Poe Drawings by Gottfried Helnwein and more
LD_egon
accompany an edition of Edgar Allen Poe stories. These drawings are
overwhelmingly eerie -- they add another large helping of the dark,
uncertain quality that Poe's stories are so known for. They are
vague, filled with uncountable, fine, black lines. Just like Poe's
stories, these drawings by Helnwein are of scenes and feelings that
one generally only encounters in nightmares.
I've been trying to find the Helnwein Poe drawings for quite a while
now, but the book is obviously out of print and somewhat of a
collector's item now. I've also been trying to find pictures of these
drawings on some website, but without luck. The closest I got was to
the page of early works on paper on the Helnwein website. The ink
drawings at the bottom of the page are similiar to the ones Helnwein
did for the Poe book, although, the Poe drawings are generally darker.
Still, the bizarre, uncomfortable quality that Helnwein gives his
work is very strong in these drawings.
(Early works on paper:
http://www.helnwein.com/werke/papier/tafel_2.html).
There also seems to be a big influence on him from the strange Nazi
past Austria had (Helnwein was born in Vienna). A lot of his work
reflect his experiences of growing up in this embarrassing aftermath
of WW II.
There are a series of paintings Helnwein did titled "Epiphany".
(http://www.helnwein.org/werke/leinwand/group7/image.html).
These are fairly recent Helnwein works. This article of the Irish
Times, explains a little about the paintings, shown in Kilkenny
Ireland at the time.
01.Aug.2001
The Irish Times
Aiden Dunne
CUTTING EDGE
While it is a painting, Epiphany is typical in its almost
interchangeable use of photography and painting: both played their
part in the achievement of the eventual, quasi-photographic image. He
is a fine photographer, and his photographic portraits of Kilkenny
children (enlarged to an enormous scale) form one strand of his
festival exhibitions. The careful adaptation of existing imagery is
another trait, and his references extend back through fine art history
as well as history itself...
Artist Gottfried Helnwein does not tread lightly with his art - Nazis,
mutilation and surgical instruments regularly crop up in his work.
Aiden Dunne warns festival-goers what to expect.
In Austrian artist Gottfried Helnwein's Epiphany, Nazi officers in
uniform cluster around an Aryan woman, an icy blonde Madonna. She
supports a naked infant who, it occurs to you, resembles Adolf Hitler,
particularly as it has a precocious moustache. For an Austrian artist
to venture into this highly charged terrain, blatantly conflating
Christian and Nazi iconography, and doing so with work that had such
an ambiguous edge and leaves a lot to our own imaginations, suggests a
particularly provocative sensibility.
And, on the score, Helnwein certainly fits the bill, as a lot of
people will discover when they encounter his work at first hand during
the Kilkenny Arts Festival. In fact, his work, distributed over
several venues, will be hard to miss. He makes sure of that.
Incidentally, he does not come to Kilkenny as a stranger. For several
years he and his wife Renate have lived in a castle in Co. Tipperary.
A technically proficient, immensely versatile artist who seems to
think instinctively on a grand scale, he had systematically broken
taboos. Some of his earliest public "actions" involved cutting himself
with razor blades. These were very much in keeping with a taste for
elaborate performance featuring violent, bloody spectacle typical of
Herman Nitsch and the notorious Vienna Group.
There is an account of a late 1970s performance by Helnwein in which
he drove around in Nazi regalia, his head bandaged and apparently
bleeding. Since then he has become much more confrontational in his
approach. He anticipated British artist Gillian Wearing by a number of
years in wandering the streets with his head and face swathed in
bandages, recording the reactions of passers-by. . .
http://www.helnwein.com/presse/selected_articles/artikel_68.html
Aiden Dunne, Irish Times, reporting on Helnwein at the Kilkenny Arts
Festival 2001.
But the work of Helnwein has included the theme of the Nazi past and
the Holocaust since the beginning of his career. This painting shows
Hitler holding the hands of two children, one to his right and one to
his left(painted 1991):
(http://www.helnwein.org/werke/papier/group29/image113.html).
02.Jun.2000
Jewish Chronicle, London
Julia Weiner
HELNWEIN, ONE MAN SHOW, ROBERT SANDELSON GALLERY, LONDON, 2000
London show for Gottfried Helnwein, Artist's haunting Nazi-era Images
Austrian artist Gottfired Helnwein's powerful and haunting paintings
provide a disturbing commentary on Nazism and the Holocaust, regularly
provoking outraged reactions from right-wingers in his native land and
in Germany. "I was amazed how much pictures could reach into the
hearts and minds of people - and how much they would talk to me about
it," he told the JC. "For me, art is like a dialogue. My art is not
giving answers, it is asking questions."
But although his work has been exhibited widely throughout Europe, as
well as in the United States, Russia and Japan, his current exhibition
at Robert Sandelson's gallery in London's Cork Street is his first
British one-man show.
Mr. Sandelson, who is Jewish, confessed to being "bowled over" upon
first seeing Mr. Helnwein's paintings, in San Francisco last year.
The London exhibition includes a number of works based on traditional
church altarpieces, one featuring Oswald Mosley and his blackshirt
followers. Another depicts a group of SS officers adoring the Virgin
and Child, intended to evoke the wartime relationship between the
Nazis and the Roman Catholic church.
Fearing that people have become inured to the atrocities of the
Holocaust, the artist seeks to elicit, indeed to provoke, a response
from viewers.
Born in Vienna in 1948, he grew up asking questions about his
country's recent past - questions his family were at pains not to
answer.
It was not until he exhibited a portrait of Adolf Hitler alongside
paintings of injured children, he recalled, that people began
discussing the war with him. Mr. Helnwein's intention had been to
suggest Hitler's responsibility for suffering. Yet he discovered that
many viewers merely admired the portrait of the Nazi leader.
"When I moved the painting by taxi to the [Vienna] museum, the driver
thought it was fantastic, telling me he was one of Hitler's followers
and talking about the 'great times'. Then, the exhibition attracted
many neo-Nazis."
However, victims of the Nazi regime also saw the work, and spoke to
him about it.
(Untitled, 1987, Photograph:
http://www.helnwein.com/werke/photo/bild_525.html)
"I was amazed how much pictures could reach into the hearts and minds
of people - and how much they would talk to me about it," he told the
JC. "For me, art is like a dialogue. My art is not giving answers, it
is asking questions."
One of Mr. Helnwein's best-known images is "Life Not Worth Living",
depicting a child slumped in a plate of food.
It was created in response to a revelatory interview given by Austrian
doctor Dr. Heinrich Gross, who allegedly participated in the murder of
hundreds of children during the Second World War.
The watercolour generated a national debate, which culminated in Dr.
Gross's being charged with having acted as an accessory to the murder
of nine physically and mentally handicapped children as part of a Nazi
euthanasia programme. The trial has been adjourned on medical grounds.
Over the years, some of Mr. Helnwein's works have been literally
attacked by opponents of his political views. Early on, some works
were defaced with stickers bearing the words "Entartete Kunst", the
Nazis' term for "degenerate" art.
More recently, an installation of huge portraits of children produced
to commemorate Kristallnacht was also defaced, with several of the
children's throats "slit".
