Gottfried Helnwein | PRESS | English Press

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English Press

The-True-Impact-of-Violence-On-Childhood-Why-Every-American-Ought-To-See-The-Paintings-Of-Gottfried-Helnwein.

Two days after the Sandy Hook school massacre, a survival gear company called Black Dragon Tactical composed a new slogan to promote sales of armored backpack inserts. “Arm the teachers,” the company declared on Facebook. “In the meantime, bulletproof the kids.”... The question may be political, but the keenest response is to be found in a museum in Mexico City, the Museo Nacional de San Carlos, at a retrospective of paintings and photographs by the Austrian-American artist Gottfried Helnwein. Helnwein’s extraordinary work depicts the fragile innocence of children. Devoid of grown-up sentimentalism, his images can be overwhelming, especially those that show how that innocence falters in an adult world. mehr

CRITICS-CHOICES-2004-Helnwein

San Francisco Chronicle

Chosen as the most important show of a contemporary artist in 2004.

TOP 10 The Gottfried Helnwein exhibition "The Child" at the Palace of the Legion of Honor (San Francisco Fine Arts Museums, July) was chosen as the most important show of a contemporary artist in 2004. "In the first of two shows (the other at the Modernism Gallery in November), Helnwein's large format, photo-realist images of children of various demeanors boldly probed the subconscious. Innocence, sexuality, victimization and haunting self-possession surge and flicker in Helnwein's unnerving work." mehr

The-Child-Exhibition-130000-VISITORS-The-reviews

Palace of the Legion of Honor

Summary of reviews and texts

Adults bring a trunkful of contradictory cultural baggage to any representations of children. That's what makes the work of Helnwein so powerful. In his show, "The Child," at the Legion of Honor (of the San Francisco Fine Arts Museums), deformed infants and bandaged children stir feelings of pity, defiance and uneasiness about exploitation. There's an ambiguously disturbing painting of a girl aiming a gun into an open refrigerator and another of a bare-breasted mother and child surrounded by Aryan soldiers. But the most haunting images may be the ones of children who seem strangely oblivious to the adult gaze. Some of Helnwein's children peer right past the onlooker. Others sleep, dreaming of anything but us behind their silky eyelids. And some, like the enormous, half- shadowed "Head of a Child" at the Legion, see straight through us with cloudless, infinite blue eyes. Steven Winn, San Francisco Chronicle, 17. November 2004 mehr

Bloodied-but-Unbowed

The Sunday Times

Fury greeted Gottfried Helnwein's Waterford Installation, but his art deals in public trauma, says Gerry McCarthy

Again and again, he has painted children in brutal, violent settings. He has used Christian iconography to depict Nazi officers, and juxtaposed rampaging soldiers with Images of childhood innocence. Visceral reactions come with the territory: one Installation in Cologne was physically attacked by neo Nazis. And yet, he says, he does not set out to shock. "Shock is a useless effect," he says. "Somebody in shock is completely useless. I want to make somebody think." Instead, Helnwein's work speaks of a deep psychological need for meaning, even as it takes the form of violence and confrontation. Such an approach is rooted in the uneasy silences of growing up in post-war Austria and the shattered illusions of his early adult life, yet is still infused with an uneasy idealism. His art has brought him material rewards. Over the past 30 years, he has become an art superstar. His paintings and photographs command large prices. As he talks in his Co Tipperary castle, garbed in black clothes and dark glasses, Helnwein has the air of a veteran rock star and the lifestyle to match it. mehr

Gottfried-Helnwein-Dark-Inspiration

Los Angeles Times

The artist, who has taken on war crimes, Catholicism and the Holocaust in his works, is inspired by the city.

Some might think that Los Angeles - its unrelenting sun, its one-step-away-from-reality perch -- is an incongruous place for someone like Helnwein. What he creates, regardless the medium - watercolor, oil, photography, performance art, sculpture - is a thorny psychological excursion into our sublimated self, our obscured corners and dark humors. His explorations into war crimes, Catholicism, disfigurement and the Holocaust are both unflinching and surgical. His work is in museum collections around the world, including those of LACMA and the Smithsonian, and critics have labeled it grotesque, fearless, disturbing and "veer[ing] dangerously close to offensive." People are surprised, he says, when they discern that he doesn't "seem insane." mehr

The-Helnweins-Will-See-You-Now.

