PRESENT: A crowd described as groovy and Hollywoodish -including actor/skateboarder Jason Lee - turned up Thursday for the opening of Austrian-born L.A.-and-Ireland resident Gottfried Helnwein's show at Modernism in San Francisco. Sean Penn was said to have bought three paintings. ...

THE FRENCH SAY, "CONDEMNANT IL FAIT Q'UOD": "WE CONDEMN WHAT WE DO NOT UNDERSTAND." BUT THAT STOPS RIGHT HERE. LAY YOUR OPINIONS OF THE MAN TO REST UNTIL AFTER YOU'VE READ THE ENTIRE CONVERSATION BETWEEN CYRIL HELNWEIN AND MARILYN MANSON
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Manson:
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.. ...

His private collection of abstract expressionists, contemporary and Native American art is considered by dealers and curators to be one of the nations best, and he has seats on the boards of the museums of modern art in San Francisco and New York. Much of his collection, including works by Wayne Theibaud, Naomi Kremer, GOTTFRIED HELNWEIN and Nathan Oliveira, is on display throughout the company's offices.
In November, Sotheby's will hold a sale of more than 20 abstract works owned by Weisel. The paintings are expected to fetch as much as $60 million. ...

Some of his work is disturbing to say the least, and has been described as "the visual equivalent of a contact sport". He uses art as a way to fight back at society, his pictures forcing people to face things they might prefer to forget about.
Children feature heavily, as do bandages and chilling images from the wartime era. All very challanging, yet fascinating. ...

The art in the loft is primarily representational and often haunting, veering towards an eerie hyperphotorealism. A large painting by Gottfried Helnwein shows a group of men - perhaps doctors or veterans of war - surrounding the body of a young girl on an examination table. They gaze directly at the viewer, as if posing . It could be an antique photograph - the men are from another time - but for the disfigured faces of the physicians.
"I don't think they know how they look," says Lee. ...

Die von William Hogarths Kupferstichserie von 1733/34 inspirierte Oper weckt von je den Ehrgeiz der Maler, Bühnenbildner zu sein: David Hockney, Jörg Immendorf, zuletzt in Hamburg Gottfried Helnwein. Die Orte des Niedergangs von Tom Rakewell - Landidylle, ein Londoner Bordell, Friedhof und die Endstation Irrenhaus - kitzeln reflexhaft die Inspiration: es zucken und schnappen Drastik, wilde Farben, Travestie und Parodie. ...

When Austrian artist Gottfried Helnwein opened a show of his paintings recently, celebrities crowded his downtown studio.
Leonardo DiCaprio rubbed Elbows with Marilyn Manson. Beck chatted with Kevin Smith. Mena Suvari stopped for a photo op, and Sean Penn lent his cool.
For a recent transplant, Helnwein attracted much Hollywood. ...

“This is a very serious and somewhat disturbing exhibition,” said Mayor Meralee Goldman, who is supportive of the exhibit and was first approached by the Austrian artist.
“There is an important component of education to go along with this exhibit,” Human Relations Director Mary O’Gorman said. “This is a Holocaust Memorial, and the intent at times is to overwhelm.”
The exhibit is described as “an art event to focus the conscience of the viewer and, through media exposure, the conscience of the widest possible public” by the artist’s draft proposal. “An art installation a city block long...will rise into public view to cry out against not only one of history’s most tragic and horrific episodes of prejudice, but also against the current resurgence of the endangerment of children through intolerance around the world.” ...

...Helnwein opens up"Nighthawks" to closer iconographic inspection, exposing the symbolic meanings of the painting to cement its position as a landmark of twentieth-century anti-urbanism. ...

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cover: "Head of a Child 4"
inside: "Head of a Child 5" 2000, oil and acrylic on canvas,
and "Ninth of November Night", 1988, installation at the Museum Ludwig, cologne ...