Having lived in Germany from 1985, he has now decided that he no
longer wants to reside in a German-speaking country, and has moved to
Ireland. Future projects include organising the first exhibition of
his work in Israel.
HELNWEIN, ONE MAN SHOW, ROBERT SANDELSON GALLERY, LONDON, 2000
http://www.robertsandelson.com/gottfriedhelnwein_01.html
Of the same Helnwein exhibition at the Sandelson Gallery, Robert
Johnson (the Curator in Charge, Aachenbach Foundation for Graphic
Arts, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco) wrote the following for the
exhibitino catalogue:
01.May.2001
Gottfried Helnwein catalogue for one-man show at Robert Sandelson
Gallery, London
Robert Flynn Johnson
Curator in Charge, Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts, Fine Arts
Museums of San Francisco
HELNWEIN
The art of Gottfried Helnwein cannot be properly considered without
surveying the terrain of modern and contemporary art from which it
developed. To understand Helnwein is not just to see what movements
and artists he embraced and was influenced by, but also what he
rejected. For Helnwein, creativity is not a vocation but a mission.
His art is the visual equivalent of a contact sport. It not only has
put Helnwein at odds with much of the history of post-war art, but
also has positioned him in the forefront of the highly regarded
confrontationalist movements of contemporary art so active in America
and Europe today. . .
In 1948 Gottfried Helnwein was born in Austria, a country that
willingly had embraced Nazi Germany. For decades after its defeat, the
Austrian population could not come to terms with the evil with which
it had associated. The fervent acceptance of the Anschluss was
replaced by a sense of wounded denial in the years after the war. It
was in this dysfunctional society that Helnwein spent his youth.
Helnwein wrote of this time:
"My childhood was a horror - born right after the war, I lived in a
world of deep depression and unlimited boredom. All the grown-ups
looked ugly and devastated. I never saw anybody laughing and I never
heard anybody sing. I always felt I have landed in limbo. A
two-dimensional world without colours, my real life began when I got
my first Mickey Mouse comic book from the Americans - when I opened a
three-dimensional world full of colours and wonders. My first
encounter with art was totally opposed to the torture art of the
church. Very early I started to research. I knew something had
happened, but all the adults were unable to talk about it. Nobody
wanted to answer my questions. But I found out what I wanted to know
and I'm still finding out."
Gottfried Helnwein is an intelligent individual whose art is
influenced, but not overwhelmed, by his awareness of history, culture,
and politics. As a young man, his artistic energy needed to be
encouraged, channelled, and refined. In 1969, with the support of the
artist Rudolf Hausner, Helnwein was admitted to the Vienna Academy of
Art, the crucible of creativity in Vienna since the days of Gustave
Klimt and Egon Schiele. The four years that Helnwein spent there were
not for instruction, for he required and received little. It was for
the structure and the process. To work within one of the great
ateliers, to interact with fellow artists, and to see art as a vehicle
for expression to a wider audience. Helnwein wrote of this period:
"When I started to paint in the first years, I did not want to know
anything about High Art and the art world. Different than most artists
I knew, for me it was never a matter of decoration, style, or art
reflecting and dealing with the problems of art. It was the politics,
society, history, media, news, that provoked, shocked, and motivated
me and the so called trivial world of comics, advertising and Rock and
Roll. Art, for me, was not only a way to explore the subject matter of
war, violence, and society but also a way to fight back - a way of
resistance - of not agreeing with what an oppressive, manipulating
ruling society is trying to force on us. I felt I could strike back
with my pictures and force people to look at things they'd rather
forget."
It was during this period that Helnwein expanded his creative
imagination into the areas he is best known for today. The art of
drawing and painting was and is the bedrock of his art. However,
Helnwein did not want to be confined or categorised and felt free also
to involve himself in photography. Further, he wanted to take his art
out into the streets, to confront the world with his images and ideas.
This form of art, now generally referred to as performance art, was
called "Aktions." In America, in the early sixties, it was called
"Happenings," but their true origin goes back to the early days of the
Dada movement in Switzerland, France, and Germany. Each of these
different artistic enthusiasms informed his art. A photograph would
inspire a watercolour. A painting would inspire an Aktion. Helnwein
wrote of this period, "In the beginning I was almost autistic... I
didn't know about Richter, Schwarzkogler, the Wiener Aktionism and all
other works. Much later, in the early eighties, I started to research
and I was amazed to see how many connections and similarities I found
with other artists' works which emerged at approximately the same
time. However, there was no direct inspiration or influence."
?Children and lunatics cut the Gordian knot, which the poet spends his
life patiently trying to untie.? Jean Cocteau
A clarity of vision in his subject matter was emerging in Helnwein's
art that was to stay consistent throughout his career. His subject
matter was the human condition. The metaphor for his art, although it
included self-portraits, was dominated by the image of the child, but
not the carefree innocent child of popular imagination. Helnwein
instead created the profoundly disturbing yet compellingly provocative
image of the wounded child. The child scarred physically and the child
scarred emotionally from within.
In art history, before the end of the eighteenth century, the child as
an independent subject matter hardly existed. The child usually
appeared symbolically or allegorically as cupid, putti or angel. The
child also appeared as a miniature adult as in the depiction of young
gods, kings or, in Christianity , Jesus. This, however, was to change
with the advent of the Romantic movement in Europe. Around 1800,
artists such as William Blake, Louis Leopold Boilly, and Phillip Otto
Runge (above left) began to have children appear as individuals in
their works, disconnected from their previous symbolic baggage. The
image of this now liberated child was one that promised innocence,
freedom, and curiosity. However, now made mortal, there was also the
necessary introduction of emotions, sexuality, and the prospect of
pain, suffering, and death.
There are a number of these earlier artists who were especially
meaningful to Helnwein in their portrayal of children. Among them were
Lewis Carroll (Charles Dodgson) with his adoration of feminine
adolescence (above left); Edvard Munch and his depiction of suffering
and sexual awakening (left); and Balthus (below left) with his
preoccupation with secrets and the erotic.
The children in these works have a knowing look in their eyes. There
was a sense of life experienced, both good and bad, which made these
works so intense and in their own day, so controversial. It was
apparent from the reception that these artists and others received,
however, that any derivation from the most bland representation of
children as innocents was cause for violent backlash from society. The
public was then, as it is now, very uncomfortable about showing the
child as having a sexual identity, however subtle, or as suffering in
any way whether physically or emotionally. Artists like Munch were
willing to risk the wrath of propriety in seeking out this un-explored
area of human experience. For Gottfried Helnwein, it became the major
theme of his career.
?How can a friendly person like Helnwein stand making
his-excellent-painting into a mirror of the terrors of this century?
Or is it that he can't stand not doing it? Does his mirror just
reflect the attitude of the century?? Heiner Müller
Looming out across a Helnwein canvas over twelve feet in length,
Mickey Mouse, 1995, stares back at us. He is, at once, both benignly
sweet and threateningly sinister depending on your age and viewpoint.
