Del disagio del pubblico di fronte a bambini non rappresentati come innocenti e ai quali si attribuisca marcatamente un’identità (e una consapevolezza) sessuale è ben conscio l’artista austriaco Gottfried Helnwein che, soprattutto nei lavori su carta, ha creato alcune tra le più potenti e conturbanti rappresentazioni della storia dell’arte, di infanzia abusata. Ma non certo d’abuso da codice penale si tratta. Quel che viene denunciata è la manipolazione puntuale, l’introduzione forzata (The intrusion), a opera degli adulti, nel corpo sociale dell’infanzia, che viene così snaturato, svuotato di quelle naturalissime pulsioni che ci si ostina a non riconoscere, a negare. Di fronte a esse Helnwein non solo non distoglie lo sguardo, non indietreggia, ma ne cattura l’essenza, la forza, e la porge allo spettatore le cui certezze cominciano a vacillare, come avviene all’uomo in The doubting Thomas, inginocchiato di fronte alla bambina e col capo accoccolato sulle sue ginocchia in segno d’abbandono, di prostrazione assoluta. E ancora in Untitled (1993) sono messi in scena, al contempo, il riconoscimento della “fluidità”, dell’inafferrabilità infantile e la volontà di costringerle entro una fissità rassicurante. Numerosi sono anche i lavori, sia fotografici che pittorici, in cui bambine vengono rappresentate con delle fasciature che ne coprono, anche integralmente, il capo e le mani (la tattilità) tentando, attraverso la recisione sensoriale, di impedirne il contatto “immediato” col mondo, la presa sul mondo. Tentando, cioè, di ricacciare indietro quella sensualità contagiosa, incontenibile, che i sensi infantili potrebbero proiettare su di esso (cfr. Beautiful victim II e il più volte ripreso Child of light). ...

The Austrian artist Gottfried Helnwein is well aware of the discomfort the public feels when confronted with images of children not represented as innocents but to whom a powerful sexual identity (and an awareness) is designated. In his work, and especially his paper drawings, he has created some of the most powerful and disturbing representations of abused childhood in history of art. We are not talking about the form of abuse commonly described in the penal code. By altering or removing the inbred pulsation that spurs us to stubbornly refuse or deny what we do not recognise, the manipulations and interferences (The Intrusion) adults perform on the social body of childhood are denounced. ...

Doch steht er bei weitem nicht allein in diesem Theater der Grausamkeit made in Austria. Seine Erbarmungslosigkeit gehört in eine lange Tradition künstlerischer Darstellung der österreichischen «Verlarvtheit». So nennt es der Maler und Aktionskünstler Gottfried Helnwein, so zeichnet es der Comic- König Manfred Deix, so monologisiert es Helmut Qualtinger alias Herr Karl, so textet es die Schriftstellerin Elfriede Jelinek - alle eingebettet als Militärberichterstatter vor Ort in diesem blutigen Aggressionskrieg gegen Verdumpfung, Verdummung und moralische Verderbnis. Auf dem Kommandoposten stehen noch immer Karl Kraus und Thomas Bernhard, hoch dekorierte Generäle an einer Heimatfront, um die mit Gift und Gas gekämpft wird. Sprachgift und Kunstgas gegen Gift und Gas der Geschichte. Schützengräben gegen jede Form von «Anschluss», in dem sich die Nazifratze immer von neuem ungehemmt entlarven will.
Pickel-Naturalismus. ...

If you are already familiar with Gottfried Helnwein then you proably knew more than I do about art, and I apologize on behalf of the commercially saturated masses.
Helnwein is a ridiculously talented artist. That is basically all you need to know. Anything you could imagine art doing for you, or to you, any feeling it might instill in you or emotion it might remove from you, he captures, then cripples, reformats, and pastes into the cleft pallet of a 20-foot-tall gray-scale rendition of a deformed fetus soaking in formaldehyde.
The essence of realism and ability that every art major ever clamored to grasp, he manages to expel onto canvas with apparent ease. He produces paintings, and photographs that you can't help but wish you could recreate with the same vision, depth, and intrigue. His art is without gimmick and his persona is without persona.
Helnwein is simply someone who enjoys creating, and has been doing a pretty damn good job at it for 35 years. ...

