The Russian Museum's Marble Palace is showcasing over 100 of the artist's paintings, drawings, photos and sculptures for the next two and a half months, allowing St. Petersburgers to experience for themselves what the museum's curator, Alexander Barovsky, calls Helnwein's "unique combination of strong radicalism with Pop-Art." ...

Gottfried Helnwein- Retrospective in the State Russian Museum, St Petersburg ...

MTV: Sigismondi and Bowie both acknowledge lifting the imagery in his "Dead Man Walking" video from the work of the English painter Francis Bacon.
The look of Floria's most noted video to date, though, [QuickTime,1 MB] "Beautiful People," although it owes a debt to Austrian painter Gottfried Helnwein, was pretty much the inspiration of the artist, Marilyn Manson.
KURT:
The new wave of rock-video grotesquerie isn't new at all, actually, the Austrian painter Gottfried Helnwein, whose self-portrait adorned the cover of an album by the German band Scorpions some years back, was doing images of medical horror twenty years ago,
and no one in rock has gone as far down the road to happy depravity as photographer Joel Peter Witkin, whose deeply disturbing work, which you might best seek out on your own is much admired by Nine Inch Nails leader Trent Reznor, no slouch at images of icky sickness himself. ...

Gottfried Helnwein, Faces ...

Daß Gottfried Helnwein, auch so ein Übriggebliebener aus schöneren Skandaljahrzehnten, die Rammstein-Fratzen auf der CD-Hülle mit seinen bekannten Kopfbandagen und Hannibal-the-Cannibal-Maulkörben verzieren darf, ist nur die folgerichtige Konsequenz. ...

It's been said that a great portraitist can capture his subject's essence on film.
If you've never come across a photographer who's lived up to that standard, check out Helnwein. He turns our cultural idols into flesh and blood human beings, whether they like it or not. ...

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The Gottfried Helnwein seen on the poster advertising his show and the Gottfried Helnwein viewed in person seem to be a study in contradictions. With his head bandaged and eyes literally pierced by two forks, the poster Helnwein shatters glass with his seemingly torturous cries. In person, Helnwein's taut skin is unblemished; his personality, approachable and warm. But as he begins to talk, it becomes clear that he is indeed the creator of the madman. ...

... the living room walls are bare; only a gigantic painting by the Austrian artist Gottfried Helnwein speaks its silent language: full of passion, pain, and tenderness. "Art is creativity," says Shicoff, "that comes from the soul."