Helnwein has written, "what do I associate with the name Disney? The
inspiring sacred comics of my childhood, that gave me a chance to
escape from the cold Nazi-country into a world of joy and wonder, or
Michael Eisner's multi-billion dollar machine that smothers the
world." 8 The truth is, this image could represent both viewpoints,
just one, or neither. As Pablo Picasso once remarked, " a picture
lives a life like a living creature, undergoing the changes imposed on
us by our life from day to day. This is natural enough, as the picture
lives only through the man who is looking at it."
A flag painting by Jasper Johns is neither pattern nor patriotic. It
is both a beautiful act of pure painting but also an image pregnant
with meaning because of the symbolic nature of the subject matter.
This is also true with Helnwein's painting. Often overlooked in the
discourse over the subject matter or meaning of Helnwein's art is the
appreciation of the compositional and painterly beauty of his work.
The technical virtuosity of his art makes acceptable certain images
that more crudely executed by others would be unbearable. "Mickey
Mouse" hovers between carefree and carnivorous in our consciousness.
It is the unease of our age that Helnwein has seized upon.
"Sunday's Child" (1972), is a disturbing tour de force of the young
Helnwein. It is a multi-layered vision convincing in its hyper-realism
(notice the beautifully rendered reflections of the apartment
buildings in the window) at odds with the absurdist fantasy of a
knapsack toting duck with a popsicle. Between these two competing
tendencies appears an adolescent girl, the true subject of the
picture. She stands in winter coat and mittens in front of the glass
doors of a store festooned with the advertisements of mass
consumerism.
On her arm is a cloth armband signifying that she is blind although it
is clear that she is not. In her hand is a large chocolate bar. Blood
runs down her legs, staining her tights. Is she bleeding from early
menstruation or the result of a sexual encounter (rape?) of which the
chocolate is her reward or to buy her silence? Her face is a
contradiction. She sticks her tongue out to the viewer with a smirk.
Is it an innocent expression or a lascivious gesture?
Helnwein makes our mind swoon between the simply bizarre and the truly
perverse. What holds this outrageous work together is the painstaking
detail of his watercolour rendering and the baffling mystery of what
it represents. Like many of Helnwein's best works, it is a drama
without narrative. Despite all its visual information, it only raises
questions, not answers them.
Tennessee Williams once said that all good art was an indiscretion. In
Helnwein's case, it is a confrontation. Since his earliest work,
Helnwein has linked children and pain. The wounded child has become
his metaphor for the chaos of our emotionally vacant world.
The writer Peter Gorsen wrote of Helnwein's work, "The child is the
embodiment of the innocent, defenceless, sacrificed individual at the
mercy of brute force. As an innocent, child of light, whose head and
hand injuries emit light rays like self-radiating stigmata, he is
heroized into a sufferer and a saviour figure." The wounds of Christ
and the martyrdom of saints so often depicted in countless paintings,
sculptures, and car dashboard shrines no longer have the power to
shock. Despite our general indifference to general suffering in the
world, the thought or better yet, the image of a child in pain still
gets through the emotional defence mechanisms to our feelings.
Helnwein understands this and exploits this knowledge in his art.
"Beautiful Victim I", 1974 was inspired by a 1972 altered photograph
"Child of Light II", which was carefully arranged and posed by the
artist. The magic of this watercolour lies in its balancing of beauty
and horror. The work itself is subtle in colour with exquisite
Vermeer-like light bathing the exquisitely rendered outstretched body
of the young girl. Contradicting the peace is the shocking bandages
and tubes that surround and obscure the child's face. We are repelled
and entranced at the same time. There is no explanation for her
wounds, no explanation for what she is doing on the floor. Helnwein's
aim is not to tell a story but to trigger a response.
Helnwein has always been interested in photography as both a catalyst
in his painting and an end in itself. He has written, "I think
photography is the key medium for all artists who work in some kind of
realistic manner. People today perceive and know the world mainly
through two-dimensional reproductions and film. It's a highly
manipulative media and I'm fascinated by its almost unlimited
possibilities to shift and twist the reality. When it looks like a
photograph people think it's real. So I always had the feeling a very
photographical image has more impact, more suggestive power."
Just as Helnwein creates paintings that appear photographic, in
"Phoney Death", circa 1990, he has created a photograph that takes on
the composition and scale of one of his paintings. The subject is both
autobiographical and symbolic. Helnwein uses the comic book as a
symbol of freedom. As a child he sought refuge in the escapist fantasy
these comics delivered. Here this refuge, although in the possession
of the child, is denied. Because of her bandages, her hands cannot
turn the pages and her eyes cannot see. The starkness of the child's
white world is in contrast to the inviting colour and energy that the
comic book promises.
Helnwein has increasingly preferred to paint in grisaile (monochrome)
utilising a deep blue-black. (Another contemporary artist who employs
this method is Mark Tansey who usually opts for a brick red tonality
in his works.) For Helnwein, the restriction of colour to a single
tone removes extraneous visual distractions and focuses attention on
the subject at hand. It also links his paintings with photographic
sources in an interesting way. A black and white photograph is both
extremely real in its technical ability to capture a moment in time
and, at the same time, completely false in that we do not live in a
world purged of colour. In his monochrome paintings, Helnwein has
taken advantage of our mind's photographic experience and expectations
to create paintings that have that same degree of reality/falsehood.
"Night V (Phoney Death)", 1990 is a chilling revisiting of the wounded
child whose bandages cut her off from the world. In this case,
however, the bandages might be a blessing. The only light in the scene
comes from a glowing television ... a source of information and
enlightenment but also a vehicle of propaganda, commercialisation and
control. On top of the television is a mechanical bank in the shape of
a racially stereotyped black man. Next to it is a sculpture that
vaguely resembles the work that the Nazi's put on the cover of the
violently anti-Semitic Degenerate Art exhibition catalogue in 1937.
Behind the child reclines a beautiful yet unsmiling nude woman of
uncertain ethnic background. The scene resembles nothing so much as a
contemporary updating of the old master imagery of the torment and
temptation of Saint Anthony. The blinded child is surrounded by
symbols of lust, commercialism and prejudice...all vices of an adult
world. The escapist comic book, even with its implied violent subject
matter of "Phoney Death" on its cover is preferable to the alternative
world that awaits this child.
We live in an age of euphemisms to cocoon ourselves from getting too
close to the truth. Bombs that kill civilians do not inflict
casualties but only cause "collateral damage." The greatest cause of
unnatural disaster to humanity over the centuries has not been the
result of economic or nationalistic forces, but by the inhumanity
unleashed by organised religion on one group by another. The use of
brutality under the banner of religion is a profound perversion of
anything sacred. "Untitled" (Madonna and Child), 1994 is Helnwein's
response to the ethnic horrors unleashed in the Balkans since the
dissolution of Yugoslavia. Based on a painting by the Italian
Renaissance artist Andrea Mantegna (1431-1506), Helnwein has
painstakingly replicated the composition in monochrome, except for one
telling detail. In the case of the Christ Child, he has depicted the
face as terribly disfigured and maimed. Helnwein is symbolically
confronting the hypocrisy of Christian Serbs who, while conducting
their reign of terror and murder, under the euphemism of "ethnic
cleansing," maintained that they were defending Christianity against
the inroads of the Moslems. It is history repeating itself and
Helnwein utilises history to comment on the latest failure of
civilisation to be civilised.
