Gottfried Helnwein, essays, texts, art, archive

Epiphany, 1996
oil and acrylic on canvas
82x131in, 210x333cms
The Logan Collection
San Francisco

essays

PETER MURRAY "HELNWEIN, IRISH AND OTHER LANDSCAPES" One man show at the Crawford Municipal Art Gallery, Cork Ireland catalogue, 01 July 04 - 01 Aug 04 Although born and educated in post-war Vienna, Gottfried Helnwein is very much an international artist, with exhibitions of his work bein held in cities such as San Francisco, Beijing and St Petersburg find out more >>>

CATALOGUE "IRISH AND OTHER LANDSCAPES" One man show at the Crawford Municipal Art Gallery, Cork Ireland catalogue, 01 July 04 - 01 Aug 04 Contiuing the Crawford Gallery's theme of documenting the landscape, international renowned artist Goffried Helnwein will exhibit a number of large-scale (some are of seven metres in length), photo-realist canvases depicting landscape. Helnwein divides his time between Co. Tipperary and Los Angeles and his paintings find out more >>>

MIC MORONEY "THE MURMUR OF THE INNOCENTS" Installation and one-man show at the Kilkenny Arts Festival 2001 catalogue, 2001 As I write, the Austrian artist, Gottfried Helnwein is wrestling excitedly with his first exhibition in the country which he recently made his home. The work spills out of Butler House, and up onto the festival streets of Kilkenny. These images are huge - in one case as big as six by nine metres, hoisted onto the facade of Kilkenny Castle find out more >>>

HEATHER WHITMORE JAIN Curatorial Associate, San Francisco Musum of Modern Art "THE DARKER SIDE OF PLAYLAND", Childhood Imagery from the Logan Collection, San Francisco Musum of Modern Art Exhibition, 1 Sept 2000 - 2 January 2001 catalogue, 2001 find out more >>>

ROBERT FLYNN JOHNSON Curator in Charge, Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco "HELNWEIN" The art of Gottfried Helnwein cannot be properly considered without surveying the terrain of modern and contemporary art from which it developed Robert Sandelson Gallery, London one-man show, 12 May - 15 June 2000 catalogue, 2000 find out more >>>

JOHN HENDRY "THE SHOCK OF THE REAL" London, 11th May 2000, Robert Sandelson Gallery, London one-man show, 12 May - 15 June 2000 A year or so back, an exhibition called Sensations caused a few upsets, first in London and then in New York. Central to the reaction was a large-scale portrait of a child-killer assembled from, if I remember correctly, the palm prints of children. So far, so bland. The shock element in art has been much talked about in the last five years but art that actually shocks has been thin on the ground during the same period. Step forward then, Gottfried Helnwein. find out more >>>

PETER ZAWREL Chief Curator, Museum of Lower Austria "AGAINST HARMLESSNESS IN ART", "Apokalypse", installation and one-man show Museum of Lower Austria, Dominican Church, Krems, 1999 catalogue, 1999 The enigma of Helnwein's paintings always has to do with guilt and atonement, perpetrators and victims, accusation and remorse. He has never escaped the Christian world of ideas and images of his childhood, but instead has used it for his own artistic purposes. find out more >>>

SPECIAL COLLECTIONS "EUROPEAN DRAWINGS", Arkansas Art Center, The Collection, 1999 In addition to over 130 Signac drawings, the Arts Center has amassed a world-renowned collection of fellow Europeans' works on paper. find out more >>>

WOLFGANG BAUER "INSPIRED BY HELNWEIN", "Apokalypse" installation and one-man show Museum of Lower Austria, Dominican Church, Krems, 1999 catalogue 1999 As long ago as 1963 a fellow-artist and I imagined the horrible future of free-lance artist. The topic of our discussion was not so much finances as the necessity of letting go and totally abandoning oneself. At the time I had the idea of inventing something like a "fitness training of geniuses". In retrospect I must say that I know very few artists who have persevered in this imaginary training programme. Gottfried Helnwein is one of them. find out more >>>

ALEXANDER BOROVSKY Curator for Contempary Art at the State Russian Museum, St Petersburg "THE HELNWEIN PASSION", retrospective one-man show, State Russian Museum, St Petersburg, June 1998 I'll never forget the sensation I had at the unveiling of Gottfried Helnwein's "Kindskopf" in the Russian Museum. And not just because this enormous canvas (six metres in height, four in breadth), well-known from reproductions, seemed to operate in a whole new way in the real, quasi-monumental space of the museum's "Concrete Hall", originally intended for the demonstration of gigantic sculptural compositions. I realised that I was looking at the inner content of this innovative picture from a whole new point of view. find out more >>>

