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. ...

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A spokesman for the festival said they were "disappointed and saddened" that the images had been attacked. He said Mr Helnwein's work had provoked a strong reaction throughout the festival. "There have been a lot of positive comments but there has been negative reaction as well."
The images have been a major talking point since before the festival began. A former mayor of the city, Mr Paul Cuddihy, initially objected to a painting being hung on the City Hall for fear it might be misinterpreted as lending support to Nazism. After meeting Mr Helnwein at his studio in Co Tipperary, however, Mr Cuddihy said the artist's work was "astonishingly good".

Kilkenny Arts Festival said the artist had a long and acknowledged record of taking a firm stand against Nazism and fascism. ...

If you are a tourist whose arrival coincides with the festival, so much the better. Or worse, that is, should you want to take that defining photograph of one of Ireland's great castles and find it obscured by the massive, football pitch-size images by Gottfried Helnwein, whose work you may or may not like. "I don't give a damn what the hell it's supposed to be saying," announced an exasperated North American with a complicated-looking camera to the tiny woman at his side, "who in their right could justify poster art on an historic building smack dab in the tourist season or at any goddamn time." Some people appear to like the pictures of the local children. For others, the images are dismissed as "variations of Benetton-style advertising". Some women disapprove of the fact that the young girl's eyes are wearing eye make-up. A couple weren't happy about the children having their eyes closed, "It's, um, suggestive." ...

The major art works of Austrian artist Gottfried Helnwein, at Kilkenny Castle, Butler House and throughout the city are beautiful, prosaic, sinister, grotesque, unusual and ordinary and provoked a lot of discussion and disgust.

A controversial mural by Austrian artist, Gottfried Helnwein has been damaged at the Kilkenny Arts Festival.
Huge canvases of his work, depicting images of Nazi soldiers staring adoringly at modern Madonna and Child figures, were displayed on various buildings in Kilkenny during the festival.
One of the murals hanging at the front of Kilkenny castle had paint thrown at it sometime during the night.
Another picture by Mr Helnwein, featuring a young Kilkenny girl, was also partially damaged in another part of the town. ...

The visual focal point of the arts festival has to be Gottfried Helnwein's huge photographic images displayed on the streets of Kilkenny. Originally from Austria, Helnwein is now based in County Tipperary. His display of works on the streets of Kilkenny, and in Butler House, is testament to the power of this man's visual imagery. Helnwein's concerns could be viewed on a political level, indeed in his own homeland his work has been hounded by controversy, as he directly pinpoints neo-Nazi neuroses.
'Epiphany I: Adoration of the Magi' depicts a beautiful Madonna and Child being examined by Himmler's elite SS officers. This is strong stuff, with piercing connotations on the interaction of religion, politics and power in the 20th century. Juxtaposed with these images are a series of enlarged photographs of children's faces from Kilkenny. Hung in the same manner as billboard advertisements on buildings and walls, these photographs, with their silent, shut-eyed subjects, are meditative comments on life in the making. ...

No better way was this shown than with the giant canvasses draped along the castle and around the streets of the city. For those who didn't know the work of Austrian artist Gottfried Helnwein, his huge pictures of local children were a delight.
The canvasses showing images from the Nazi era just left them confused, but the throngs who visited Kilkenny during the weekend snapped away with their cameras all the same.
Ms Anne Quiggle who was on a tour from Minnesota wasn't impressed, however. "It doesn't belong on the castle. It's ruining the view," she said.
Ms Joni Delaney O'Connell, the tour organiser, said the Nazi images were just "too political" for an arts festival.
Mr Seamus Raben from Celbridge came to see Helnwein's work. "The craftsmanship is outstanding, and it's great how he involves himself with the local community," he said. ...

Workmen finish one of a series of prints measuring 9.3 metres by 6.2 metres by Austrian artist Gottfried Helnwein.The prints of Kilkenny children will hang on buildings in Kilkenny as parts of its arts festival beginning on August 10th. ...

The disturbing Work of Helnwein comes to Ireland Helnwein is a headline artist who works in tight sound bites on a very large scale. The works brand themselves with proof of his technical know-how in various media and are endorsed by the coolest celebrities of his generation. So much for the cover-story, so what lies within? Headlines lure you into stories that make you want to cry, smile or help to change the world. But when they stop at your own skin, you can get a sinking feeling, a sense of the bigness and badness outside and the impossibility of change. ...