?Anyone who sees and paints the sky green and pastures blue ought to
be sterilised.? Adolf Hitler
This single sentence sums up the essence of the totalitarian mindset.
The world must adhere to an order of which no variation or
independence is acceptable. "Epiphany I", 1996 is from an important
series of three paintings created over a three-year period. This
seamless stapling of a version of the Adoration of the Magi into a
scenario out of the Third Reich is in keeping with Helnwein's desire
to press the limits. Helnwein wrote, "In the Epiphany trilogy, I refer
directly to my (our) own historical background. The most significant
issue on the time track of the occident is Christianity and the male
dominated world of conquering and oppression. The constant slaughter
of the "weak"-women, children, the Jews, and other ethnic minorities,
through holy wars, crusades and the constant extermination of the
inferior."
The apparent blasphemy of this scene of Nazi evil encountering the
Madonna and Child is not so clear cut in Helnwein's mind. It is a more
symbolic case of unconditional evil (the Third Reich) meeting
conditional evil (the Catholic Church). It takes on a further
significance with the knowledge of the complicity of Pope Pius XII, in
matters of moral responsibility, with Germany during World War Two.
The surreal atmosphere within the picture is attributable to Helnwein
creating the veracity of a carefully composed news photo within a
traditional Renaissance composition.
There is a basic misconception that any given face at any given time
looks more or less the same: like a statue's face. Actually, the human
face is as variable from moment to moment as a screen on which images
are reflected ... Gottfried Helnwein's paintings and photographs
attack this misconception showing the variety of faces of which any
face is capable. William S. Burroughs
For Helnwein, the nature of portraiture is not the mere artistic
replication of physiognomy or capturing the essence of a person's
character. It is more complex than that. Helnwein, like many other
artists today such as Cindy Sherman, Sally Mann, Christian Boltanski,
Fang Lijun and Ron Mueck have shattered the traditional sense of
identity through formal portraiture and reassembled the concept in a
multitude of different styles and concepts.
In many of Helnwein's works, what at first glance appears to be the
portrait of an individual in truth comes to be seen as a more
generalised conception. This is true in "Untitled", 1996. The
immediate reaction to the work is one of mystery. Is the fragmentary
depiction of the child's face simply caused by shadow or is there no
illusion? Is the face a fragment like some broken Egyptian sculpture
in the British Museum? Is the child depicted asleep as our
subconscious hopes or dead as our subconscious fears? Restricting the
tonalities to a blue-black pallor reinforces a mood of solemnity.
Helnwein gives us enough information to care, but not enough
information to know.
Not content with a consistent artistic viewpoint, Helnwein creates a
very different dynamic in "Untitled", 1998. At first glance, Helnwein
has created a more straightforward portrait. It is in naturalistic
colour executed with photorealist precision. It is not a generalised
conception but the specific portrait of a beautifulyoung girl with
blond hair and blue eyes. The work has a luminosity inspired by the
paintings of Georges de la Tour and Carravaggio.
Beyond the general attractiveness of the subject and the virtuosity of
the execution of the work, what makes us care? There is a quiet drama
going on in this painting. Her face comes out of darkness and is
starkly and artificially lit. Her face is partially in darkness, one
eye in the shadow, the other distinct and staring from the centre of
the canvas. It is an unnerving picture. Although the girl displays no
distinct emotion, one has a sense of unspoken dialogue between subject
and viewer. There is knowledge and one could even project a subtle
judgmental quality to her stare. It is as if a youth were to say to an
adult: "How could you have screwed the world up so badly?" Ultimately,
Helnwein's portraits follow what Oscar Wilde perceptively observed,
"Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the
artist, not of the sitter."
?I cannot bear the crying of children, but when my child cries I don't
hear.?Anton Checkhov
Surprisingly, the works of Gottfried Helnwein have something in common
with the art of Alfred Hitchcock. Both often deal in suspense and
mystery. Both often deal with violence or the threat of violence. What
is also true, however, is that both deal in scenes leading up to
violence or the aftermath of violence but rarely the act of violence
themselves. Like Hitchcock, Helnwein well aware that stimulating the
imagination of a viewer can create far greater drama than a literal
depiction.
In "Untitled", 1998 Helnwein has presented us with an effect without
knowledge of the cause. In his characteristic monochrome, Helnwein has
a young girl, naked except for a pair of panties, kneeling upon a
floor within a bare room. Her head is obscured by her hands that cover
her face in an implied gesture of grief, pain, or shame. The only
other piece of visual information in the work is a pail to the right
of the girl. Does the pail indicate a task forced upon the child à la
Cinderella? The image is haunting; the emotion of the child is
undeniable, yet the viewer is left to come to her or his own internal
conclusions.
Viewing "Kiss I, 1998" is like visually eavesdropping on a potentially
explosive situation . . . or is it? Starkly lit within a dark
background, an adolescent girl in a blue dress stares out at us as a
woman, naked from the waist up, holds the girl as she kisses her. Is
this the prelude to a sexual assault? The erotic nature of the woman's
nakedness, the seemingly suggestive lifting of the girls dress by the
woman's right hand and the limp response of the girl to the kiss imply
the worst. But wait, could this not just be an act of tenderness by a
young mother to her daughter and the look of the child, the natural
aversion of adolescents to acts of affection? There is no answer from
Helnwein. For the answer, the viewer must look within himself or
herself.
There are three things that cannot be seen, even though they may be
right in front of our eyes: the sun, genitals, and death. Georges
Bataille
Until recently Helnwein has restricted himself to dealing with the
child as victim, wounded physically or mentally by a world it cannot
comprehend or control. Implicit in these works is that which logically
follows suffering and pain in the extreme is death. However, the
subject of death has rarely appeared in Helnwein's work until now. In
the summer of 1999, Helnwein was commissioned to do a major
installation for the Dominikanerkirche in Krems, Austria. The
installation, entitled Apokalypse was a visual assault on the senses
and the emotions. Besides the three large canvases of the Epiphany
Cycle 1996-98 and the painting Late Regret 1997, Helnwein created four
new series for this installation. The series Angels Burning depicts,
in garish colour, the faces of children as if severely burned. Saints
Silent, also in colour, depicts portraits of men grotesquely
disfigured as if from war wounds. Salved is a series, in monochromatic
blue, of men and boys both burned and disfigured. The final most
monumental and clearly disquieting of the series is Angels Sleeping, a
group of photographs with painted additions. The subject of these are
fetuses floating in a stillborn liquid atmosphere of which they will
never emerge.
"Angel Sleeping I, 1999" was part of the installation and
representative of the whole. It is as heartbreaking as it is
beautiful. This is not an image from which one can get an intellectual
distance such as Damien Hirst's The Physical Impossibility of Death in
the Mind of Someone Living that placed a shark in formaldehyde.