The New York Times

By Nicholas Haramis

They’re creepy and they’re kooky, mysterious and spooky. They’re altogether ooky. Meet the The Real-Life Addams Family

February rains flooded the gravel road to Gurteen Castle, a 40-room fortress built in 1866 for Pope Pius IX’s chamberlain. Throughout the Republic of Ireland, stories about power outages dominated the evening news, but the Austrian artist Gottfried Helnwein and his wife, Renate, their four children and three of their grandchildren were oblivious to the storm. In the castle’s dining room, under the flickering glow of candlelight, they were singing along to a spirited rendition of “Nell Flaherty’s Drake,” a bouncy 19th-century Irish folk song that had them merrily rhyming “astray” and “gray.” mehr

Nazi-dreaming

New Statesman, UK

"Face it" Helnwein exhibition at Lentos Museum of Modern Art Linz

Gottfried Helnwein's latest exhibition, "Face It", is the artist's first show in his native Austria since 1985. A retrospective of 40 works from the 1970s to the present, it is more shocking than the Royal Academy's infamous "Sensation" of 1997. Helnwein aims to disturb not with, say, an elephant-dung Madonna, as Chris Ofili did then, but with a far more controversial Virgin. Of all his paintings, the most disturbing is Epiphany (1996), for which he dips into our collective memory of Christianity's most famous birth. This Austrian Catholic Nativity scene has no magi bearing gifts. Madonna and child are encircled by five respectful Waffen SS officers palpably in awe of the idealised, kitsch-blonde Virgin. The Christ toddler, who stands on Mary's lap, stares defiantly out of the canvas. Helnwein's baby Jesus is Adolf Hitler. mehr

The-Darker-Side-of-Playland-Childhood-Imagery-from-the-Logan-Collection-at-SFMOMA

In 'The Darker Side of Playland', the endearing cuteness of beloved toys and cartoon characters turns menacing and monstrous. Much of the work has the quality of childhood nightmares. In those dreams, long before any adult understanding of the specific pains and evils that live holds, the familiar and comforting objects and images of a child's world are rent with something untoward. For children, not understanding what really to be afraid of, these dreams portend some pain and disturbance lurking into the landscape. Perhaps nothing in the exhibition exemplifies this better than Gottfried Helnwein's 'Mickey'. His portrait of Disney's favotite 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. mehr

Conformity-is-no-Place-for-me

The Free Lunch Commission

The Entropy Memo

Any belief system will pre-condition you to see only things that you are supposed to see, but it will make you blind to anything you are not allowed to perceive, even if it happens right in front of you. Through various education systems in all history, people have been convinced to abandon their own values and dreams and have been programmed to think and behave in certain ways. So people have developed a good workable system of selective perception. But there are always those that can’t be broken and properly programmed: artists, writers and thinkers. Nothing scares authoritarian regimes more than art and free creation. Why would Hitler burn mountains of books and paintings and ban all arts? Why would Stalin—the master over life and death of almost 300 million people, a man who commanded the biggest army and secret service that ever existed—be afraid of a poem by Anna Akhmatova? Why would Mao be so obsessed with destroying China’s entire cultural heritage? Why would FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, while denying the existence of organised crime in the US, put so much effort into harassing and spying on every artist from Hemingway, Elvis, Thomas Mann to John Lennon? The last thing any human society wants are free beings. Don’t wait for somebody to grant you freedom, it will never happen; if you want freedom, you have to seize it. Creating art is one way of doing it, and for me it’s the most effective way. On this planet, creating means to stand up, to rebel, to resist. It means striking back. mehr

Confronting-the-Intolerable

Los Angeles Review of Books

Brad Evans interviews Gottfried Helnwein

Throughout the entire history, the only forces capable of resisting tyranny and suppression are artists, thinkers, and writers. These are the makers of what we call culture, which means the combination of aesthetics and spirituality. Dictators know that, they have a very good sense for the only serious threat to their power: free creation and free communication. On this planet, creating means to stand up, to rebel, to resist, it means striking back. mehr

Childhood-isnt-what-it-used-to-be.-In-the-arts-its-dark-and-complex.

San Francisco Chronicle

Gottfried Helnwein's work is on display at the Legion of Honor and at Modernism Inc.

