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 that he knows.
Helnwein is a master of surprised recognition. ...

Adults bring a trunkful of contradictory cultural baggage to any representations of children. That's what makes the work of Helnwein so powerful. In his show, "The Child," at the Legion of Honor, deformed infants and bandaged children stir feelings of pity, defiance and uneasiness about exploitation. There's an ambiguously disturbing painting of a girl aiming a gun into an open refrigerator and another of a bare-breasted mother and child surrounded by Aryan soldiers.
But the most haunting images may be the ones of children who seem strangely oblivious to the adult gaze. Some of Helnwein's children peer right past the onlooker. Others sleep, dreaming of anything but us behind their silky eyelids. And some, like the enormous, half- shadowed "Head of a Child" at the Legion, see straight through us with cloudless, infinite blue eyes.
Steven Winn, San Francisco Chronicle, 17. November 2004
.
California Palace of the Legion of Honor, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. さてさて。旅行記めいたものを書きますと長くなり、途中でやめてしまうことが多いので、今回の旅行の中で印象に残った点を、つらつらと書いてみたいと思います。ゴットフリード・ヘルンウｪイン（Gottfried Helnwein）。この片仮名表記で合ってるかどうかわかりませんが。オーストリア人アーティストです。現在のコンテンポラリーでは、彼の作品展「The Child」が開催されていました。 ...

..A clarity of vision in his subject matter was emerging in Helnwein's art that was to stay consistent throughout his career. His subject matter is the human condition. The metaphor for his art, although it included self-portraits, is dominated by the image of the child, but not the carefree innocent child of popular imagination. Helnwein instead created the profoundly disturbing yet compellingly provocative image of the wounded child. The child scarred physically and the child scarred emotionally from within. ...

For Helnwein, the child is the symbol of innocence, but also of innocence betrayed. In today’s world, the malevolent forces of war, poverty, and sexual exploitation and the numbing, predatory influence of modern media assault the virtue of children. Robert Flynn Johnson, the curator in charge of the Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts, has assembled a thought-provoking selection of Helnwein’s works and provided an insightful essay on his art in this exhibition catalogue.
Helnwein’s work concerning the child includes paintings, drawings, and photographs, and it ranges from subtle inscrutability to scenes of stark brutality.
Of course, brutal scenes—witness The Massacre of the Innocents—have been important and regularly visited motifs in the history of art. What makes Helnwein’s art significant is its ability to make us reflect emotionally and intellectually on the very expressive subjects he chooses. Many people feel that museums should be a refuge in which to experience quiet beauty divorced from the coarseness of the world. This notion sells short the purposes of art, the function of museums, and the intellectual curiosity of the public.
The Child: Works by Gottfried Helnwein will inspire and enlighten many; it is also sure to upset some. It is not only the right but the responsibility of the museum to present art that deals with important and sometimes controversial topics in our society. ...

TOP 10
The Gottfried Helnwein exhibition "The Child" at the Palace of the Legion of Honor (San Francisco Fine Arts Museums, July) was chosen as the most important show of a contemporary artist in 2004.
"In the first of two shows (the other at the Modernism Gallery in November), Helnwein's large format, photo-realist images of children of various demeanors boldly probed the subconscious. Innocence, sexuality, victimization and haunting self-possession surge and flicker in Helnwein's unnerving work." ...

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? Reflektiert sein Spiegel nur die Jahrhunderthaltung, LIEBER EIN SCHRECKEN OHNE ENDE ALS EIN ENDE MIT SCHRECKEN, die aus der Überbewertung des Todes kommt, Folge seiner Tabuierung durch Statistik. Perseus, der die Gorgo im Spiegel guillotiniert, und wenn der Kopf fällt, ist es der eigene.
Wie viel Köpfe hat ein Mensch / Mann in unserem Zeitalter der Spiegel? ...

A story by Stephen King. An American schoolboy, twelve or thirteen years old, fascinated in his small-town boredom by documents on the German concentration camps - the way his classmates are by Superman - the formula of his fascination: THEY JUST DID THOSE THINGS...
How does a friendly person like Helnwein stand making his - excellent - painting into a mirror of the terrors of this century? Or is it that he can't stand not doing it? Does his mirror just reflect the attitude of the century? TERROR WITHOUT END IS BETTER THAN AN ENDING IN TERROR. It comes from the over-evaluation of death, a consequence of "statistics" making it taboo. Perseus guillotines the Gorgon in the mirror -, and when the head falls, it is his own.
How many heads does a person/man have in our age of mirrors? ...

Helnwein - A Concept Artist before the Turn of the Millennium. Is it sheer coincidence that Gottfried Helnwein, the Austrian artist, created a portrait of both the German and the American? Coincidence, that he captured Warhol as a disturbing spectre on photograph, but painted Beuys? And that he then photographed the painted portrait of Beuys in the hands of Arno Breker, Adolf Hitler's favourite sculptor? There are weighty reasons for considering Helnwein the legitimate heir to Beuys and Warhol. ...

Artist of inner Turmoil.
Gottfried Helnwein's works from the 1980's are represented by the self-portraits in his "Black Mirror" series. However, these works reach far beyond the boundaries of the ordinary self-portrait.
They reflect the inner wants and desperation which lies within the viewer's own self.
Helnwein points out the new form of the modern self-portrait which involves the creator and viewer alike. ...

„In memory of the children of Europe who have to die of cold and hunger this Xmas“, schreibt der nach London emigrierte österreichische Maler Oskar Kokoschka im Winter 1945 auf den Entwurf zu einem Plakat. Auf eigene Kosten lässt er 5000 Stück drucken und in U-Bahn-Stationen affichieren.
Im Spätherbst 1988 montiert der ins Rheinland emigrierte österreichische Maler Gottfried Helnwein entlang einer 100 Meter langen Wand zwischen Kölner Dom und Museum Ludwig eine Reihe von vier Meter hohen Fotodrucken mit Kindergesichtern. Er nennt die Arbeit „Selektion (Neunter November Nacht)“. Es ist ein Werk von monströser Aussage und schmerzhafter Wirkung. Sein Titel ruft den Jahrestag der sogenannten Reichskristallnacht in Erinnerung, durch ihn gibt Helnwein den Kinderporträts ihren beinahe überwältigend erschütternden Effekt.
Während wir mit Gottfried Helnwein seine Ausstellung für das Lentos Kunstmuseum vorbereiten, recherchiere ich gleichzeitig für ein anderes Projekt über Kokoschka. Die Geschichte der Londoner Plakate ist mir neu. Unbeabsichtigt und unerwartet blenden sich die beiden Künstler-Leben für einen kurzen, berührenden Moment ineinander. Mit beträchtlichem Einsatz an Gestaltungskraft, Kommunikationsfähigkeit, organisatorischer Erfahrung, Umsetzungsenergie und finanziellen Mitteln widmen sich beide Künstler aus gegebenem Anlass einem Appell: Zur Erinnerung! ...