"Kleines Helnwein" is a play written and directedby the Argentinian poet Rodrigo M. Malmsten.
Inspired and based on the early paintings of Gottfried Helnwein
First performance: Teatro San Martin, Buenos Aires, 2000
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Autor: Rodrigo M. Malmsten
Actuan: Martín Von Tumpling, Belén Blanco
Iluminación: Alejandro Le Roux
Música: Mariano Durand, Marcelo Vignolo
Producción: Julieta Almada
Dirección: Rodrigo M. Malmsten
Esta obra formó parte del evento: III Festival Internacional de Buenos Aires ...

We have seen something of the 'look' created via Manson's collaboration with artist Gottfried Helnwein -
While the Album remains a sealed box in musical terms, Manson will wax lyrical about the inspirations and influences that helped shape it. There are the people - as well as Calloway, he nods to Oscar Wilde and the loose collective of radical artists and agents provocateurs - collaborator Helnwein among them - who were dubbed the Viennese Actionists.
" The Grotesque Burlesque takes what we've done in the past and brings it to a completely different level. This is making everyone a part of your creation. It's realising that art is more than music, more than people listen to it, more than people who play it - it is the combination of all that.
Gottfried Helnwein is someone who knows how to artfully provoke. He would take some of his creations and he'd bring them out into the streets. It became an instance where people wouldn't know what was the show and what wasn't the show. That's such a beautiful thing. It's like being in the playground - you're not really sure who's on what team, or what the real objective is. ...

Wie ist die Zusammenarbeit mit Marilyn Manson entstanden?
GOTTFRIED HELNWEIN: Ich habe ihn vor einem Jahr kennen gelernt, seitdem arbeiten wir an verschiedenen Projekten. Unter anderem an Videos und Street Performances. Wir planen auch, gemeinsam eine Installation in Wien zu machen. ...

Art critic Klaus Honnef lauded Helnwein as "the legitimate air to Beuys and Warhol, " highlighting his ability to defy the artistic boundaries of the social and political realm."
After posing for a photographic portrait in 1990, William Burroughs said of Helnwein’s work, " You can’t show anyone anything he hasn’t seen already, on some level any more than you can tell anyone anything he doesn’t already know. It is the function of the artist to evoke the experience of surprised recognition to show the viewer what he knows but does not know what he knows. Helnwein is a master of surprised recognition. ...

Outside the Osbournes’ mansion last week, Manson and modernist Viennese artist Gottfried Helnwein premiered two paintings from a collection that will be used as The Golden Age Of Grotesque’s artwork and will travel with the singer. Inspired by the glamour of 1930s Hollywood, the grotesque of vaudeville and the erotic art movement in Weimar Berlin, the pieces are disturbing portraits of Manson wearing the classic Mickey Mouse ears hat.
"This is an image of innocence and an image of childish nightmares," Manson explained. "This is, to me, growing up in America, what I saw in entertainment and the contrasting extremes of beauty and ugliness. ...

Outside the Osbournes' mansion last week, Manson and modernist Viennese artist Gottfried Helnwein premiered two paintings from a collection that will be used as The Golden Age of Grotesque's artwork and will travel with the singer. Inspired by the glamour of 1930s Hollywood, the grotesque of vaudeville and the erotic art movement in Weimar Berlin, the pieces are disturbing portraits of Manson wearing the classic Mickey Mouse ears hat.
"This is an image of innocence and an image of childish nightmares," Manson explained. "This is, to me, growing up in America, what I saw in entertainment and the contrasting extremes of beauty and ugliness. ...

"Kids and guns is a big issue in society today, especially in America," explains Helnwein," One aspect of these pictures refers to the Columbine High School shootings, when Manson was blamed. And now the whole country is going to war. America worships guns. Every day you hear of child abuse. There are these cases with the Roman Catholic church. We're living in a crazy society. I believe a true artist will always reflect the state society is in." ...

Die Symboltiefe des Stücks versucht die Inszenierung in albtraumartig verrätselten Bildern szenisch einzufangen. Deren Motive erinnern bisweilen an die bedrückende Atmosphäre mancher Zeichnungen von Helnwein: die grausig auf dem Bett der Kaiserin herumlungernde Falkenfigur etwa, mit ihrer langen, gebogenen Schnabelnase, die surreal kahlen Räume, das klinisch von oben einfallende Licht sowie allerlei über die Bühne schleichende, zwielichtige Statistengestalten mit gipsernen Tiermasken ...

Gottfried Helnwein's extensive 1997 retrospective at the State Russian Museum in St. Petersburg gave visitors an overview of his work going back to his street actions in Vienna in the 1970s, his grimacing iconic self-portraits that suggest self-mutilation, and on to his menacing canvases depicting the evils of the Third Reich.
He has worked as a painter. draftsman, photographer, muralist, sculptor and performance artist. His work is consistently concerned with psychological anxiety.
In his new series of paintings, done in somber monochrome blues, he continues to work with singulae sense of suspense and mystery. ...