Helnwein's work is an image that was the beginning of a human being,
an individual with the prospects of feelings, aspirations, a future
... now lost. In today's contemporary art, it carries a more
pessimistic tone than the oversized infant sculptures of the British
artist Ron Mueck, but is less cynical than Marcus Harvey's portrait of
child murderer Myra Hindley made up of what appear to be the imprints
of children's hands. It is worth noting that this work would surely be
interpreted differently in the United States than in Europe. For
Americans, the image of a stillborn infant would be seen as a symbol
of the debate over the abortion issue ... the right to life movement
versus a woman's right to choose. The potential for polarisation is
far from the sense of universality that Helnwein intended with this
work.
If Gottfried Helnwein were simply the skillful renderer of facile
paintings, drawings, and photographs without meaningful content (like
so many practitioners today) his art would not be of significance. If,
in turn, Helnwein were an artist bursting with original and
provocative ideas without the skills to render those ideas into
meaningful art (also quite common in today's art world), he would not
merit the attention he deserves.
The fact, however, is that Gottfried Helnwein is the genuine article;
a skilled artist with a constantly evolving conscience that seeks
release through his art. A character in the 1976 film Network tells a
vast television audience to go to the window, open it up and shout,
"I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore!" Gottfried
Helnwein shouts with his paintbrush.
Text about Helnwwin by Robert Flynn Johnson.
Gottfried Helnwein, Modern and Contemporary British and International
Art, Robert Sandelson, London, 12 May - 15 June 2000
01.May.2001 Gottfried Helnwein catalogue for one-man show at Robert
Sandelson Gallery
(Full article about Helnwein, including pictures:
http://www.helnwein.com/texte/selected_authors/artikel_79.html).
But the work of Helnwein ranges over a vast field of different subject
matters. From dark paintings that deal with Germany's Nazi past, to
suffering children, and comic culture icons like Donald Duck and
Mickey Mouse.
". . .Perhaps nothing in the exhibition exemplifies this better than
Gottfried Helnwein's 'Mickey'.
His portrait of Disney's favorite mouse occupies an entire wall of the
gallery; rendered from an oblique angle, his jaunty, ingenuous visage
looks somehow sneaky and suspicious. His broad smile, encasing a row
of gleaming teeth, seems more a snarl or leer. This is Mickey as Mr.
Hyde, his hidden other self now disturbingly revealed.
Helnwein's Mickey is painted in shades of gray, as if pictured on an
old black-and-white TV set. We are meant to be transported to the
flickering edges of our own childhood memories in a time imaginably
more blameless, crime-less and guiltless.
But Mickey's terrifying demeanor hints of things to come. ...
Gottfried Helnwein at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 2000."
Excerpt from:
ARTWEEK
November 2000, issue 11,
"The Darker Side of Playland:
Childhood Imagery from the Logan Collection"
at SFMOMA by Alicia Miller.
http://helnweincomic.homestead.com/
1999
Museum of Lower Austria
Apokalypse, Helnwein, installation, one-man show
Wolfgang Bauer, Poet
INSPIRED BY HELNWEIN
Helnwein - Inspiration
As long ago as 1963 a fellow-artist and I imagined the horrible future
of a free-lance artist.
The topic of our discussion was not so much finances as the necessity
of letting go and totally abandoning oneself.
At the time I had the idea of inventing something like a "fitness
training of geniuses".
In retrospect I must say that I know very few artists who have
persevered in this imaginary training programme. Gottfried Helnwein is
one of them.
Helnwein likes to linger at boundaries.
Whoever wants to pass through is closely examined by him. Like Goya he
is one of the magic customs officials of art. (Rousseau, on the other
hand, always stayed on the other side of the border even though he
really was a customs official by profession!
Whoever wants to enter the plane of art has to be able to understand
and communicate reality. Helnwein is not only an artist but also a
perfect transformer.
The so called imagination should not come into play at the beginning
of a world, but its nuclear power should be released only at the
moment of transformation, of metamorphosis.
The effect of Helnwein's paintings upon me is like a child's answer to
the question of what a dream is: "You can't escape it... you can't
change anything."
The last words of Colonel Kurtz (Marlon Brando) in Francis Ford
Coppola's Apocalypse Now are: "The horror. The horror...." The
beheaded men, the crazy ones, the poetically-desperate slaughterer,
they are all real! How senseless to try to understnad them logically.
Destruction and disaster seem to be static indigestion. There is no
antidote against them because every thing arises and exists
simultaneously. How many wars have got out of hand due to well-meaning
help? How many saviours have perished in an attempt to save - even in
everyday life? Dali's personal physician, for example, died while
attending to Dali. his head suddenly fell forward onto the cheek of
the utterly disturbed disturbing patient. Dali's somnambulistically
safe path through fear-inducing, seemingly inaccessible worlds
suddenly ended there, too.
Even if everything seems to flow the boundaries flow with it.
Helnwein likes to linger at boundaries. Whatever wants to pass through
is closely examined by him. Like Goya he is one of the magic customs
officials of art. (Rousseau, on the other hand, always stayed on the
other side of the border even though he really was a customs official
by profession!)
Whoever wants to enter the plane of art has to be able to understand
and communicate reality. Helnwein is not only an artist but also a
perfect transformer. The so called imagination should not come into
play at the beginning of a world, but its nuclear power should be
releases only at the moment of transformation, of metamorphosis. . .
(This excerpt is taken from the article by Wolfgang Bauer
http://www.helnwein.com/texte/selected_authors/artikel_80.html).
Wolfgang Bauer, about Helnwein?s exhibition ?Apocalypse? in Austria.
This Helnwein interview by a local Ohio newspaper, was done late
October 2000.
31.Oct.2000
Tastes Like Chicken; Columbus, Ohio
by Insane Wayne Chingsang
HELNWEIN
These are the images of a man consumed by free will. A man with a gift
and a craft and a passion to challenge the mediocrity of what has
already been established. A man whose opinions embody everything
authority does not want you to believe in. His name is Gottfried
Helnwein, and he recently discussed his 30+ year career with Tastes
Like Chicken's Insane Wayne Chingsang.
insane wayne chingsang:
You and your work are no strangers to controversy. In the late sixties
and into the seventies you dealt with people trying to put a stop to
your work. Today, you receive much less resistance than before. Do you
feel that this is because society has seen more and is therefore no
longer surprised by much, or do you feel that your work has changed to
the point where it is no longer as shocking?
Helnwein:
I think my work is changing, but my intention was never to shock. I
thought it was just something I had to do and, to my surprise, it was
a big shock for many people. From time to time with certain pieces I
still get rather hot reactions. Many things were unthinkable in
television and the media at the time when I was young, but today
people have seen a lot. It is still rather easy to disturb people or
get their emotions stirred up. Do you remember the elephant dung thing
(Ofili's Holy Virgin Mary)? Well, that was obviously intentionally
used to be shocking. That shows how easy it is, even today. With fine
art, the tolerance is very low. It's very strange. One would assume
that by what people see everyday, they should have no problem with
certain things, but with fine art they do for some reason.
iwc:
You have stated that you learned more about art and life from Donald
Duck than from all the schools you ever attended. Could you explain in
further detail what you meant by that statement?
Helnwein:
I was born in Vienna after the war. They had just lost World War II.
