ТемыHelnwein

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.

Exhibition Catalogue

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.

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.

Whether hanging with the Stones, zooming in on Warhol or making sure Dietrich wasn’t completely alone, Gottfried Helnwein has always ended up making great art. Stuart Clark tracks him down to his Waterford castle where Nazi Germany, Israel, Lou Reed, Marilyn Mansion, cancel culture, Donald Duck and Elvis are also up for discussion.

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. Gottfried, in a skull-print bandanna and black sunglasses, spoke about the spirit of a jealous woman who tormented the burlesque dancer Dita Von Teese on her wedding day (she married Gottfried’s friend Marilyn Manson there in 2005 in a ceremony officiated by the surrealist filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky). Von Teese was nearly ready to walk down the aisle when the ceiling above her vanity came crashing down, narrowly missing her and her maid of honor.

The nuptials of schock rocker Marilyn Manson and burlesque queen Dita Von Teese were never going to be conventional, but as Hamish Bowles discovered as he tracked the celebrations from Los Angeles to Tipperary, they were also filled with high drama and high style. ... The following afternoon our cars are trundling through the darkening landscape to Helnwein's baronial castle, a forbidding Hammer House of Horror edifice complete with turrets, crenellations, and a lone bagpiper.

Essentially a hyperrealist artist of quite extraordinary facility, Gottfried Helnwein's huge Photorealist canvases are awash with references to religious Renaissance paintings, the dark allure of Nazi imagery and his background in the ruins of post war Vienna. His strategy is often of deliberate shock and provocation, from his earliest extreme watercolors of doll-like, wounded children with their hare-lips and facial disfigurements, which prompted cartoonist Robert Crumb to call him "a very fine artist and one sick mother---er."

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...

LARGE-scale art installations dotted around Waterford’s city centre depicting war images are causing controversy because of their graphic content. The exhibition, The Last Child, by Austrian-born and Waterford-based artist Gottfried Helnwein, is part of the Waterford Fringe Festival and includes a variety of work placed at strategic locations in the city, such as the Quays, the Clock Tower, City Hall and John Roberts Square. Among the material featured in the images are depictions of children with guns and a child lying down, covered with blood, as well as various shots of children with their eyes closed, as if dead.

...these photo-paintings appear even more real than a photograph: they are hyper-real, super-saturated depictions of the world that surrounds us, as we would like to see it. Helnwein’s landscapes offer us the world as we see it in our mind’s eye, our memories. What is certain is that with these works Helnwein has raised the bar for artists to come with art that is groundbreaking in terms of scale, skill and vision. Painted mountains, fields and sky can never be the same again. ...

Gottfried Helnwein looks more like a rock star than an internationally acclaimed artist. Dressed all in black, with a bandanna around his head and dark glasses hiding his eyes, he resembles, in a superficial way, Bono. Like Bono, he is concerned about the most troubling issues of our times: violence, inhumanity and oppression. There is a cinematic quality to all of Helnwein's works, which seem to be projected on a wide screen. These "stilled cinematic moments," as Crocker curator Diana Daniels calls them, are powerfully affecting. "He deals with difficult subjects in a way that isn't propagandistic," Daniels said. "It's an open-ended way of dealing with historic subjects that are in danger of slipping away from us." Many of the images are very disturbing, and the museum has issued a warning that some images may be challenging for sensitive or younger viewers. But the show is a powerful one, posing questions we all need to contemplate.

Der Aufstand der Jugend in den Sechzigern war eine historische Notwendigkeit. Die Generation unserer Eltern und Großeltern waren durch zwei Weltkriege und das Nazi-Regime beschädigt. Sie waren für den Holocaust verantwortlich. Und danach hatte viele ehemalige Kriegsverbrecher wichtige Ämter und Positionen in der Regierung oder waren in öffentlichen Institutionen beschäftigt. Der ehemalige SS-Mann und Massenmörder Friedrich Peter war Chef der Freiheitlichen. Oder Heinrich Gross, der in der NS-Zeit 800 Kinder ermordet hatte, war der meistbeauftragte Gerichtspsychiater Österreichs (der KURIER berichtete). Dementsprechend war auch das Klima in der Bevölkerung.

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.

