The bizarre and squirm-inducing self-representations of Austrian conceptual artist Gottfried Helnwein - the guy who likes to puncture his cheeks with surgical instruments - are so disturbing that municipal councils have sought to ban his work.
But these are depictions of pain that make sense, given the intellectual and moral framework of Helnwein's personal and political past.
The odd bureaucrat might question his motivations, only to be instantly shouted down by a chorus of art critics and intellectuals who can think of thousands of cogent, intelligent reasons why Helnwein's work matters. Still, the few members of the bod-mod community who actually talked to me took the moral high ground.
Logic alone indicates that one person's Pamela Anderson is someone else's Lizard Man (Eric Sprague, a man who has, over the last few years, obsessively pursued his desire to become a human lizard via tattoos, teeth-filing, etc.)
In a free society, the body's canvas is something an adult person should have complete mastery over. ...

Helnwein:
"I think art always reflects the society and the time the artist lives in; it always tells you something about the condition of the culture.
This is the age of materialism and profit, accompanied by its favorite all-eating pet – the entertainment industry. Therefore in order not to sink into oblivion, in a desperate struggle to be heard and seen, many artists and curators try to compete with this multi-media-entertainment-Godzilla, trying to be just as loud and cheap and stupid. That’s why 70% to 80% of all the contemporary art in our museums is crap.
It’s true though that each time has its own aesthetic values and if you want to reach the people of today you have to develop an artistic language that they can understand. And that’s what I try to do – my audience is the great love-affair of my life. I am obsessed with my public, and all I want to do with my art is touch them and move them and to hold them tight – and sometimes I want to kick their ass. That is all I care about.
But I also listen to them and take them and their responses serious, because they and other artists are the only ones that ever taught me anything." ...

Hay de decidirse a creer” (Aira. 51), telenovelas rasas que, en la Buenos Aires de Iris Nieves, “al mismo tiempo que eran de una extravagancia demente, debían ser muy banales, muy esquemáticas, simplificaciones brutales de la realidad, a la medida del más amplio de los públicos” (ib.), Bandagen-Aktionen y hielmos de vendas echándoselas de parificadas por idolatría de lo sobrante sobresaliente y sacrificio de fisonomía en estrictura uniforme, divinamente previsible autosuficiencia de la epidermis (v. Gottfried Helnwein, Marlene, acuarela sobre cartón, 1983) arrugada y rajada en corola de brochazo florecido sin arte ni parte mientras el hombrecito espera el autobús clavándose un Crazy Red 13 (Jolie de Vogue - Nail Polish, Laboratorios de Cosméticos Vogue, Bogotá) de lápiz tan amargo cuanto la mancha del girasol azteca que tiene encima (v. Helnwein, Artaud’s Song, óleo y pastel, 1989), a fin de enganchar la dolorosa cantilena del espinazo, claro está, obscurísimo, espejeante, otro reflejo succionado por faz definida en gasa alquitranosa, ocultos los bulbos oculares, sin tenedor edípico, la gula de sí brillando apenas en el fiel salivar de una tarántula metálica metida en la boca, quizás dispositivo quirúrgico cuya función habitual debería consistir en mantener separados los tejidos, doble erina en el lugar repugnante de lo que ni se come ni se saca, freno o bocado al borde de motes engolados, orzuelo oral, no el tumorcito del párpado sino esa especie de cepo que se utiliza para cazar fieras por los pies (v. Helnwein, Black Mirror V, Cibachrome, 1987). ...

Helnwein: "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."
The Mickey portraits are only a small part of a larger collection of unnerving images that Manson will incorporate into his worldwide "Grotesk Burlesk" stage show.
"The corporations, the media, they tell us to be shocked by images like these," Helnwein says. "Well, it's the world that's shocking to people like myself and Manson. There's no freedom. There's censorship. You're constantly being told how you should behave.
What Manson and I have in common is the fact that we don't accept this. These images represent us fighting back." ...

"Meine Arbeit hat immer polarisiert. Ich habe immer Leute gehabt, die begeistert und fasziniert waren und ich habe immer Leute gehabt, die mich gehasst haben.
Als ich noch in Wien war und ein Kritiker, der ein Leben lang eine Menge schlechter Bilder ohne Probleme ausgehalten hat, bei mir aber wirklich ausgerastet ist, Schaum vor dem Mund hatte, und fast einen Herzinfarkt gekriegt hat, dachte ich mir: Siehst du, irgendeine Intensität muss dein Werk haben.
Bei meiner ersten Ausstellung im Wiener Künstlerhaus sind meine Bilder sogar mit Klebern überpickt worden auf denen “Entartete Kunst” stand. ...

He and Helnwein created a series of controversial photographs, most of which were deemed by the label as too risque to be album art, including one of Manson dressed in Nazi regalia and clutching a gun as a young girl looks on. ...

Wie authentisch kann, wie inszenatorisch muss Portraitfotografie sein? Und was sagt sie über die Person aus, die hinter dem Objektiv steht? Für Andy Warhol war die Kamera gleichermaßen Medium der Kontaktaufnahme und der Distanzierung. Sein gesamtes Oeuvre zehrt von dieser fotografischen Ambivalenz.
Eine Darstellung des Pop-Art-Künstlers zählt zur Serie der großen Charakterköpfe, die der Wiener Gottfried Helnwein ganz für sich sprechen lässt - während gegenüber davon die Fotos von Jochen Gertz nicht ohne ihren Begleittext auskommen. ...

Across the tiled runway, the living area displays three paintings with intentionally disturbing narratives. “They’re more complex,” she continues. “For my children to understand art, I needed some difficult pieces.” “American Prayer” – one of a half dozen paintings by Gottfried Helnwein, whom the couple discovered at the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, Russia – shows a boy with prosthetic arms praying to Donald Duck. “This Disneyland view of America symbolizes, to us, optimism for the future,” she says. ...

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. ...