand gegeben, um
über alle Grenzen hinweg arbeiten zu können und seine Schöpfungen
endlos zu vervielfältigen und räumlich zu bewegen. Disney hat den
jahrhunderte alten Traum aller Künstler verwirklicht und erstmals eine
Kunstfigur geschaffen, die tanzen, singen und sprechen kann.
SZ : Jetzt tanzen seine Figuren stromlinienförmig und absichtslos
durchs Jahrhundert.
HELNWEIN : Seit dem Tod Walt Disneys hat das kommerzielle Denken der
Konzern-Leitung leider die Oberhand gewonnen. Aber das ist doch
typisch für die Zeit! Das ist doch der Zeitgeist!
SZ : Aber es ist eine angepasste Kunst. Sollte Kunst nicht im
Widerstreit sein mit der vorherrschenden Meinung?
HELNWEIN : Nicht nur und nicht immer. Die christliche Kunst war auch
über zweitausend Jahre lang nicht im Widerstreit zum Zeitgeist.
SZ : Sehen Sie in Disneys Kunst eine Entwicklung?
HELNWEIN : Aber sicher! Sie müssen nur die ersten Disney-Filme mit den
späteren vergleichen.
SZ : Die haben sich technisch weiterentwickelt. Gibt es aber auch neue
Inhalte?
HELNWEIN : Die Kunst hat stets die gleichen Inhalte, ob es sich um ein
Drama von Shakespeare handelt oder um einen Hollywoodfilm - es geht
immer um die gleichen Anliegen, um einen Helden und einen Schurken, um
den Kampf zwischen Gut und Böse, um Liebe und Leid.
SZ : Auch in Entenhausen ...
HELNWEIN: Kunst muss die Menschen berühren können. Und wenn ihr das
mit einer neuen zeitgemässen Form gelingt, wird sie zur grossen Kunst.
Deshalb sind für mich Picasso und Walt Disney die beiden bedeutendsten
Anreger in der bildenden Kunst des 20sten Jahrhunderts.
http://www.helnwein.com/presse/international_press/artikel_50.html
Focus
Magazin
COMICS: BARK BARK BARK ...
Von wegen nur Ente! "Donaldisten" feiern 60 Jahre Donald Duck.
Entenhausen-Erfinder Barks kommt nach Deutschland
Mit Verblüffung registriert Hans Joachim Neyer, Direktor des
Wilhelm-Busch-Museums in Hannover, allwöchentlich an die siebentausend
Besucher in der Ausstellung "Donald - Die Ente ist Mensch geworden".
Dem Schöpfer der Entenhausener Storys, Carl Barks, 93, hat der Wiener
Maler Gottfried Helnwein anläßlich dieser Retrospektive einen
voluminösen Bildband als Ausstellungskatalog zusammengestellt. Er
preist den jahrzehntelangen Walt-Disney-Verlags-pinsler als "genialen
Zeichner und Poeten, ohne den das Disneysche Mammutwerk auf tönernen
Füßen stünde". Mehr noch: Mit dem menschenähnlichen Schnäbler habe
Barks nichts Geringeres als "das neue Menschenbild", eine "Creatio ex
nihilo" und "die Ankündigung und Ahnung einer neuen Zeit" geschaffen.
http://www.helnwein.com/presse/international_press/artikel_757.html
1993, Neff
Germany
Gottfried Helnwein
"WER IST CARL BARKS?"
Retrospective, " Die Ente ist Mensch geworden - Das zeichnerische Werk
von Carl Barks"
monograph,catalogue
text by Gottfried Helnwein.
with an interview of Carl Barks by Gottfried Helnwein on July 11,
1992, Oregon
texts by Roy Disney, Gottfried Helnwein, Carsten Laqua, Andreas
Platthaus und Ulrich Schröder
The exhibition was shown from 1994-1997 in the following museums:
Münchner Stadtmuseum, München.
Wilhelm Busch Museum, Hannover.
Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Köln.
Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe, Hamburg.
Landesmuseum Mainz, Rheinland Pfalz, Mainz.
Kunsthalle Schwaben, Baden Würthemberg.
Museum Zitadelle Spandau, Berlin.
Ludwig Museum, Schloss Oberhausen.
Städtische Galerie am Fischmarkt, Erfurt.
Städtische Galerie Ravenberger Park, Bielefeld.
The show was seen by more than 300,000 people.
http://www.helnwein.com/kuenstler/bibliografie/artikel_449.html
Finally, here is a website with a lot of information and pictures of
Gottfried Helnwein's art in relation to the comic culture:
http://helnweincomic.homestead.com/