It’s a foggy, cloud-streaked afternoon in Waterford County, Ireland. I’m meeting a man who has spent a large part of his life on this island that is famously steeped in tradition. He’s called this place home for some while. Ireland has a long history of treating its artists, literary figures and musicians well.

"Helnwein's meticulous Irish landscapes, which are the cornerstone of this Crawford show, are unashamedly aesthetic: gorgeous confections of pure, delicious spectacle. The typically epic but not inhuman scale imitates the subject matter. The tonal realism will make people go "Wow, are they paintings?" - thanks to the photorealist finish which seems free of the foibles of the human hand. Helnwein works with very small brushes - highlighting and subtly magnifying here, muting colours or creating shadows there; pushing some paintings towards momentary sleights of impressionism; and others towards seamless, burnished hyperreality. The bird's eye view suggests a kind of superhuman vision which can simultaneously take in the entire view with breath-taking clarity, like some bionic eagle." Mic Moroney, from the essay "Out of the Apocalypse into the Sublime - bursting into Irish Landscape: Citizen Helnwein"

WITH his bandanna and long dark hair, wearing something that looks like a flak jacket, swarthy Gottfried Helnwein could be a guerrilla or a pirate-revolutionary. But the rock 'n' roll lifestyle and 17th-Century castle in Co Tipperary adorned with huge canvases tell a different story. He's an artist of serious international reputation, veteran of many controversies, who counts Sean Penn, Marilyn Manson, Norman Mailer and, once, Marlene Dietrich among his friends.

Louis le Brocquy, Sean Scully, Tony O'Malley, Hughie O'Donoghue, Gottfried Helnwein, Basil Blackshaw, Dorothy Cross, William Crozier, Mary FitzGerald, Martin Gale, Elizabeth Magill, Janet Mullarney, Paul Nugent, Linda Quinlan.

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. The Sunday Times, Gerry McCarthy

Exhibition - catalogue One man show, Butler House, Kilkenny Installation in the Kilkenny city center Introduction by Claire O'Donoghue Essay by Mic Moroney Ninety children from around the city and country were photographed by the artist here in the High Street and nine are displayed in central locations around the city, dramatically enlarged up to 9 metres high. This ongoing project, begun here, will continue in other cities and towns in Ireland as the artist intends to expand the work to include one thousand Irish children. These beautiful,confident and happy children from Kilkenny contrast starkly with some of his more disturbing imagery. The juxtaposition of historical photographs of the Nazi regime with religious imagery of the Madonna and Child in the "Epiphany" series can make uneasy viewing not only in Germany and Austria but also here in Kilkenny. Amongst a number of possible readings of these works is the uncomfortable relationship between the church and oppression in its various forms. However, as the artist Nolde said, "harmless pictures seldom mean anything". Nolde was banned from painting by the Nazi regime.

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.

Gottfried Helnwein's classic yet unnerving images transform sentimental representations of childhood into portraits of individual subjects frozen at the moment of suffering. His photo-paintings pirouette on the fine line between chocolate box pictures/excessive sentimentality and the cost to children of being treated as commodities, of suffering emotional or physical pain at a grown-up's hands. High pictorial and technical values create compositions that recall contemporary cinema and seventeenth-century painting, expanding the treatment of time into epic. This apparent grandiosity plays against the immediacy of each suffering subject, underlining the different experience of time in childhood. Small hurts can devastate when you're a child. Big hurts stay with you for years, as survivors of Hitler's Anschluss testify. Now, in the age of virtual use and abuse of children, Helnwein's insistence on valuing the humanity and charm of the littlest, the least powerful, offers a counterpoint to claims that suffering counts most when you're grown-up. It opens his practice into a series of pictorial mise-en-scènes, as did Rembrandt's tableaux in The Blinding of Samson (1636) or The Night Watch (1642).

Gottfried Helnwein lebt seit fast drei Jahrzehnten in Irland. In einem Gespräch mit der „Krone“ erzählte er von seiner Entscheidung, dort ein Schloss zu restaurieren, den magischen Momenten auf der Insel und wie sich das Leben in der grünen Landschaft auf seine Kunst ausgewirkt hat.

Kiltinane, Tipperary

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.

