Excerpt from the essay "Black Mirror", which Heiner Müller wrote 1986 in Berlin for the Helnwein exhibition “Der Untermensch - Self-portraits from 1970 - 1987" at the Musée d’Art Moderne, Strasbourg, 1987, Edition Braus, Heidelberg. ISBN: 3925835075
QUOTE: Heiner Müller
Heiner Müller
playwright
How does 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? TERROR WITHOUT END IS BETTER THAN AN ENDING IN TERROR. It comes from the over-evaluation of death, a consequence of "statistics" making it taboo. Perseus guillotines the Gorgon in the mirror, - and when the head falls, it is his own. How many heads does a person/man have in our age of mirrors?