[Aug. 16th, 2004|08:07 pm]
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For Helnwein, the child is the symbol of innocence, but also of innocence betrayed. In today’s world, the malevolent forces of war, poverty, and sexual exploitation and the numbing, predatory influence of modern media assault the virtue of children. Robert Flynn Johnson, the curator in charge of the Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts, has assembled a thought-provoking selection of Helnwein’s works and provided an insightful essay on his art in this exhibition catalogue.
Helnwein’s work concerning the child includes paintings, drawings, and photographs, and it ranges from subtle inscrutability to scenes of stark brutality.
Of course, brutal scenes—witness The Massacre of the Innocents—have been important and regularly visited motifs in the history of art. What makes Helnwein’s art significant is its ability to make us reflect emotionally and intellectually on the very expressive subjects he chooses. Many people feel that museums should be a refuge in which to experience quiet beauty divorced from the coarseness of the world. This notion sells short the purposes of art, the function of museums, and the intellectual curiosity of the public.
The Child: Works by Gottfried Helnwein will inspire and enlighten many; it is also sure to upset some. It is not only the right but the responsibility of the museum to present art that deals with important and sometimes controversial topics in our society. ...

Beyond his treatment of common children's motifs - dolls, toys and ambivalent nymphets- Austrian painter Gottfried Helnwein's vision is shrouded in an aura of enigmatic darkness. With his giant color portraits of stillborn babies; paintings that juxtapose Nazi-era photographs with his own images; and pictures of deformed, abjectly countenanced children swathed in bandages, Helnwein is preoccupied with the indelible suffering that mirrors the more delicate aspects of youth. His work is hauntingly gorgeous and suffused with pathos, precisely because viewers are immediately aware of the larger threat that looms within the pieces: the rupture of innocence. ...

Alright, I found this art a while back while looking through various art websites and it is pretty amazing, though VERY odd. Watercolor Paintings ...

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Helnwein's preoccupation with the dark side of modern history, including its abuse of images, has never left him. He did a whole series of paintings (the Legion show includes a couple) so dark as to appear imageless. But he intended them not as mirrors of dark times but as counterthrusts to the aggressive reach of so much contemporary culture.
Despite the grotesquerie it contains, the Legion show also has elements of pathos.

Helnwein nodded yes when asked whether he has made a theme of innocence. "It's a dangerous word, it's so abused and misused, but yes that's probably the basic essence of what I'm interested in."
"As soon as somebody's grown up they have so many issues," he said. "When you look at a person -- what social level, what country they're from, what fashion they affect -- all this stuff comes in, but I'm interested in the stage of a human being where it's not so important whether it's a male or female, before we can tell any social background or anything, it's just ... abstract, almost."
...Probably few visitors will appreciate the detachment in Helnwein's work. They will more likely respond to his concern with the power of images. We willingly subject ourselves to their power every day without really understanding it. If nothing else, his pictures, no matter how confrontational, stand still and permit us, even defy us, to understand how they work upon us. ...

When I was in seventh grade, I was always bullied. Now in eight grade, the bullying has become worse. They make fun of me, throw things at me, kick me, hit me, and do other violent things. It was a waste of time complaining to the teacher when I couldn't tolerate it. They'd throw my textbooks at me and harass me for telling the teacher. I have no friends who sympathize with me in class. My close friends in clubs outside school have learned to hate me, too. I'm too tired to hold out any longer. The world's not right for me.
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Adding To The Discussion Gottfried Helnwein is an artist whose work - "giant color portraits of stillborn babies, paintings that merge Nazi-archive photographs with pictures Helnwein has taken, enigmatic portrayals of apparently wounded or menaced children" - tends to provoke strong reactions, and in recent years, several individuals have expressed their displeasure with some of his images by defacing them. Helnwein confesses to being initially startled by the vandalism, but these days, he has decided that the viewer has as much to contribute to the larger discussion as the artist, and if people are moved to destroy what he has created, he can at least salute their passion. ...

Har du nogle kunstneriske forbilleder? I så fald, hvem? Og har det påvirket din tegnestil?
Uuh, der er mange! Hmm, nogle af mine store forbilleder er Ashley Wood, Gotfried Helnwein, Cam De Leon og selvfølgelig min mester fra tegneskolen her i Viborg som har betydet min absolut største fremgang Artem Alexeev, men også folk som Jean-Michel Basquiat og Jackson Pollock .... ser jeg utroligt meget op til! Jeg har 100´vis af forbilleder, men dette må regnes for nogle af de største! De har påvirket mig rigtig meget!
Også musikalsk har jeg mange forbilleder, de afspejles så til gengæld sjældent i mine billeder, men er folk alligevel intereserede er der nogle links i min profil til lidt af hvert. ...

Gottfried Helnwein (Viena, 1948
1948: Nace en Viena
1969/73: Estudia pintura en la Academia de Fine Art en Viena y realiza sus
primeras exposiciones para audiencias pequeñas.
1979: Protesta contra el psiquiatra forense número uno de Austria, Dr. Gross, que admitió en una entrevista que en la era Nazi, él había envenenado a centenares de niños.
1985: Se muda a Alemania, vive y trabaja en un castillo cerca de Cologne, comienzan a producir los cuadros que se componen de varias piezas, Helnwein examina de cerca áreas del taboo y aborda términos tales como arte sub-humana, degenerada y vida indigna de vida. En este mismo año Rudolf Hausner propone a Helnwein como su sucesor y como cabecilla de los profesores para los pintores en la academia de artes visuales en Viena. ...