Project Arts Centre

Tom Byrne interviews Tim O'Brien, the well-established and very famous New York based, Irish-American illustrator. His work graces the covers of such magazines as Time and Newsweek. His clients also include advertising agencies and book publishers. As established professionals go, he is among the best. In 1999 and 2000 he was even selected as one of a hundred 'Irish Americans of the Year' by Irish American Magazine. Tim, a former boxer, now enters the ring to keep fit but also works up an intense sweat by creating stunningly realistic paintings in oils to very short deadlines - Who influences you in terms of painting? It's a long list and not necessarily similar to my style. I did learn quite a bit from studying the work of Gottfried Helnwein, Ingres, Paul Cadmus, George Tooker, Lord Leighton and Ivan Shishkin, to name a few.

After rubbing shoulders with some of the biggest names of contemporary art as a child, Cyril Helnwein now lives quietly in Ireland, surrounded by a circle of loyal friends -famous or not- close to whom he seems to have foud some kind of serenity. Glitters of fame ? He leaves them to others - who have more time to spend in official receptions and society dinners. Quick interview with a shadow artist who keeps trying to bring our world to light...

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.

Ich spüre ein überwältigend emotionales Gefühl, wenn ich im Flugzeug sitze und schaue herunter auf diese kleine grüne Insel Irland. Ich werde so sentimental dass ich Tränen in den Augen habe. Obwohl ich dort nicht geboren bin, habe ich das Gefühl, ich gehöre zu diesen vielen Iren, die dort seit Jahrhunderten um ihre ihre karge Existenz kämpfen, singen, dichten, saufen und ständig auswandern mussten. Aus irgendeinem Grunde fühle ich mich als Teil dieser eigenartigen und traurigen Geschichte.

Continuing the theme of documenting the landscape, internationally renowned artist Goffried Helnwein will exhibit a number of large-scale photo-realist canvases depicting Irish landscapes. Helnwein lives for much of the year in Co. Tipperary and his paintings illustrate the drama and the beauty of the countryside as well as revealing the changing landscape of Ireland. Helnwein, (born in Vienna in 1948), is a formidable artist and his work has often been proved controversial, because they function as moral probes. He continually reveals emotive issues within his work practice.

"When I am reincarnated I want to come back to this castle and relive tonight!" Nora Owen, former Minister for Justice of Ireland

Jul 2-30 Summer Exhibition Includes works by William Crozier, Gottfried Helnwein and Sarah Walker.

Most Popular: * Haring, Keith (1958-1990)@ * Hine, Lewis Wickes (1874-1940)@ * Helnwein, Gottfried (b. 1948)@ * Hirschfeld, Al (1903-2003)@ * Hundertwasser, Friedensreich (1928-2000)@ * Hopper, Edward (1882-1967)@ * Hockney, David@ * Hockney, David (b. 1937)@ * Hunter, Dard (William Joseph) (1883-1966)@ * Hughes, Arthur (1832-1915)@

...the work is extremely ambitious, both in terms of scale and rendering - some paintings are seven metres long and all are so realistic that they are nearly indistinguishable from photographs. Consequently they cannot fail but to strike a chord, as you marvel at the skill involved in creating such vivid and realistic landscape views. So much so that Fáilte Ireland is surely gaining free advertising, as many will be inspired to venture out and experience these places first hand. Helnwein re-creates theses vistas using a composite of photographic sources which cram multiple focal points into a single view. The surfaces are absolutely flawless with practically no evidence of the artist's brushwork. Studying the surface is absorbing, as the viewer is immersed in the detail as much as seductive wider views of the vast, undulating topography.

Almost 'autobiographical landscapes', the paintings in this exhibition by Austrian artist Gottfried Helnwein broadly outline the migrations he, and his family, have made from his native Vienna, through Germany, to America and Ireland, his family home since 1997. Yet these landscapes also mark a return to his earliest artistic inspiration. Helnwein's meticulous Irish landscapes are unashamedly aesthetic and the typically epic, but not inhuman scale, imitates the subject matter with each painting seeming to breathe a sense of a year well advanced, after the effusive growth and floral displays of May. Sunset beckons here and with it, Romanticism.