KLAUS HONNEF Curator for Photography and Contempory Art, Rheinisches Landsmuseum, Bonn "GOTTFRIED HELNWEIN - A Concept Artist before the Turn of the Millennium" The Subversive Power of Art, retrospective one-man show State Russian Museum, St Petersburg, June 1998 Is it sheer coincidence that Gottfried Helnwein, the Austrian artist, created a portrait of both the German and the American? Coincidence, that he captured Warhol as a disturbing spectre on photograph, but painted Beuys? And that he then photographed the painted portrait of Beuys in the hands of Arno Breker, Adolf Hitler's favourite sculptor? There are weighty reasons for considering Helnwein the legitimate heir to Beuys and Warhol. f ind out more >>>

ROLAND FLAMINI PASSPORT GERMANY, World Trade Press, 1997, "THE BURDEN OF HISTORY" Your pocket guide to German Business, Customs and Etiquette, Gottfried Helnwein German Painter Gottfried Helnwein has gained international renown for his chilling anti-Fascist and anti- militarist canvases find out more >>>

PETER SELZ Professor Emeritus, Department of Art History, University of California, Berkeley "HELNWEIN THE ARTIST AS PROVOKATEUR" retrospective one-man show State Russian Museum, St Petersburg, June 1997 Much like Joseph Beuys, who opened new, unexpected, and far-reaching spheres for art, Gottfried Helnwein has made works that extend beyond the art scene into the social and political realm. Like his predecessor , he has moved beyond the realm of pure aesthetics, engaging his art into the everyday world. Furthermore his principal interest is not to express personal feelings and emotions, but to make statements that go beyond the individual. He wants to see his work not trapped on the walls of museums and galleries, but revealed in the public domain. He expects his work to intervene in the social sphere and to have a direct impact on the life of his time. find out more >>>

GÜNTER ZEHNDER Curator Rheinisches Landesmaseum, Bonn "MADONNA" one-man show Museum of Modern Art, Otaru, Japan, catalogue November 1996 Gottfried Helnwein's artistic and intellectual approach is to aim quite subtly at producing a crucial feeling of insecurity and a concomitant change of consciousness in the viewer, by using seemingly familiar or usual images that have a certain amount of tradition and an apparently well known composition. find out more >>>

EVGENIJA NICOLAEVNA PETROVA Chief Curator State Russian Museum, St Petersburg "METAPHORICAL PRINCIPLE OF GOTTFRIED HELWNEIN" one-man show Museum of Modern Art, Otaru, Japan, November, 1996 catalogue, 1996 Rousing the audience's curiosity, the painting invariably surprised viewers when exhibited as part of Gottfried Helnwein's retrospective exhibition held at the State Russian Museum in St. Petersburg. find out more >>>

REINHOLD MISZELBECK Curator for Photography and New Media, Museum Ludwig, Cologne "PHOTOGRAPHIE DES 20. JAHRHUNDERTS", Photography of the 20th Century, Museum Ludwig Benedikt Taschen Verlag, 1996/2001, ISBN 3-8228-5514-6 "I do not refer to the choice of objects, although I mean those too; above all, I refer to that expression of uniqueness, of the special quality of time that pictures can be given by artists who know what a record is. But that requires an interest in the things themselves and it is not enough to be interested in the lighting." Bertold Brecht find out more >>>

ANDREAS MÄCKLER "SELF PORTRAIT" one-man show, Museum of Modern Art, Otaru, Japan, 1996 catalogue, 1996 "The reason why I took to doing self-portraits", Gottfried Helnwein said in a 1990 interview, "and why I have been presenting my own persona from the very start, lay in a kind of substitution for the self. There is nothing of an autobiographical or therapeutic nature on show. It tells you nothing about me personally. I don't mean me at all: I just use myself because I am always available as a model. All I mean to present is a human being, pure and simple." The bandaged head became a cliché that was repeatedly misunderstood. Even Mick Jagger once asked, albeit with a laugh: "Will you paint me with bandages?" find out more >>>

DAVID S. RUBEN Curator of 20th Century Art, Phoenix Art Museum "IT'S ONLY ROCK AND ROLL Gottfried Helnwein, Rock and Roll Currents in Contemporary Art, Phoenix Art Museum Prestel, Munich - New York, 1995 The portraits of Hendrix, Joplin, and Lennon are particulary stirring because their ghostlike treatment translates as a poetic and humble tribute to major creative forces whose lives were tragically cut short. As exemplified by the paintings of Helnwein, the purpose of a contemporary rock and roll portrait may extend well beyond biographical signification to stimulating reflection upon larger issues of social or political consequence. find out more >>>

