“Look Now” was a spectacular show comprised of photography, installations, painting and video art. The images were often disturbing as the examples of Gottfried Helnwein’s haunting painting of a child in military dress and Tony Oursler’s disembodied, frog-like talking heads, which amused, admonished and interrogated their audience went fully to show. The exhibit attempted to “confront us with the realities that lie behind and between our fantasies of who we are and of the world in which we live,” and this was certainly chillingly and mesmerizingly achieved. ...

This is the first art history that analyzes the use of Disney imagery by such artists as Lichtenstein, Oldenburg, Warhol, Chagoya, Thiebaud, Helnwein, Boltanski, Dion, Pesanto, Ospina, Finley and many more. This book explores the impact of Disney, including artists’ economic and psychological motivations, on contemporary art. Disney refused permission for any images - their and artists. ...

Contemporary Looks "Radar: Selections From the Collection of Vicki and Kent Logan" will be the principal opening exhibition. Among, the works on view will be Thomas Schutte's "Grosse Geister," (left), Franz Ackermann's "B 1 (Barbeque with the Duke)" (center) and Gottfried Helnwein's "Epiphany" (right). ...

Provokateure in der Kunst gibt es schon eine Weile. Besonders in Österreich tritt diese Spezies seit den 60er Jahren hervor. Man denke nur an Hermann Nitsch, Arnulf Rainer oder Günter Brus. Gottfried Helnwein (geb. 1948), etwas jünger, hat sich ebenfalls als Enfant terrible etabliert. Gesicht und Hände mit Rasierklingen bearbeitend, von Wien nach Venedig pilgernd, ohne zu essen und zu schlafen, oder sich selbst porträtierend als "Schreiender - Geblendeter." Jetzt kann man in der Galerie Brockstedt überprüfen, wie sich der Künstler zwischenzeitlich entwickelt hat. ...

The child as a symbol of hope, purity and innocence triggers a protective reflex that taps into society's instinct to cherish and protect its young. Any tarnishing of this ideal is naturally going to provoke controversy, with art, literature and advertising strewn with instances of iconoclasts who have upset the moral applecart. (Henry James' novel The Turn of the Screw, the sinister paintings of Balthus, or the candid photographs by Sally Mann, are all examples.) It is within such company that Austrian artist Gottfried Helnwein rests, as his controversial works cause people to sit up and take notice whenever he exhibits. Certainly, shocking images of deformed babies, Nazi ephemera and pseudo-religious overtones are not for the faint-hearted. However, the majority of the portrait paintings on show in the current exhibition at the Fenton are perhaps more palatable for the general viewer, as the imagery is comparatively sedate in terms of narrative and symbolism. ...

WITH his bandanna and long dark hair, wearing something that looks like a flak jacket, swarthy Gottfried Helnwein could be a guerrilla or a pirate-revolutionary.
But the rock 'n' roll lifestyle and 17th-Century castle in Co Tipperary adorned with huge canvases tell a different story. He's an artist of serious international reputation, veteran of many controversies, who counts Sean Penn, Marilyn Manson, Norman Mailer and, once, Marlene Dietrich among his friends. ...

With her reddened lips slightly ajar and her eyes gently shut, this little girl could either be in serene repose or even, with her ghostly pallor, dead. Considering the artist who has created this hauntingly compelling image, it's possibly the latter. Gottfried Helnwein, the man in question, has always danced along that fine line of controversy. ...

Die Welt des Walt Disney hat moderne Künstler seit der Pop Art inspiriert. Christian Boltanski widmet sich 1972 den Fotos von Mitgliedern des Mickey-Clubs des Jahres 1955 und Gottfried Helnwein portraitiert 2000 den "American Prayer", einen Jungen, der sein Abendgebet Donald Duck widmet. ...

"Wie hält ein freundlicher Mensch wie Helnwein es aus, seine exzellente Malerei zum Spiegel der Schrecken des Jahrhunderts zu machen? Oder hält er es einfach nicht aus, das nicht zu tun?", so schrieb Heiner Müller einmal. Gottfried Helnwein, geboren 1948 in Wien, wurde bekannt mit grausam hyperrealistischen Bildern verwundeter, wie kriegstraumatisierter Kinder. ...

Helnwein: "We are living in the age where materialism has finally triumphed. The world has been purged of fairies, elves, witches, angels, enchanted castles and hidden treasures. Dreaming and fantasizing is nowadays considered a chemical imbalance in the brain of the child. For reasons of national security there are no realms of imagination anymore in which to escape - children are held in the merciless headlight of the adults level-headed, common-sense-madhouse: a world of stock-markets, war, rape, pollution, television-moronism, prozak, prison-camps, miss universe-competitions, genetic engineering, child pornography, Ronald McDonalds, Paris Hilton and torture." ...