Visitors to Gottfried Helnwein's show of panoramic landscapes at the Crawford Municipial Gallery in Cork are having trouble deceiding either they are looking at paintings or photographs. Some are up to seven metres in length, by two metres wide: a breathtaking, epic scale. They are extraordinarily beautiful, by any standards, and, yes, they are paintings. The finish may be photorealist, but these are not direct transcriptions of what the camera lens sees; they are edited and informed by the artist's eye. Take a close look at Irish Landscape III (Nire Valley) or Irish Landscape IV (County Waterford). Nor do they represent what the naked eye can see. American Landscape (Death Valley) is so wide that it has an almost vertiginous effect. Dawn Williams who curated this show has done a superb job.

Helnwein talkes to Olga Buckley

* Helnwein's Epiphany I has been up on our site for years now. For a while I used it as wallpaper on my desktop. Perhaps that explains how the first hypertext poem came to be one about the Virgin. But as I struggled with updating the site, I checked all my old resources and came across materials that explain Helnwein's commitments and meanings far better than I could alone.

Marilyn Manson: "Gottfried Helnwein whom I collaborated with a lot invited us to get married at one of his castles in either Germany or Ireland," Manson said. "So we thought we would just have the pageantry and the ceremony of a normal wedding, but without the church. Because I don't think that I would really be welcome there."

One man show ‘Helnwein in Tipperary’ is an exhibition of large-scale landscape painting by Austrian-born Artist Gottfried Helnwein in the South Tipperary Arts Centre, Nelson Street, Clonmel. The exhibition opens Friday, 26th November and runs until Saturday, December 18th. Internationally respected, Gottfried Helnwein spends much of the year in his home and studio in Ireland. The exhibition at the Arts Centre features three large scale landscapes around Tipperary including the Nire Valley and Tullamaine. The public is welcome to the official opening at 8 p.m. on Friday night which will be performed by Senator Martin Mansergh.

"I think we should be in no doubt that we are in the presence of the work of an artist of exceptional stature. Exhibitions of his work have been shown all over the world. He is based in Ireland and in Los Angeles, retaining close contact of course with his Austrian homeland and the German-speaking world. He was recently granted Irish citizenship."

Tipperary is set to host rock wedding of the year later on this month. The eccentric Marylin Manson will tie the knot in the County after his close friend, artist Gottfried Helnwein offered him the use of his Tipperary castle.

Nun findet sich die Antwort auf die Frage nach dem Verbleib Gottfried Helnweins in massiven Schlagzeilen der “New York Times” und der “Los Angeles Times”. “Ein Aufstand der Farben, exzentrisch, anachronistisch, wundersam”, jubeln die Kalifornier. Die Kollegen von der Ostküste schreiben von “ausserirdischer Faszination und wilder Extravaganz”. Gottfried Helnwein hat an der von Placido Domingo geleiteten Oper von Los Angeles den “Rosenkavalier” von Richard Strauss ausgestattet. Maximilian Schell inszenierte, Kent Nagano dirigierte, und die Premiere zu Wochenbeginn geriet dem alten Fuchs Domingo zum Clou der amerikanischen Opernsaison. Schon in den Überschriften aber wird klargestellt, wer hier der Chef war: Gottfried Helnwein nämlich, geboren in Wien als Sohn eines Postbeamten, Konzeptkünstler, Fotograf, Filmer, unvergleichlich resistent gegen Katalogisierungen.

This exhibition by internationally renowned artist Gottfried Helnwein continues in the Crawford Art Gallery until September 4 th next. Helnwein bases himself between Co. Tipperary and Los Angeles and is exhibiting a number of large scale photorealist canvases depicting landscape. Perhaps more recognized as a painter of highly emotive portraits, this exhibition will reveal the influence of landscape throughout his career from the early Vienna cityscapes to the present series of Irish landscapes and recognizes the impact which the German romantic artist Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840) has had on Helnwein’s work. Born in Vienna in 1948, he is a formidable artist and his work has often been seen as controversial because it functions as moral probes.

The Times: "...these photo-paintings appear even more real than a photograph: they are hyper-real, super-saturated depictions of the world that surrounds us, as we would like to see it. Helnwein’s landscapes offer us the world as we see it in our mind’s eye, our memories. What is certain is that with these works Helnwein has raised the bar for artists to come with art that is groundbreaking in terms of scale, skill and vision. Painted mountains, fields and sky can never be the same again."