REINHOLD MIßELBECK Curator for Photography and New Media, Museum Ludwig, Cologne "HELWEIN FACES", "faces" one-man show Rheinisches Landesmuseum, Bonn, 1992 Edition Stemmle, 1992 Looking at Gottfried Helnwein' portraits, we once again experience the shock of the new, of an unprecedented view of the person opposite. I have observed many people confronted with these portraits for the first time and again and again they would show surprise, intensity of experience and fascination. Helnwein's portraits can be seen as counterpoles to the technically sophisticated smoothnes of the portraits of Robert Mapplethorpe. find out more >>>

ANDREAS MÄCKLER "GOTTFRIED HELNWEIN - HORROR AND THE TRANSCENDENT" Gottfried Helnwein, Horror and the Transcendent Benedikt Taschen Verlag, 1992 "Rock music, films and comic strips are the art of the 20th century: basic artforms that make a powerful impact, with elemental potency and intensity. These are the very qualities I have tended to miss in most approved works of high art. In comparison, the latter are generally bloodless and boring, and have little connection with real life and people." When Gottfried Helnwein made this assessment of contemporary art in 1990, he had long since shown in his own art that he was way ahead of his times. Yet again. find out more >>>

GOTTFRIED HELNWEIN Gespräch mit Carl Barks "GOTTFRIED HELNWEIN TALKS WITH CARL BARKS" 11 July 1992, Oregon, "Wer Ist Carl Barks", Neff, Verlag, 1993 find out more >>>

PETER ZAWREL Chief Curator Museum of Lower Austria "KINDSKOPF", Helnwein's plea for a different childhood" Installation at the Niederösterreichisches Landesmuseum in the Minoritenkirche Krems/Stein Museum of Lower Austria, catalogue, 1991 The auratic face of a child, six metres high, four metres wide, hanging in the triumphal arch of a medieval church, surrounded by dozens of canvases in the standard size of 200 by 140 cm that are mounted on the church's pillars and walls show heads and fantasy creatures which only on closer inspection may be easily recognized as children's drawings - once more Helnwein upsets traditional structures of perception in a number of ways, including the expectations that visitors have of a Helnwein exhibition. This is signalled already by the title "KINDSKOPF", which in addition to being a reference to the theme depicted (the head of a child) refers to the ironically serious self-representation of the artist (in German "Kindskopf" is a somewhat condescending colloquialism for an adult acting in childish ways), similar to Helnwein's earlier catalogue title "Subhuman" ("Untermensch") of 1988. find out more >>>

WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS "HELNWEIN IS A MASTER OF SURPRISED RECOGNITION", State Russian Museum, St Petersburg, 1997 catalogue, ISBN 3-7231-0447-9, 1992 Stemmle, 3-7231-0447-4, 1992 There is a basic misconception that any given face, at any given time, looks more or less the same, like a statue's face. Actually, the human face is as variable from moment to moment as a screen on which images are reflected, from within and from without. I have seen six pictures of the same subject taken in less than a minute - so different one from the other, as not to be recognizable as the same person. find out more >>>

SIMON WIESENTHAL "THOUGHTS - NINTH NOVEMBER NIGHT" Gottfried Helnwein's fantastic idea to present the consequences of this "Period without mercy" in such an unconventional manner Installation at the Museum Ludwig, 7 Sept - 30 Nov 1988 Installation at the Museé de L'Elyseé, Lausanne 22 Jun - 30 Aug 1990 catalogue, 1988 catalogue, 1990 Not even the children were spared; they, too, fell victim to the destruction. It was Gottfried Helnwein's fantastic idea to present the consequences to this "period without mercy" in such an unconventional manner. He made no use of photos of heaped corpses; children's portraits force the observer to stop and consider this idea. The fury with which the neo-nazis reacted to these portraits is understandable inasmuch as it is the very same fury with which they have for years been fighting against The Diary of Anne Frank; the murder of children rouses abhorrence and conflict in every human, whether they are motivated by ideology or insanity. The urge to destroy has survived; the portraits bear witness to its rage - an attempt was made to cut them to shreds. "People, please, stop,... look at these children's faces, multiply their number by a few hundred thousand. Only then will you realise or gain an inkling of the extent of this holocaust, of the greatest tragedy in human history!" find out more >>>

CHARLES-HENRI FAVROD, Chief Curator Museé de l'Elysée, Lausanne, "NIGHT AND FOG - NINTH NOVEMBER NIGHT" "In the struggle against the Jew, I defend the acts of God" Those where Hitler's words in Mein Kampf. Installation at the Museum Ludwig, 7 Sept - 30 Nov 1988 Installation at the Museé de L'Elyseé, Lausanne 22 Jun - 30 Aug 1990 catalogue, 1988 catalogue, 1990 Of all of these pictures, one soon stands out: his own, in a disfiguring getup with bandaging and surgical instruments. For under this grimacing mask, with the eyes covered by operating clamps, and underneath the bandaged head the painter's face is itself put on display by this disguise. find out more >>>

