Gottfried Helnwein | 媒体 | 因特网 | GOTTFRIED HELWEIN’S SOMBER ARTISTIC UNIVERSE

Well, as you can see in the photos section, I select some Helnwein’s picture to reinforce the darkness of my site. I discovered this artist in 2003 from the artwork of Marilyn Manson’s latest album—The Golden Age of Grotesque.

Shocking.

As all the excellent artists do, the first shocking impression will let you never forget their names. Manson said that he chose Helnwein because he fights for expression and stance against oppression. Again, psychological anxiety, that is what it talks about. Helnwein is a master of surprised recognition. As an artist, his function is to evoke experience of it: to show the viewers what they know but don’t know that they know. His painting of bewildering dramas leaves the viewers adrift in their macabre world.

I’ve seen another interesting quote about him from Sean Penn. He said that the artists’ place on the planet is to be the canary that’s sent down into the coal-mine to sniff out whether the air down there is poisonous. And if the canary comes up alive we can all go there. If Helnwein is such kind of canary, he keeps coming back to the surface no matter how poisonous the air and that give us a lot of belief in our own ability to do it and to reconcile things.

His work, in a multiplicity of media, manifests Nietzsche’s assertion that “ Authenticity of the creative artist can supply meaning to the despair and absurdity of existence.

When the creativity is not a vocation anymore but a mission, we can say that he/she is a genius, whose subject matter involves the complexities of human condition.

Helnwein is surely one of most excellent contemporary artists in this modern world.

P.S: I collect almost everything I found about him, in the Grotesque Section, I only displayed what are unpublished in the album, so does Rammstein!


		30. 九月 2005 spaces.msn.com Happiness in bizarrerie GOTTFRIED HELWEIN’S SOMBER ARTISTIC UNIVERSE When the creativity is not a vocation anymore but a mission, we can say that he/she is a genius, whose subject matter involves the complexities of human condition. Helnwein is surely one of most excellent contemporary artists in this modern world.