Die Freunde der "Nil-Gesellschaft" treffen sich im Helnwein Schloss in Irland: Alfred Biolek, Alice Schwarzer, Antje Vollmer, Renate Gruber, Bettina Flittner, Gottfried, Renate, Amadeus, Cyril und Kojii Helnwein...

...oder auf die Serie "Irische Landschaften", die, im extremen Querformat auf richtersche Art gemalt, dem gegenwärtigen Wohnsitz des Künstlers Reverenz erweist - mittels elegischer schafreicher, aber menschenleerer Panoramen. Hier ist einmal übermäßig offensichtlich, was Gerhard Richter als bestimmenden Einfluß auf seine eigenen Bilder stets behauptet hat: das Vorbild der Romantik.

Shock-rocker Marilyn Manson tied the knot with his burlesque bride Dita Von Teese in a secret ceremony in Tipperary last night. The couple exchanged vows after dark at a private ceremony in the home of their artist friend Gottfried Helnwein. The stately Irish castle where Helnwein lives with his family was transformed into a gothic fortress as pals including Lisa Marie Presley, Johnny Depp, Madonna and her husband Guy Ritchie arrived for the event. As darkness fell, former stripper Dita, 32, walked through the gothic arches of the castle's Great Hall to the sound of a harp - dressed in a stunning gown designed by Vivienne Westwood and corset expert Mr. Pearl.

DVT: I'm in London. Manson and I got married last weekend in Ireland. Our friend, the artist Gottfried Helnwein, has a castle there, which is where we had the wedding. SP: [laughs] Did you have fun? Was it great? DVT: I had the time of my life. I think we both did. SP: What did you wear? DVT: I wore a giant purple silk-and-grosgrain taffeta dress by Vivienne Westwood and a Mr. Pearl corset. I also wore a little tricorn hat from Stephen Jones. I didn't want a white wedding or a Gothic wedding. It was somewhere in between-just beautiful, rich colors everywhere.

The String Quartet No.1 in E Minor starts like a windswept landscape – overcast and abandoned. A strong current of all four instruments introduces the theme with an unexpected immediacy and pulls you into a story of which you are about to be the author. From the headstrong first movement you’ll soon be dropped into five minutes and thirty-four seconds of someone’s bleeding heart – the second movement. Starting with a minimalistic plucking that sounds like the last raindrops of a storm, the music gracefully gives way to the slow and lulling depths of the cello. By the way, you’d be surprised how something that sounds like velvet can cut like a razor. But whatever dreams you might have lost yourself in, the third movement will wake you up.

Nicht nur einheimische Stars wie U2 haben vom weltweit einmaligen Modell profitiert. Auch kreative Ausländer wie Michel Houellebecq oder Gottfried Helnwein suchten Unterschlupf auf einer Insel, die nicht nur der Seele, sondern auch dem Konto gut tut.

group show

Dita Von Teese: "Bespoke - whether it's jewellery design or putting together a party - is like, 'Wow.' I love the way the Regency and Victorian era really knew how to party. There was so much attention to detail. People have become lazy about entertaining. It’s all done to a formula.” Her dream theme is a Marie Antoinette banquet. "I love centrepieces dripping with flowers, berries and fruit. In those days, people would eat the table arrangements, and 1 love that irreverence. Marilyn and Dita were such fun to work with - they let me frame their cheesy childhood photos and put them on the walls of the castle in Tipperary.

"Wir leben beide in Irland..."

