Like Sylvia Plath, artist Gottfried Helnwein has a near-schizoid attitude toward Germany's National Socialists, producing images of that period ranging from the truly horrible to those bordering on an eerie reverence. Here his work Epiphany I, Adoration of the Magi (1996), in which the central female figure has a Plath-like intensity. ...

Düsseldorf. Der österreichische Aktionskünstler und Maler Gottfried Helnwein stattet die Aufführung des Oratoriums «Das Paradies und die Peri» von Robert Schumann beim diesjährigen Schumannfest in Düsseldorf aus (4. bis 18. Juli).
Helnwein werde dabei statt eines Bühnenbildes im klassischen Sinne mit Bildern, Video-Projektionen, Kostümen und Licht eine «multimediale Installation» entwerfen, dies teilten die Veranstalter am Mittwoch mit. ...

Das Angebot am 9. März ist vielschichtig und bietet preislich auch Einsteigern manche Möglichkeit. Blätter von Hermann Nitsch, Günter Brus oder Otto Muehl haben Schätzpreise zwischen 800 und 3.000 Euro, Franz Ringel gibt es bereits ab 600 Euro. Für Spielkartenentwürfe von Arik Brauer (7.000 bis 8.500 Euro), ein vier Meter breites Triptychon von Gottfried Helnwein ("Das stille Leuchten der Avantgarde", 14.000 bis 18.000 Euro) oder eine Übermalung von Arnulf Rainer (5.000 bis 8.000 Euro) muss man tiefer in die Tasche greifen. ...

...and especially by opening up the discussion to a powerfully engagé photo-realist like Helnwein, 'image and Enigma' proposes further possibilities and more intricate relationships, demonstrating that the energy of the enigmatic image has suffused yet more widely through current artistic practice.
from the unsettled unsettling times we live in, could we expect anything less? And could anything less than a lucid, concentrated collection of such work make the point as urgent as our times require? ...

Helnwein goes China! Der Film begleitet den Maler anlässlich seiner Großausstellung nach Peking - ein ungewöhnlicher Zugang zum Werk eines eigenwilligen Künstlers. ...

The following suicide notes were left by Japanese schoolchildren, aged ten to fifteen, who killed themselves within the last several years. Some of them met in suicide chat rooms, which are becoming increasingly popular in Japan.
translated from the Japanese by Patrick Luhan. ...

Los Angeles - Der österreichische Multimedia-Künstler Gottfried Helnwein präsentierte anlässlich des 65. Jahrestages der von den Nazis "Reichskristallnacht" genannten Novemberpogrome im "Simon Wiesenthal Center Museum of Tolerance" in Los Angeles eine Ausstellung, in der auf das historische Leiden und den unmenschlichen Hass hingewiesen werden soll. Präsentiert wurde auch sein neues Buch "Ninth November Night". Ein Dokumentarfilm zeigte die langjährige Auseinandersetzung des Malers mit dem Thema Faschismus. ...

Helnwein’s 20-by-60 foot outdoor installation “Modern Sleep 2003”, as well as photographs from his collaboration with Marilyn Manson, are included in the show, which opens with this evening’s gala and is open to the general public Friday through Sunday at Santa Monica Airport’s Barker Hangar.
“Modern Sleep 2003” (digital print) is the latest in a series dating back to the 1980s and reflects Helnwein’s use of children in questioning the human condition. It includes two images of a girl. In one, her skin is pale white, and she is dressed in black. In the other, she is black, dressed in white. In both images, her expression is death-like.
“They have open eyes, so modern sleep doesn’t mean they are just sleeping,” says Helnwein. “It might mean something else.” ...

The bizarre and squirm-inducing self-representations of Austrian conceptual artist Gottfried Helnwein - the guy who likes to puncture his cheeks with surgical instruments - are so disturbing that municipal councils have sought to ban his work.
But these are depictions of pain that make sense, given the intellectual and moral framework of Helnwein's personal and political past.
The odd bureaucrat might question his motivations, only to be instantly shouted down by a chorus of art critics and intellectuals who can think of thousands of cogent, intelligent reasons why Helnwein's work matters. Still, the few members of the bod-mod community who actually talked to me took the moral high ground.
Logic alone indicates that one person's Pamela Anderson is someone else's Lizard Man (Eric Sprague, a man who has, over the last few years, obsessively pursued his desire to become a human lizard via tattoos, teeth-filing, etc.)
In a free society, the body's canvas is something an adult person should have complete mastery over. ...

Hay de decidirse a creer” (Aira. 51), telenovelas rasas que, en la Buenos Aires de Iris Nieves, “al mismo tiempo que eran de una extravagancia demente, debían ser muy banales, muy esquemáticas, simplificaciones brutales de la realidad, a la medida del más amplio de los públicos” (ib.), Bandagen-Aktionen y hielmos de vendas echándoselas de parificadas por idolatría de lo sobrante sobresaliente y sacrificio de fisonomía en estrictura uniforme, divinamente previsible autosuficiencia de la epidermis (v. Gottfried Helnwein, Marlene, acuarela sobre cartón, 1983) arrugada y rajada en corola de brochazo florecido sin arte ni parte mientras el hombrecito espera el autobús clavándose un Crazy Red 13 (Jolie de Vogue - Nail Polish, Laboratorios de Cosméticos Vogue, Bogotá) de lápiz tan amargo cuanto la mancha del girasol azteca que tiene encima (v. Helnwein, Artaud’s Song, óleo y pastel, 1989), a fin de enganchar la dolorosa cantilena del espinazo, claro está, obscurísimo, espejeante, otro reflejo succionado por faz definida en gasa alquitranosa, ocultos los bulbos oculares, sin tenedor edípico, la gula de sí brillando apenas en el fiel salivar de una tarántula metálica metida en la boca, quizás dispositivo quirúrgico cuya función habitual debería consistir en mantener separados los tejidos, doble erina en el lugar repugnante de lo que ni se come ni se saca, freno o bocado al borde de motes engolados, orzuelo oral, no el tumorcito del párpado sino esa especie de cepo que se utiliza para cazar fieras por los pies (v. Helnwein, Black Mirror V, Cibachrome, 1987). ...