PETER GORSEN "THE DIVIDED SELF" Gottfried Helnwein and his self portraits. one-man show "Der Untermensch" Museum of Modern Art, Strasbourg, Edition BRAUS, ISBN 3-925835-07-5, 1988 catalogue, 1988 Helnwein compared the "quietly theatrical" ecstatic attitude of his self-portrait with the heroic pose of the figure of the suffering figure of Sebastian and generalizes both to the stigma of the artist in the 20th century, making him a kind of saviour figure. In addition, its poetic title sets the viewer onto the right track. The visual montage of the modern artist as Man of Sorrows with Friedrich's landscape painting projects the dashed hopes of the romantic rebellion into the present, to the protest thinking of modernity, which has become introverted and masochistic, and its crossing of aesthetic boundaries. Is romanticism making a comeback? No; actually, it had never left modernity. But its rebellion is confining and introverting itself in the "body metaphysics" of contemporary artists to its own flesh and blood. find out more >>>

ROLAND RECHT Chief Curator of Museum's, Strasbourg, "A WORLD OF HORROR IN PICTURES" The Self Portraits of Gottfried Helnwein, one-man show "Der Untermensch" Museum of Modern Art, Strasbourg, Edition BRAUS, ISBN 3-925835-07-5, 1988 catalogue, 1988 Of all of these pictures, one soon stands out: his own, in a disfiguring getup with bandaging and surgical instruments. For under this grimacing mask, with the eyes covered by operating clamps, and underneath the bandaged head the painter's face is itself put on display by this disguise. find out more >>>

HEINER MÜLLER How does a friendly person like Helnwein, stand making his - excellence - painting into a mirror of the terrors of this century? Or is it that he can't stand not doing it?" one-man show "Helnwein faces" Rheinisches Landesmuseum, Bonn one-man show "Helnwein Der Untermensch" Museum of Modern Art, Strasbourg Edition Bravs Heidelberg, ISBN 3-925835-07-05, 1988 catalogue, ISBN 3-7231-0447-9, 1988 Edition Stemmle, ISBN 3-7231-0447-4 1992 Black Mirror. A story by Stephen King. An American schoolboy, twelve or thirteen years old, fascinated, in his small-town monotony, by documents on the German concentration camps - the way his classmates are by Superman. The formula for his fascination: THEY JUST DID THOSE THINGS. find out more >>>

H. C. ARTMANN "ESSAYS AND POEMS " "einer erstellt die surmme seiner beobadtungen in dieser welt der patzer und dämonen, er vernimmt die schreie aus den gekachelten schreckträumen abseits einer satten gesellschaft" about Gottfried Helnwein Monograph, State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg, "Helnwein", ORAC-Pietsch, 1981 catalogue "Helnwein", 1997 "Helnwein", Könemann, ISBN 3-8290-1448-1, 1998 find out more >>>

DAS GROSSE LEXIKON DER GRAPHIK "KÜNSTLER TECHNIKEN HINWEISE FÜR SAMMLER" Gottfried Helnwein, Das Grosse Lexikon der Graphik Tigris, Köln, ISBN 3-14-509079-8, 1989 find out more >>>

K.H. ROSCHITZ "MALEREI - ARCHITEKTUR - BILDHAUERKUNST Lexikon der Kunst, Karl Müller Verlag 1986 Gottfried Helnwein find out more >>>

ANDREAS MÄCKLER "1460 ANTWORTEN AUF DIE FRAGE: WAS IST KUNST" Kunst ist die einzige Freiheit, die uns geblieben ist. DuMont Buchverlag, Cologne, Gottfried Helnwein, about Art find out more >>>

K.H. ROSCHITZ "HARENBERG PERSONENLEXIKON 20 JAHRHUNDERT" Helnwein, Gottfried österr. Maler, Grafiker und Aktionskünstler * 8. 10. 1948 Wien Gottfried Helnwein, Harenberg Personenlexikon 20. Jahrhundert Harenberg Lexikon Verlag, 1981 find out more >>>

ULRIKE VON HASE-SCHMUNDT & ROBERT DARMSTÄDTER GOTTFRIED HELNWEIN Osterr. Maler, Objekt- u.Performance- Künstler, *Wien 8.10.1948 Reclams Künstlerlexikon, 2. neu bearbeitete Auflage, 1995 find out more >>>

MIC MORONEY HELNWEIN Lead White Gallery, Dublin 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-render .... find out more >>>