Konsequent und virtuos. Technische Meisterschaft und auch die Konsequenz einer packenden sozialkritischen Thematik offenbaren sich in dieser Ausstellung: Gewalt, Schmerz, Verletzung werden dargestellt. Den Körper ebenso wie die Psyche betreffend. Helnwein dokumentiert hier in Linz einen künstlerischen Reifegrad, der eine weitere Steigerung kaum vorstellbar macht. Seine Eingriffe sind von einer schmerzhaften Unmittelbarkeit, deren emotionale Energie weit über die großen Bildformate hinaus den Raum und sein Publikum ergreift. (Irene Judmayer - Oberösterreichische Nachrichten)

Publication Date: February 12, 2008

The recent landscape show by Gottfried Helnwein at the Crawford Gallery in Cork contained a homage to Friedrich’s The Wreck of the Hope, while the current Walker & Walker exhibition at the Royal Hibernian Academy features a three-dimensional recreation of his work Wanderer in the Mist. Because it is a show culled from the extensive collection of Berlin’s Nationalgalerie, A German Dream does not include these two key works, both of which are in Hamburg’s Kunsthalle, but the six works that are included still offer a tantalising taster. They point the way to understanding Friedrich’s iconic idealism and energy, but what they highlight even more pointedly is the need for a comprehensive retrospective of the artist’s work.

On December 3, 2005, Marilyn Manson and Dita Von Teese were married in a private, non-denominational ceremony at Helnwein's castle. The wedding was officiated by surrealist film director and comic book writer Alejandro Jodorowsky, Gottfried Helnwein was best man. They exchanged vows in front of approximately 60 guests, including Lisa Marie Presley.

The two celebs are reportedly going to bring in 2007 holed up in a remote Irish castle to which they travelled to recently. The Presleys will be staying at the exclusive Castle de La Poer in Co Tipperary, the home of Priscilla's pal, the reclusive Austrian artist Gottfried Helnwein.

The child as a symbol of hope, purity and innocence triggers a protective reflex that taps into society's instinct to cherish and protect its young. Any tarnishing of this ideal is naturally going to provoke controversy, with art, literature and advertising strewn with instances of iconoclasts who have upset the moral applecart. (Henry James' novel The Turn of the Screw, the sinister paintings of Balthus, or the candid photographs by Sally Mann, are all examples.) It is within such company that Austrian artist Gottfried Helnwein rests, as his controversial works cause people to sit up and take notice whenever he exhibits. Certainly, shocking images of deformed babies, Nazi ephemera and pseudo-religious overtones are not for the faint-hearted. However, the majority of the portrait paintings on show in the current exhibition at the Fenton are perhaps more palatable for the general viewer, as the imagery is comparatively sedate in terms of narrative and symbolism.

“All a poet can do today is warn”, World War 1 soldier poet, Wilfred Owen, wrote in a draft Preface for a book of anti-war poems he would never see published. He was killed on the eve of Armistice Day 1918. World War One, The Great War, The War to End All Wars . . . within twenty summers, Europe was engulfed again in the even greater catastrophies of the fascist era. The work of Gottfried Helnwein has its genesis in these years. They obsess him as a creative artist. As a kind of guardian angel, he grapples with them on our behalf. That such a nightmare would never visit us again. Or our children. Or our children’s children. Or “. . .all those still to come”.

“For me, the reaction so far in Waterford is very good because people are talking about the theme of war and exploitation. For a child to grow up now, it’s the toughest time ever because children are flooded with violence in the media and internet and computer games where the only thing to do is kill people and they are very graphic. Entertainment is very violent but as long as it’s entertainment, it’s fine, but as soon as you do it as art, people get very sensitive. In my art I’m only reflecting the world and I wanted to raise awareness and make people think.”

The bride wore a flowing purple Vivienne Westwood number over her trademark cinched corset. Manson was his normal sepulchral white self, with black make-up and lipstick as they exchanged vows by candlelight in Ireland, at Gothic Castle Gurteen Le Poer in Kilsheelan, Co Tipperary. A designer-fest costing an estimated $500,000, the bride wore Christian Louboutin shoes to trip up the aisle while the groom wore a John Galliano black-silk taffeta tux. They exchanged their vows at midnight in the home of their artist friend Gottfried Helnwein and the invited guest list was studded with showbiz royalty, including Madonna, Keanu Reeves, David Lynch, Lisa Marie Presley, and Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne.

The exhibition includes works by: Basil Blackshaw, Dorothy Cross, William Crozier, Mary FitzGerald, Martin Gale, Gottfried Helnwein, Elizabeth Magill, Janet Mullarney, Paul Nugent, Hughie O’Donoghue, Linda Quinlan.

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.