Many houses were destroyed and people were deeply depressed. It was a
world of no hope. There was no art, no culture. There was nothing. I
didn't understand all the circumstances at the time, but I felt that
it was a horrible time and place to be in. So, my first encounter with
great art was actually the first comic books they had in Austria.
American officers brought some with them. It was Donald Duck by Carl
Barks. For me, it was like a complete encounter with the real world.
That was true also for my friends. This was a world we could
appreciate and understand. The so-called 'real world' was very unreal
to me.
iwc:
It must be a nice escape also, to be able to detach yourself from that
world.
Helnwein:
That's what I think art and aesthetics is. If you have to be attached
to that world, there would be no escape and that would be it. I could
never live in that world. If there was not that door to aesthetics and
art, which for me is the real thing, then it would be a disaster.
iwc:
What do you do to relax?
Helnwein:
I relax when I paint. Recently, I've been listening to music a lot.
Classical music actually.
iwc:
Which classical composers have you been listening to?
Helnwein:
Beethoven, Bach and Mozart of course. All the stuff I hated when I was
young. When I was young, I hated everything that had to do with
established culture or environment. I rejected everything. I never
went close to museums or galleries. I hated them and didn't want to
know anything about them.
iwc:
Was it too structured for you?
Helnwein:
Well, when I was a child my enemies were basically my parents'
generation. I felt that this was really the last world I would want to
live in. There was nothing about it I could like. When they taught you
art they taught you to really hate it. And it took me probably twenty
years to get back to it. But I've found that, especially with classic
art, it is something fantastic. But, this whole type of culture that
started in the renaissance time is fading out. Especially in America
there is a feeling that it is gone. Even in Europe, it's over.
iwc:
Your work has progressively gotten larger through time, some works
reaching as large as fifty by seventy-five feet. Is increasing the
scale of your work something you've always wanted to play with? And if
your work keeps progressing this way, how big do you plan on painting
in the future?
Helnwein:
I've always wanted to paint bigger. I'd love to be able to have my
work even as big as billboards and out on the streets, but it's too
expensive. What I've always liked was to explore and try completely
different things. There is probably only one thing I am trying to
communicate, but I always try to do that in different ways -with
different media and different styles . And if I fail, I need that. I
know it's not very appreciated in the art world because critics like
artists sticking to one type of work so they are easily recognizable,
but I don't care. I want to try different things.
iwc:
You've met some very interesting American Pop Icons in your lifetime.
What was meeting Michael Jackson and Andy Warhol like?
Helnwein:
Michael Jackson was really interesting. He was very smart and very
intelligent. I remember talking with him for an hour, and he brought
Lisa (Marie Presley) along with him. So we talked about art and he was
asking me about what techniques I use and telling me about what
paintings he liked. And then he left. And Lisa looked at me and said,
"Oh my god. He was totally normal. That's amazing!" I mean, this is
his wife saying this! Andy was interesting because, uh (laughs), this
guy was so artificial, too. It was amazing! When he meets you for the
first time he tells you, "Wow! I like your work." He liked everything.
The nice thing was, when I photographed him he was sitting there very
patiently all day. Just sitting and didn't say anything, like he was
frozen. That was great because I was sitting there and didn't know
what to say.
iwc:
In your amateur opinion, do dogs have lips?
Helnwein:
(laughs) Oh my god! The good thing is this is a question I've never
been asked before. Do dogs have lips? I think so. I have four dogs.
I've never kissed them on the lips, but I think they have lips.
iwc:
In 1991 you arranged for your three children to paint large-format
canvases to be hung with your work in the Basilica. What was the
feedback on this, and, now that your children are older, are any of
them pursuing a career in art?
Helnwein:
My daughter is writing and drawing and likes to do film. Amadeus is
the littlest one, so he is just watching television. He's not doing
anything right now. And Ali is in a band. He is doing music. But at
the time of the show I told them they could paint what they wanted.
People, especially the critics, were really pissed off because they
said that it was making fun of art. I honestly didn't expect it. And
with some of the paintings you couldn't tell that they were done by a
kid. And the curator would think it is the greatest thing and want to
hang it in the museum. It's actually a disturbing point that they
couldn't tell.
iwc:
Within the last decade you've started using computers in your work
more frequently. How have computers changed your work?
Helnwein:
I always was looking for new techniques. When I started to paint I
also started to photograph. I've always thought that those two have
paralleled. Photography is a very important aspect in my work. I don't
know much about computers but I have tried different things and think
it is a new and fantastic tool. But I still like to make things that
are totally made without computers. I always try to switch up the
balance and make something else.
iwc:
What is one thing you miss most about your childhood?
Helnwein:
Nothing, actually.
iwc:
Whom, alive or dead, would you love to paint a portrait of but haven't
yet gotten around to it?
Helnwein:
I would have liked to have met Picasso. Also, Francis Bacon. I had an
appointment to meet Francis Bacon, but then he died. The same thing
happened with Dali. I had an appointment with him that was very hard
to get because he was sick. And again, I was too late.
iwc:
What are the most recognizable differences between living in America
and living in Europe?
Helnwein:
I didn't believe it in the beginning but there is a big difference.
What I really find in America is that the concept of the culture of
old Europe doesn't exist. Culture and art are something different
here. The feeling in America is that it's entertainment, it's
business, it's investment, it's media. But the idealistic approach
that exists in Europe doesn't exist here actually. In Europe, someone
would like a certain type of art and collect it their whole life just
because they liked it. They collected it for no other reason other
than they were passionate about it.
iwc:
In 1998 a board of contemporary artists (including yourself and Cindy
Sherman, among others) juried an exhibition titled "Choice," a show of
young emerging artists. What do you think young artists of today have
to deal with differently in the art world?
Helnwein:
I think it is harder than ever. The problem is that the world is
entertained to death. There is so much cheap entertainment and
everything is so mediocre and stupid. I was watching MTV and it was a
shock to me because I hadn't really watched television in several
years. But, from time to time I will peek in to see where the world
is. And seeing that was a shock. It was so stupid that I couldn't
believe that it was even possible. And everyone is a part of it and no
one has a problem with it. Everyone was acting so stupid and so
superficial. I think the biggest vision in literature in the last
century was Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. Huxley describes the
world as a place where they entertain people so they have no time to
think. And that is what's really going on. Everyone is so stupid and
so superficial. And I think it is very hard for young artists. Today
the art scene is dominated by curators. It's not even about art
anymore, it's about curators. It's also all about the media. Art would
never be covered in the media, with the exception of Hollywood.
Starting as an artist is really tough. My message would be to
disconnect from the whole shit and don't work with the galleries. Get
your own factory space, which would probably have to be in Idaho or
something because everything is so expensive. But get something, get a
garage, meet other painters and become independent. Do it yourself.
And I don't say this because I'm stuck in the sixties. It's really how
I feel.
iwc:
What is the most prized gift you've ever received and what is the most
prized gift you've ever given?
Helnwein:
I don't get much actually (laughs). The paintings I give to people are
the most prized things I give.
iwc:
Just recently you moved to Ireland. But prior to that you lived and
worked in a castle near Cologne. First of all, why a castle? And
secondly, why move out of a castle?