 
Although cartoons and caricatures have played an important role in Western culture since the Middle Ages, the development of the comic strip and comic books are a unique American phenomenon and has contributed significantly to American visual culture.
...Gottfried Helnwein's "American Prayer," which is a large hyper-realistic painting of a boy kneeling in bedtime prayer to a large and looming Donald Duck.
About Helnwein's piece: Clark says, "In many ways, this is the signature piece for this whole show, because it shows how cartoon imagery has entered our culture, our world, our daily life." ...

(Illustrated Books).
Publishers Weekly; January 27, 2003
... paintings of Braque, Dali and Degas, and even an occasional piece of sculpture. Baudelaire's "Giantess" mirrors Gottfried Helnwein' s Lulu, a giantess in garters--other juxtapositions are more of an artistic stretch. As a stimulus to sexual reflection ... ...

COMIC RELEASE: NEGOTIATING IDENTITY FOR A NEW GENERATION
The Regina Gouger Miller Gallery
Carnegie Mellon University, Oakland
Through March 21
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Mickey: So, uh, guys, it's a small world after all, don't ya think?
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Spider-Man: Um, yes. I never really believed I'd ever be in a museum, sharing wall space with you, Donald Duck, or even really with Superman or that weird Ghost World guy.
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Daniel Clowes: Hey, I'm right here. I can hear you perfectly well. And it's not just me; there are other alternative comics artists here, too, like Joe Sacco and Chris Ware. We can't believe our stuff is even on the wall, let alone alongside real artists like Barry McGee, Inka Essenhigh or Gottfried Helnwein.
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Gottfried Helnwein: Yes, it's quite a mix. I'm not sure what I think about it. After all, I borrow imagery from comics, and I really appreciate the do-it-yourself ethic of 'zine editors...but still, I am a painter and my paintings really do belong in a museum. You guys belong in books, in comic book stores.
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This fictional dialogue isn't too far-fetched from the one that the curators of Comic Release: Negotiating Identity for a New Generation hope visitors will engage in when they visit the show. Curators Vicky A. Clark, Barbara Bloemink, Ana Merino and Rick Gribenas know that this smart and intriguing collection of comics, both mainstream and alternative, 'zines and fine art is about dialogue in more ways than one.
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The child stares out from the publicity photos, skin white with dust and eyes expressionless. In a society fluent in the language of news media it's almost impossible not to interpret the blank face of Gottfried Helnwein's photo Child1:
it becomes a symbol of lost innocence and silent accusation.
The show this image promotes, Close Your Little Eyes, is a music theatre-installation devised by composer and director Max Lyandvert. Taking as its starting point a lullaby from the Vilnius Ghetto, it juxtaposes visual and sound images with music scored for 16-voice children's choir, string quartet and soprano soloist. ...

The Rules of Attraction promotional campaign skirted with controversy on more than one occasion, but there's a story that remains largely untold.
Helnwein:
Two images I could not forget - the rape scene and the suicide of that girl in the bath tub - very startling and so different than anything you have ever seen about these subjects on film.
There was a strange and sad beauty in the tardy, dreamlike movements of this girl with the expressionless face, slashing her wrists and slowly turning the water red. Theresa's acting, camera and music in that instant were one of the magic moments in cinema-history. ...

Suddeutsche Zeitung: Più esplicito: trattate con l'orrore di Poe e con "The Raven" è stata una terapia per lei?
LOU REED: Non penso. Forse è una terapia per te.
Suddeutsche Zeitung: All'inizio può essere molto confortante trattare con l'oscurità …
LOU REED: Non è una terapia per me. Conosci Gottfried Helnwein?
Suddeutsche Zeitung: L'artista austriaco?
LOU REED: Si, Gottfried Helnwein
Suddeutsche Zeitung: Non di persona. Qualche suo lavoro ....
LOU REED: Ti piace?
Suddeutsche Zeitung: No.
LOU REED: Capisco!
Suddeutsche Zeitung: Perchè?
LOU REED: E' un mio amico.
Suddeutsche Zeitung: Davvero?
LOU REED:Si. Ha dipinto un ritratto magnifico di Poe. ...

famed for his confronting paintings, Helnwein is as incisive with the camera as with the brush, as this portraits from the 80s attest. ...