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Gottfried Helnwein 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.
Gottfried Helnwein is an international artist in his early 50s, whose
work is now housed in such prestigious collections as the Smithsonian
Institut in Washington, the Ludwig Museum in Cologne, the Fine Arts Museum
of San Francisco, the State Russian Museum in St. Petersburg and the Chinese
Museum of Art in Beijing. Personal clients include the major American
collector Kent Logan and the actor Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Originally from Austria but now resident in County Tipperary, Helnwein
grew up into a claustrophobic, bourgeouis, post-war Viennese society which,
unlike much of Germany, had not been truly deNazified. This unease with,
and yet celebration of German-language cutlure continues to inform Helnwein's
work, not least in this large piece, "The Silent Glow of the Avant
Garde"
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.
Gottfried's work has evolved from his early realist, often grotesque drawings
and bandaged "Aktionen" (performances) on the streets of Vienna
to a moody, very contemporary photorealism. He is happy to work through
different media, and has collaborated with a number of theatre and opera
directors on large-scale set-designs in Germany, as well as rock artists
in Germany and the US, where he is currently working with Marilyn Manson.
But Helnwein's work is not without its humour -- as when he appropriates
the image of Mickey Mouse and invests him with growling menace, or celebrates
his lasting appreciation of the saintly everyman persona of Donald Duck.
Helnwein has also produced paintings specifically for reproduction, such
as his well-known piece in an Austrian news magazine in 1979, of a child's
face slumped, dead, by a food bowl. He produced it to sharpen the debate
in Austria about the then appointment to the Head of State Psychiatry
of the former Nazi psychiatrist, Dr. Heinrich Gross, who had "humanely"
killed retarded children by poisoning their food. Gross was forced to
resign the post, and is still, in his 90s, fighting off indictments for
war crimes.
Helnwein caused a stir at the Kilkenny Arts Festival in 2001 -- in his
first exhibition in Ireland. This featured both a gallery show of paintings
in the Butler House, and an exhibtiion of huge, printed, public works.
There was initial controversy at his enormous photomontages on the walls
of Kilkenny Castle -- images of a contemporary Madonna and child, adulated
by young, doltish SA stormstroopers; or in another image, senior SS men.
The mother and infant sat angelically in the position that Hitler occupied
in the original propaganda photographs.
Another strand of the public-art work which Helnwein mounted in Kilkenny
involved photography of local children which Helnwein then rendered huge
-- with their eyes closed, in a moment of meditation which suggests sleep
or even death. Beautiful and yet haunting, there was something about the
freckle-faced uniqueness of the Irish character in these faces which intensified
the various emotions these faces suggested -- from serenity and timeless
wisdom, though pain and disturbance -- or in one, hung over the entrance
to a bank, the irresistable urge to burst into a fit of giggles.
Like the French artist Christo, who wraps various international landmarks
in canvas (from the Reichstag to his failed attempt to get Dublin Corporation
to allow him to wrap Stephens Green), Helnwein has repeated this strategy
in a number of cities around the world, such as St. Petersburg and most
notably Köln in 1988 to mark the 50th anniversary of Kistallnacht
on November 9th 1938, when the Nazis finally unleashed their full wrath
up on Jewish shops and busnisses all over Germany and Austria.
Next year, Gottfried will become the first Western artist to exhibit inside
the Forbidden City in Beijing. Once again, the central image will be a
gigantic portrait of a girl-child's face, her eyes closed in a peaceful,
breath-taking slumber.
Gottfried's work is primarily about the positioning of images to produce
emotion and debate -- which frequently addresses the vulnerability and
centrality of children in our lives, and the unnerving shadow of totalitariansim
over contemporary civilisation.
Now that Helnwein splits his time between here and his studio in Los Angeles,
he is working on a series of what he calls his "American Paintings"
-- based on photographic archive images from the Los Angeles public library
-- and a number of Irish landscapes which emerge from composite photographies
and panoramas.
This is the first time Gottfried's work has been exhibited in Dublin.
Lead White Gallery, Dublin, Mic Moroney, HELNWEIN, Group show
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