Her lips are parted and colored a luscious deep red. The pancake makeup on her face gives off a marble-white glow. A jacket, adorned with braided gold epaulets at the shoulders, yawns open, exposing a wide expanse of skin down her chest. She appears to be about 8 years old. There was a time, not so long ago, when the subject of Gottfried Helnwein's new, large-format digital prints at San Francisco's Modernism Gallery might have alarmed or even scandalized a viewer. Not anymore -- or at least not so reflexively... Adults bring a trunkful of contradictory cultural baggage to any representations of children. That's what makes the work of Helnwein so powerful. In his show, "The Child," at the Legion of Honor, deformed infants and bandaged children stir feelings of pity, defiance and uneasiness about exploitation. There's an ambiguously disturbing painting of a girl aiming a gun into an open refrigerator and another of a bare-breasted mother and child surrounded by Aryan soldiers. But the most haunting images, here and across town at Modernism, may be the ones of children who seem strangely oblivious to the adult gaze. Some of Helnwein's children peer right past the onlooker. Others sleep, dreaming of anything but us behind their silky eyelids. And some, like the enormous, half- shadowed "Head of a Child" at the Legion, see straight through us with cloudless, infinite blue eyes. mehr

SHOCK-ART

The Sunday Times

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. mehr

GOTTFRIED-HELNWEIN-THE-MAN-WHO-USED-HIS-OWN-BLOOD-TO-PAINT-HITLER

Kate Connolly meets Gottfried Helnwein, the Austrian who is still confronting his country's Nazi past.

It could have been worse. At least he doesn't look like his self-portraits, in which bandages swathe his head, bent forks pull his mouth into a mocking smile and blood drenches his torso. Helnwein, 52, is a master of the scandalous and the art of shocking. The artist Robert Crumb once said of him: "Helnwein is a very fine artist and one sick motherfucker." "You can get things moving in a very subtle way, you can get even the strong and powerful to slide and totter - anything, actually, if you know the weak points and tap at them ever so gently by aesthetic means." mehr

-THE-BLOODSTAINED-FUEHRER

The Irish Times

The controversial work of Austrian artist Gottfried Helnwein, now resident in Ireland, explores the lingering Austrian loyalty to Nazism. He speaks to Mic Moroney.

One piece of public art he did in 1988 - funded fully by himself, after he failed to raise sponsorship - commemorated the 50th anniversary of Kristallnacht. "Again, what amazed me was that nobody talked about it - and yet that was when the horror really started." "I wanted to do it in front of the Dome in Cologne, but the City prevented it. But there was this little strip of land which belonged to the railways, and a guy who worked there said, 'go ahead'. I didn't want to use these historic photographs which are used too often - those mountains of corpses mean nothing anymore - so I used four metre high children's faces. I photographed children from the area, foreign children, German children, Jews, anything." Mounted in a long billboard line, after the huge word "Selection", the children's faces were powdered in a deathly, bruised way, many with their eyes closed. That may sound subtle, but in the context of muted German Holocaust memorials, it was like a slap in the face. Despite CCTV video-cameras, someone painstakingly sliced the throats of every single child-portrait. mehr

Astonishing-photo-realistic-portraits

The images you are about to see may shock or confound you. Gottfried Helnwein frequently depicts children in his gigantic, mesmerizing portraits, along with "low culture" icons including Donald Duck, with the loss of childhood innocence as a reoccurring theme. mehr

Gottfried-Helnwein

Helnwein in the Rudolfinum Gallery The exhibition entitled “Angels Sleeping” introduces works by the Austrian artist, Gottfried Helnwein, whose oeuvre has become a phenomenon of hyperrealist painting. His canvases, executed in the manner of photographic preciseness, draw from pop-culture as well as history, and the artist’s great subject is the position of a child in an extreme situation. The exhibition is divided to five sections which present the main subjects of Helnwein’s work, at the same time laying emphasis on his paintings from the most recent years. The first section displays portraits of the artist’s bandaged face; the second section contains references to the Nazi past of Austria, while the central subject of the third and fourth sections is child. The last section presents photographs inspired by pop-culture. The group of exhibited works was loaned from the property of the artist as well as from many public and private collections from Europe and the United States. mehr

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