2001 - Gottfried Helnwein at Kilkenny Arts Festival

"Als ich in den 1990er Jahren nach Irland kam, war es das freieste Land der westlichen Welt. Es gab nicht einmal den Ansatz irgendeinereiner Bürokratie. Es existierten überhaupt keine Formulare, die man hätte ausfüllen können, man konnte ohne Führerschein Autofahren und Künstler waren von der Steuer befreit. Ich hatte 10 Jahre lang keinen einzigen Polizisten gesehen, ich war mir gar nicht sicher, ob es soetwas hier überhaupt gibt. Das war mein Land. Ich komme nämlich sehr gut ohne Bevormundung, Überwachung und Kontrolle irgendwelcher Behörden zurecht. Die EU hat aber in den letzten Jahren dafür gesorgt, dass die Party hier vorbei ist und einige Banker haben das Land vor kurzem auch noch bankrott gemacht. Sonst ist es aber immer noch gemütlich hier."

Sender von Red-Bull-Chef Mateschitz startet am Donnerstag "möglichst emotionales" "Close Up" auf Kulturschaffende

The events feature leading artists of the 20th century including Sir John Lavery, Sir William Orpen, Jack Butler Yeats, Walter Osborne, Paul Henry, Roderic O’Conor, along with Louis le Brocquy, who died in 2012. In an innovative move, there is also a selection of works by contemporary Irish artists...Among contemporary works on offer is Gottfried Helnwein's photorealistic oil-and-acrylic-on-canvas work “The Murmur of the Innocents 45,”

A castle in Tipperary is the setting for this most unlikely of squires. Politics, paint and provocation are the life blood of Austrian artist Gottfried Helnwein and his work.

Sotheby’s said some artists had achieved record prices, including Gottfried Helnwein, the Austrian painter who lives in Co Tipperary, whose The Disasters of War, 47 (lot 70), made £115,000 (estimate, £30,000-£50,000).

AN innocent child caught up in war is the peculiarly appropriate focus of a work by the artist Gottfried Helnwein entitled The Disasters of War which comes up at Sotheby’s Irish art sale in London on September 13. The painting is not about Syria, it is about humankind.

Famed for her opulent, meticulously curated parties, Leahy got her big break planning the wedding of the burlesque star Dita Von Teese to shock rocker Marilyn Manson in 2005. A spectacularly gothic affair, the ceremony was held at Castle Gurteen in Co Tipperary, owned by Austrian artist Gottfried Helnwein.

The daughter of Gottfried Helnwein - a remarkable, often controversial force within the art world - and is now an established artist in her own right.

Zuerst dachte ich, was haben die vor? Wollen sie uns als rituelles Opfer über die Burgzinnen werfen? Aber er war unglaublich höflich, zurückhaltend und nett. Wir waren im Schloss vom Maler Gottfried Helnwein, überall brannten Kaminfeuer. Es war wie Halloween für Erwachsene. Wir haben unser Programm gespielt und später hat das Orchester noch mal Stimmung gemacht und alle tanzten. Das war sehr entspannt und lustig.

Wolfram Kons, der ntv-Kunstexperte ist, besucht den Weltstar des Hyperrealismus Gottfried Helnwein auf seinem Bilderbuch-Schloss in Tipperary, Irland. Helnwein ist einer der bekanntesten, aber auch umstrittensten deutschsprachigen Künstler der Gegenwart. Die Doku wird am Samstag, den 28. November um 9.30 Uhr und am Sonntag, den 29. November um 14.05 Uhr bei ntv wiederholt.

Austrian-born artist Gottfried Helnwein talks to Dónal Lynch about how his country's dark past led to his career, his life in a Tipperary castle, the magic of Irish pub culture and befriending Marlene Dietrich.

Tommy Tiernan welcomes mystery guests and interviews them without any preparation or knowledge of who will be joining him until they meet in studio.

Following the success of Gallery Weekends in Berlin, London, and Barcelona, the Dublin version promises to be a fun and engaging weekend of free to attend art events designed to expand upon and illuminate exhibitions from leading Irish and international artists including Callum Innes, Gottfried Helnwein, Richard Gorman, Richard Proffitt, Scott Lyall, Eilis O’Connell, Laurence Riddell, John Doherty, Gabhann Dunne, and David Fox.