`The Portrait Obscured,'' the current exhibit at the San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art, where 19 artists have all but forgone the portrait entirely in their pursuit of it.
The exhibit's signature pieces are two paintings by the Austrian painter Gottfried Helnwein.
A bit of perceptual sleight of hand, two seemingly blue-black canvases on close inspection reveal portraits of John Lennon and Bruce Lee.
Portraits obscured, to be sure, and perhaps a meditation on how unknowable are the famous by their famous faces. ...

...or how about odd nerdrum...or gottfried helnwein if you just wanna talk about paint handling these two are far superior...and perhaps being a child of a "ironic culture" has something to do with you liking the paintings...perhaps me being a child of a violent one has something to do with not liking them...
I understand the subjectivity in art but I was hoping we'd stop breeding new "quirku" warhols ...

The common or garden tie doesn't tend to throw up too many fashion conundrums for the casual wearer. The options are pretty simple; classic and understated or loud and hey, wacky!
But not anymore: thanks to London-based fashion terrorists, Cultural Ties, all that is about to change with a range of neckties, featuring specially commissioned work from over 80 contemporary artists. Now the sartorially discerning can choose from pink bunnies (Jeff Koons), naked ladies (Paola Gandolfi), amorphous freaks (Gottfried Helnwein) and satanic messages (David Shrigley) to mention a few.

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How can one recount the Holocaust? That is certainly one of the major questions confronting any writer who tries to write on this theme. How is one to transform the horrific and inconceivable reality into fiction? How can one create a feeling of aunthenticity in the reader? How to disturb his emotional world without resorting to sentimental manipulation and how to avoid banality? ...

Q:How can you explain the artistic cruelty of your cover art works? Why is there so much pain and suffering on them? Where is the border between art and cruelty?
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A:We like to arise controversies and that is why already on the second album we decided to choose the photographs of Helnwein for our cover artwork. We really like his attitude towards art and the way he showed us. It turned out that a band picture can be something different, a real art, and not just another common, boring shot of a few people. ...

Übersetzung des englischen Textes von Mic Moroney: THE MURMUR OF THE INNOCENTS.
Katalog "Helnwein", one man show and Installation in the City o Kilkenny, The Kilkenny Arts Festival 2001 ...

A controversial "Nazi" image by artist Gottfried Helnwein was daubed with red paint last week as Kilkenny Arts Festival entered its final days. Another Helnwein print, of a local girl, was set on fire and extensively damaged.

Helnwein is famously confrontational, and his bold conflations of Nazi and Christian iconography, in Epiphany and other prominently displayed pictures, predictably generated some friction. Yet, in a way, one shouldn't rush to condemn condemnations of, or expressions or resignation about, Helnwein's work, no matter how superficial or uninformed they turn out to be. Because, let's face it, a large part of its effectiveness had to do with its calculated, barbed ambiguity.
The point of the images is that they put it up to you as a viewer. Given that, one potential line of criticism is that they are designed solely to be provocative, like Marcus Harvey's portrait of Myra Hindley. But the abiding strength of Helnwein's work is that provocation is a means rather than an end; it is - however uncomfortable - morally grounded, if not necessarily in a way that will please all observers...
His beautiful photographs of Kilkenny children are, collectively, a recognisable derivative of his work Selection, which implicitly placed the viewer in the position of someone marking children for extermination. Strong stuff.
If that seems irrelevant in an Irish context, one could always point to Northern Ireland and to the scandals that have shaken the complacent authority of church and state in recent years.
What is more innocent, more open, more charming than the face of a child? Except that we are more than ever uncomfortably aware that the act of looking is not at all innocent, and Helnwein's children, with their closed, downcast eyes, decline to meet our collective gaze. Why? Perhaps because they insist on remaining within the orbits of their imaginations.
There is also, however, a slight unease arising from the uniformity of the images and the awareness that the subjects are being directed. Helnwein has a knack for throwing responsibility for what we are looking at back onto us, the viewers. ...