Helnwein:
Because I moved into a better castle. And I moved into a country where
I don't pay taxes. Ireland is the only country where artists are tax
exempt. I think that's really fair and smart, but that's not the main
reason. I think Ireland is the freest country in the world. It is
beautiful. There is no bureaucracy. There is no army. There is no
police. I never see policemen. Never. Just until recently they didn't
even have driver's licenses. It's fantastic! The people are so nice
and down to Earth. It's what America was probably like 100 years ago.
iwc:
When you leave this Earth, what is the one thing you want to leave
people with?
Helnwein:
This is kind of disturbing, but I hope my work can disturb them enough
to not forget me soon.
(http://www.helnwein.org/press/international_press/all/article15.html)
31.Oct.2000 Tastes Like Chicken; Columbus, Ohio by Insane Wayne
Chingsang
http://tlchicken.com/
01.Sep.2002
Lead White Gallery
Dublin
Mic Moroney
HELNWEIN
Group show
Helnwein's painting - both cheekily and totally in homage -
appropriates the great paintings, "The Polar Sea" (1824) by the
leading German Romantic landscape artist Casper David Friedrich.
Helnwein here re-renders the painting in a gloomy, cinematic
blue-black duochrome, and hugely magnifies it from its original scale
(about 1 metre by 1 metre 30), although the foundered ship still seems
dwarfed and pulverised by the splintering ice sheets. It remains a
fine example of that particularly Germanic celebration of heroic
humanity dashing itself against the majestic cruelty of nature.
Helnwein, in his wry title and borrowing of the image, is suggesting
an uncomfortable paradigm behind Friedrich's painting - a perpetual
sense of momentous revolution within nature, raw humanity and indeed
artistic culture. These ideas pervaded Friedrich's work, as well as
that of composer Richard Wagner and philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche -
all of whose works were later so mistakenly absorbed into the
"superhuman" aesthetic of Nazi ideaology and doctrine.
Gottfried Helnwein is an international artist in his early 50s, whose
work is now housed in such prestigious collections as the Smithsonian
Institut in Washington, the Ludwig Museum in Cologne, the Fine Arts
Museum of San Francisco, the State Russian Museum in St. Petersburg
and the Chinese Museum of Art in Beijing. Personal clients include the
major American collector Kent Logan and the actor Arnold
Schwarzenegger.
Originally from Austria but now resident in County Tipperary, Helnwein
grew up into a claustrophobic, bourgeouis, post-war Viennese society
which, unlike much of Germany, had not been truly deNazified. This
unease with, and yet celebration of German-language cutlure continues
to inform Helnwein's work, not least in this large piece, "The Silent
Glow of the Avant Garde"
Helnwein's painting -- both cheekily and totally in homage --
appropriates the great paintings, "The Polar Sea" (1824) by the
leading German Romantic landscape artist Casper David Friedrich.
Helnwein here re-renders the painting in a gloomy, cinematic
blue-black duochrome, and hugely magnifies it from its original scale
(about 1 metre by 1 metre 30), although the foundered ship still seems
dwarfed and pulverised by the splintering ice sheets. It remains a
fine example of that particularly Germanic celebration of heroic
humanity dashing itself against the majestic cruelty of nature.
Helnwein, in his wry title and borrowing of the image, is suggesting
an uncomfortable paradigm behind Friedrich's painting -- a perpetual
sense of momentous revolution within nature, raw humanity and indeed
artistic culture. These ideas pervaded Friedrich's work, as well as
that of composer Richard Wagner and philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche --
all of whose works were later so mistakenly absorbed into the
"superhuman" aesthetic of Nazi ideaology and doctrine.
Gottfried's work has evolved from his early realist, often grotesque
drawings and bandaged "Aktionen" (performances) on the streets of
Vienna to a moody, very contemporary photorealism. He is happy to work
through different media, and has collaborated with a number of theatre
and opera directors on large-scale set-designs in Germany, as well as
rock artists in Germany and the US, where he is currently working with
Marilyn Manson. But Helnwein's work is not without its humour -- as
when he appropriates the image of Mickey Mouse and invests him with
growling menace, or celebrates his lasting appreciation of the saintly
everyman persona of Donald Duck.
Helnwein has also produced paintings specifically for reproduction,
such as his well-known piece in an Austrian news magazine in 1979, of
a child's face slumped, dead, by a food bowl. He produced it to
sharpen the debate in Austria about the then appointment to the Head
of State Psychiatry of the former Nazi psychiatrist, Dr. Heinrich
Gross, who had "humanely" killed retarded children by poisoning their
food. Gross was forced to resign the post, and is still, in his 90s,
fighting off indictments for war crimes.
Helnwein caused a stir at the Kilkenny Arts Festival in 2001 -- in his
first exhibition in Ireland. This featured both a gallery show of
paintings in the Butler House, and an exhibtiion of huge, printed,
public works. There was initial controversy at his enormous
photomontages on the walls of Kilkenny Castle -- images of a
contemporary Madonna and child, adulated by young, doltish SA
stormstroopers; or in another image, senior SS men. The mother and
infant sat angelically in the position that Hitler occupied in the
original propaganda photographs.
Another strand of the public-art work which Helnwein mounted in
Kilkenny involved photography of local children which Helnwein then
rendered huge -- with their eyes closed, in a moment of meditation
which suggests sleep or even death. Beautiful and yet haunting, there
was something about the freckle-faced uniqueness of the Irish
character in these faces which intensified the various emotions these
faces suggested -- from serenity and timeless wisdom, though pain and
disturbance -- or in one, hung over the entrance to a bank, the
irresistable urge to burst into a fit of giggles.
Like the French artist Christo, who wraps various international
landmarks in canvas (from the Reichstag to his failed attempt to get
Dublin Corporation to allow him to wrap Stephens Green), Helnwein has
repeated this strategy in a number of cities around the world, such as
St. Petersburg and most notably Köln in 1988 to mark the 50th
anniversary of Kistallnacht on November 9th 1938, when the Nazis
finally unleashed their full wrath up on Jewish shops and busnisses
all over Germany and Austria.
Next year, Gottfried will become the first Western artist to exhibit
inside the Forbidden City in Beijing. Once again, the central image
will be a gigantic portrait of a girl-child's face, her eyes closed in
a peaceful, breath-taking slumber.
Gottfried's work is primarily about the positioning of images to
produce emotion and debate -- which frequently addresses the
vulnerability and centrality of children in our lives, and the
unnerving shadow of totalitariansim over contemporary civilisation.
Now that Helnwein splits his time between here and his studio in Los
Angeles, he is working on a series of what he calls his "American
Paintings" -- based on photographic archive images from the Los
Angeles public library -- and a number of Irish landscapes which
emerge from composite photographies and panoramas.
This is the first time Gottfried's work has been exhibited in Dublin.
01.Sep.2002 Lead White Gallery Mic Moroney
http://www.helnwein.com/texte/international_texts/artikel_637.html
And this is Gottfried Helnwein in his own words:
31.Jan.2000
TANK Magazine , Volume 2, Issue 2, London.
Essay by Gottfried Helnwein
THE AMERICAN PAINTINGS
These paintings are about America, I guess from a very European point
of view.