Antje Vollmer, vice-speaker of German parliament, spends her vacation at the home of Gottfried Helnwein and his family in Ireland where she meets with artists, writers, actors, musicians and other people active in the fields of culture. For the past 3 years, every summer, Gottfried Helnwein is inviting creative people from all over the world to stay at his home in Ireland.

My mom had originally thought about living in Ireland - we would go to Ireland a lot when we were younger. My Mom was friends with Austrian-Irish artist Gottfried Helnwein, and we 'd stay at his castle, Castle Gurteen de La Poer, in Kilsheelan, a few miles east of Clonmel. We'd all go to the local pubs and dance to the music, and then when closing time came, we'd head back to Gurteen and run around the castle grounds, or climb a spiral tower to the top and lay under the stars, me drunk at seventeen, until the sun peered through the crenellations. (Riley Keough)

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 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.

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.

Helnwein's painting - both cheekily and totally in homage - appropriates the great paintings, "The Polar Sea" (1824) by the leading German Romantic landscape artist Casper David Friedrich. Helnwein here re-renders the painting in a gloomy, cinematic blue-black duochrome, and hugely magnifies it from its original scale (about 1 metre by 1 metre 30), although the foundered ship still seems dwarfed and pulverised by the splintering ice sheets. It remains a fine example of that particularly Germanic celebration of heroic humanity dashing itself against the majestic cruelty of nature. Helnwein, in his wry title and borrowing of the image, is suggesting an uncomfortable paradigm behind Friedrich's painting - a perpetual sense of momentous revolution within nature, raw humanity and indeed artistic culture. These ideas pervaded Friedrich's work, as well as that of composer Richard Wagner and philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche - all of whose works were later so mistakenly absorbed into the "superhuman" aesthetic of Nazi ideaology and doctrine.

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.

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.

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.

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.

group show Artists support Nazareth House in Cape Town South Africa. Nazareth House is a world respected organisation dedicated to the stable and secure care of children in need. The Sisters of Nazareth were asked to care for one HIV baby in 1992 and since then, in their centre and their township outreach programmes, they have looked after more than 250 HIV infected babies and children.

Helnwein briefes Roy Disney on the preparation of the Carl Barks museum retrospective and the publication of the book "Wer ist Carl Barks?" (Who is Carl Barks?), and discusses the influence of Walt Disney's aesthetics on the culture of the 20th century.

Most of the city pictures emerge from a deceptively simple strand of Gottfried's work, the frank photography of children's faces. He photographed over ninety children in Kilkenny. Now these kids are immortalised, larger than life in their extreme youth, and dotted around the gable-ends and walls of their native town; there eyes closed in beautiful, breathless meditation. Mounted in a manner which is normally the preserve of billboard advertising, these are quietly awesome images of the city's youngest inhabitants.

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.

Ireland got its first real glimpse into the mind of Gottfried Helnwein in August of this year when he headlined the increasingly high profile Kilkenny Arts Festival. Across the medieval city, familiar landmarks were draped in gigantic posters bearing the Helnwein trademark. Huge freckle-faced Kilkenny children - their eyes closed and vulnerable yet possessed of a curious wisdom - occupied the walls from St Canice's Cathedral to the courtyard of Kilkenny castle. Dominating the Castle entrance was a massive print entitled "Epiphany", depicting a voluptuous mother proudly displaying her naked young boy to a gathering of sharp-dressed officers. It is only when one registers the swastikas and iron crosses on the officers' uniforms that one looks again at this toddler and beholds the unmistakeable mug of Adolf Hitler Junior. This was a bold statement by Gottfried in which he was effectively drawing a comparison between the iconoclastic and suppressive nature of the Nazi system and the more disturbing tenets of Roman Catholicism.

The multi-day event — held at de La Poer Castle, County Tipperary, Ireland, home of the couple's friend, controversial Austrian artist Gottfried Helnwein — included a non-denominational ceremony performed by Chilean underground film director (and Manson friend) Alejandro Jodorowsky, and the bride and groom exchanged personal vows. Manson and Jodorowsky, who directed "Santa Sangre," had been working together on a movie called "Abelcain," a project that has been suspended for the time being.