RECORD numbers are expected to visit Kilkenny's art festival over the next week.
Organisers say attendance at shows and exhibitions on the first weekend indicates that up to 80,000 people will have visited by the time the 10-day event finishes next Sunday.
The main talking point of the festival is a series of paintings including one by world-renowned Austrian painter Gottfried Helnwein, who took an old photograph of Adolf Hitler surrounded by children and replaced it with the Madonna and Child surrounded by SS officers.
Heinwein's paintings are hanging on a number of buildings around the city, including Kilkenny Castle, the National Irish Bank and the Watergate Theatre.
Funding for the festival is the highest to date with the organisers receiving more than £400,000. ...

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Once an agitated spectator wondered how an apparently nice man could produce such disturbing imagery. Helnwein replied: "What bothers you is the pictures that get triggered in your own head." Perusing a catalogue of his work in preparation for a meeting is a journey through disgust, fear, fascination and admiration to finally - almost - attachment. ...

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... ...

THE streets of the ancient county city of Kilkenny become a vast open air art gallery during this year's Kilkenny Arts Festival as the provocative work of Austrian artist Gottfried Helnwein hangs his vast photo-realist paintings from buildings large and small including the metropolis's towering castle.
Helnwein's work, which has even led to government resignations in his native land, examines the ambivalence and hypocrisy with which unpleasant truths about the past are now viewed by society. ...

A major controversy has erupted over plans to hang huge paintings outside City Hall during the Kilkenny Arts Festival. Examples of the paintings to be displayed were shown to members of Kilkenny Corporation on Monday night and it sparked uproar in the chamber.
Cllr Paul Cuddihy rose to his feet and said that the city would be seen to be promoting the people responsible for the Second World War and the Holocaust if paintings like the one handed out at the meeting were allowed to be displayed outside City Hall.
He was referring to a controversial picture by Gottfried Helnwein, the internationally acclaimed Austrian artist who wants to display his work in the city during the Arts Festival. Arts Minister, Sile de Valera had already given the green light to hang some of his latest pieces from the front of Kilkenny Castle. ...

A former mayor of the city, Mr. Paul Cuddihy, objected to a proposal to display one of the images on the City Hall after it was shown to members of Kilkenny Corporation on Monday night. After visiting the artist at his home in Co.Tipperary, however, the Fine Gael councillor said Mr. Helnwein was an "astonishinlgy good" artist whose works would have a "huge visual impact" on next month's festival. ...

Das Eindringen des Horrors in den Alltag hat wohl kaum jemand so beklemmend dargestellt wie der österreichische Künstler Gottfried Helnwein. Auf seinen Bildern nimmt die Gewalt derart Besitz von der Normalität, dass sie zum alles vergiftenden Elixier des Grauens wird. Viele seiner Gemälde, Plakate, Fotografien und Federzeichnungen zeigen Versehrung und Verstümmlung von Menschen, klinische Folterszenen, brutalisierten Kindern mit apathischen Blick, mit verbundenen Köpfen und Händen, oder mit ausradierten Gesichtern. Dennoch schockiert nicht die Inhalte allein: So umfassend scheint vielmehr Helnweins Perspektive auf das Leben vom Gefühl der Qual durchtränkt, dass selbst motivisch harmlosen Porträts, von John F. Kennedy oder Mick Jagger etwa, noch die Gewalt aus jeder fotorealistischen Pore dringt. ...

Austrian born artist Gottfried Helnwein's work is also of exemplary value, beginning with bandage action events (documented by the artist appearing in cafe's and lying in the street with his "wounded" head and face bandaged). His work depicts physical injuries which are metaphors for far deeper existential, psychological and human tragedies. Medical injuries, facial deformities and abused children proliferate throughout his work evoking primary internal anxieties. The inhumane acts of violence (child abuse, war atrocities, state oppression) and frightening images of familial estrangement that are presented in his work, constitute events which are preferred forgotten, like the nazi era, or preferred left unspoken such as familial traumas like child abuse. Helnwein also conducts a probing analysis of the individual and the self through an abundance of self portraits, each obscured by hideous facial bandages, his facial muscles, lips and eyes are stretched apart, torturingly, by varied medical instruments, now made famous by the Rammstein covers. All his images in some way evoke associations with mutilation, anguish or internal alienation. The works (frequently paintings appearing remarkably like photographs), boldly put forward social unacceptabilities never before portrayed so lucidly and so confrontingly. The many intensities produced in the work are profoundly disturbing, the impressions - uncomfortably eerie, electrocuting the eyes with a rush of haunting spatiality. ...