They're based on photographs, mainly newspaper photographs, of the
Fifties and Sixties from archives in New York and L.A. Most people in
these pictures are real people, caught in some long forgotten, petty
events.
I rearranged the scenes, introduced new characters, and created new
relationships and contexts. And then I painted them in black and blue.
That's how I remember America back then in the early Fifties in
Vienna, where I was born. The big war had ended a few years ago, but
the city still seemed undecided as to whether this was the end of the
world or if life should go on.
It was a strange, sad and surreal world. The streets were empty, the
houses dark - many of them in ruins from the bombings.
The few people I saw seemed ugly, clumsy, and depressed.
I never saw anybody laughing and I never heard anybody sing. It was a
world without sound and colour. Everything moved in slow motion, like
slime. We had no phones, no television, no cars, no music, no
pictures, except the paintings of tortured people in the Roman
Catholic church which made a deep impression on me, haunting me in the
sleepless nights of my childhood limbo.
And then, without any warning, suddenly there was America.
When I saw the first picture of Elvis I was in a state of shock,
because I couldn't believe that a human being could be so beautiful.
That was the beginning of the never-ending flood of American images
that suddenly came over us and started to penetrate and transform
everything.
The world that we inherited from our parents was a depleted,
exhausted, and empty place. Most of the artists, writers, and
intellectuals had left the country or were dead. The museums had been
looted by the Nazis and everything that they called "degenerate art"
was gone. All the books had been burned. And now all the images,
pictures and designs of the Third Reich that had suffused everything
for so many years had also been trashed overnight. It was a pretty
empty place now.
And out of this void we grew up into a world of wonders that we knew
only from black and white movies and photographs where everything was
impeccably staged and arranged. Shiny cars that looked like
spaceships; cops and celestial, pale girls in perfect light were
frozen into amazing poses always in the right spot of the picture,
casting long, black shadows. How these guys were holding their
cigarettes and what they did with the smoke was a piece of art. The
houses and the streets of New York and LA became our streets. We knew
all the details of the interior of the American middle-class home.
But we also saw the mountains of corpses in Auschwitz filmed by
cameramen of the U.S. army. We started to see the whole world through
American eyes in newspaper pictures and movies. These images
introduced us to a two-dimensional world without boundaries where fact
and fiction, future and past have equal rights and where distance and
time have no meaning.
I think there will never be another time where people can get rid of
some unwanted reality by just burning pictures - simply because there
are too many now and their number is growing in a never-ending
explosion. The pictures are not under our control anymore.
The invention of photography has changed the course and logic of art
and history. For visual artists the basic rules were turned upside
down, and ever since they have been struggling to find and redefine
their position. I think photography is the key medium and I'm
fascinated by its almost unlimited possibilities to shift and twist
reality.
My paintings do not intend to tell a story. Maybe they are freezing
the moment just before it's going to happen or a moment in the
aftermath. The viewers have to complete the narrative themselves. And,
if there is a conclusion, then it is outside of the painting.
- Gottfried Helnwein, referring to "The American Paintings", which
were shown at a one-man show, Modernism Gallery, San Francisco, 2000
Abstract from TANK Magazine, 31.Jan.2000, Volume 2, Issue 2, London.
Gottfried Helnwein
http://www.helnwein.com/werke/leinwand/tafel_2.html
The most recent series of L.A. inspired works by Gottfried Helnwein
are currently on show at the Modernism Gallery in San Francisco.
http://modernisminc.com/artists/Gottfried_HELNWEIN/#
There are several websites about Helnwein. The best and most
informative Helnwein sites in my opinion are:
http://www.helnwein.com/home/home/home.html,
http://www.helnwein.org/gottfried/helnwein/org/start.html, and
http://www.helnwein.net/start.html
The art of Helnwein in relation to comic art has its own
website:http://helnweincomic.homestead.com/
Gottfried Helnwein has recently begun work on a project with Marilyn
Manson.
10.Jul.2002
Marilyn Manson
Interview by Alexander, www.mansonusa.com
EXCERPTS FROM MARILYN MANSON INTERVIEW
Alexander:
Which painters and visual artists have inspired you most?
Manson:
Egon Schiele, Gottfried Helnwein, Luis Bunuel, Dali, Jodorowsky.
Bosch, Warhol, Mark Ryden, Fellini. On and on...
Alexander:
Do you have aspirations to work with any other artists or persons
(aside from Tim Skold) on new projects?
Manson:
Maybe Felix Da House Kat. D12 keeps trying to get me involved. I have
my hands full with Helnwein on a few intertwined projects...
Which painters and visual artists have inspired you most?
Egon Schiele, Gottfried Helnwein, Luis Bunuel, Dali, Jodorowsky.
Bosch, Warhol, Mark Ryden, Fellini. On and on...
Do you have aspirations to work with any other artists or persons
(aside from Tim Skold) on new projects?
Maybe Felix Da House Kat. D12 keeps trying to get me involved. I have
my hands full with Helnwein on a few intertwined projects. It really
depends on the circumstance. I don't like to collaborate with music
outside of the band. It gets too distorted and unfocused.
for the complete interview go to:
http://www.mansonusa.com/
05.Jul.2002
www.undercover.com.au
MANSON: "IT IS ONE OF THE MOST AMAZING THINGS I?VE EVER SEEN"
"I acquired a Marlene Dietrich portrait from Helnwein that is signed
by her" he says. "It is one of the most amazing things I?ve ever seen"
Marilyn Manson found himself in hospital this week, the victim of
stress and exhaustion in the rush to get his next record out.
He tells fans at his official website "This week was strenuous and I
landed myself in the hospital as a result of ?going too far? in the
creation process. I am fine now and glad to be back in the studio.
We have just completed the last track for the album and it is my
favorite so far".
Manson's also says he has started his own art collection and is now
the proud owner of a Marlene Dietrich work. "I acquired a Marlene
Dietrich portrait from Helnwein that is signed by her" he says. "It is
one of the most amazing things I?ve ever seen". He purchased the work
of art at Gottfried Helnwein's first L.A. show last month.
Art is the new love and career move for Marilyn Manson. He will hold
an exhibition of his own original work in Los Angeles on September 18
and 19. For those interested in attending, it will be at Les Deux
Cafes in Hollywood, CA.
The next Marilyn Manson album The Golden Age of Grotesque, produced by
Manson, Skold and Ben Grosse is expected in September on Interscope
Records.
By Paul Cashmere
http://www.helnwein.com/news/update/artikel_564.html
Gottfried Helnwein's son, Cyril Helnwein, has recently interviewed
Marylin Manson extensively for Tastes Like Chicken, Ohio.
22nd of September 2002
Interview with Marilyn Manson
By Cyril Helnwein
CYRIL HELNWEIN: Thank you very much for your time; it's an honor and
a pleasure to interview you.
MARILYN MANSON: Thank you. Of course, for everybody who reads this
they won't know that our meeting has been very important to my career,
because you introduced me to your father (Gottfried Helnwein) and
we've gone and will go on to do lots of great stuff together. So
that's the behind-the-scenes story for everybody who's going to read
this. . .
-------------------------------
To read the rest of the interview go to: http://tlchicken.com/