Helnwein was born in Vienna and ranks among the best-known, but also
most disputed German-speaking artists after World War II.
He studied at the University of Visual Art in Vienna (Akademie der
Bildenden Künste, Wien). He was awarded the Master-class prize
(Meisterschulpreis) of the University of Visual Art, Vienna, the
Kardinal-König prize and the Theodor-Körner prize.
He has worked as a painter, draftsman, photographer, muralist,
sculptor, installation- and performance artist, using a wide variety
of techniques and media.
His early work consists mainly of hyper-realistic watercolors,
depicting wounded children, as well as performances - often with
children - in public spaces. Helnwein is a conceptual artist,
concerned primarily with psychological and sociological anxiety,
historical issues and political topics. As a result of this, his work
is often considered provocative and controversial.
Viennese-born Helnwein is part of a tradition going back to the 18th
century, to which Messerschmidt's grimacing sculptures belong. One
sees, too, the common ground of his works with those of Hermann Nitsch
and Rudolf Schwarzkogler, two other Viennese, who display their own
bodies in the frame of reference of injury, pain, and death. One can
also see this fascination for body language goes back to the
expressive gesture in the work of Egon Schiele.
Helnwein´s subject matter involves the complexities of the human
condition. His disturbing yet provocative images of physically and
emotionally wounded children have been seen as metaphors for larger
global issues. He portrays the innocence of adolescence against the
backdrop of historical events like the Holocaust to highlight the
fragility of humanity in an unstable world.
The Child
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.
In 2004 The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco organized the first one-
person exhibition of Gottfried Helnwein at an American Museum: "The
Child, works by Gottfried Helnwein" at the California Palace of the
Legion of Honor. The show was seen by almost 130,000 visitors and the
San Francisco Chronicle quoted it the most important exhibition of a
contemporary artist in 2004. Steven Winn, Chronicle Arts and Culture
Critic, wrote: "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".
Harry S.Parker III, Director of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
explained what makes Helnwein´s art significant: "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, has assembled a thought-provoking selection of Helnwein´s
works and provided an insightful essay on his art. 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".
Comics and Trivial Art
Another strong element in his work are comics. Helnwein has sensed the
superiority of cartoon life over real life ever since he was a child.
A magazine interview brought out an explanation of his obsession with
Disney characters. Growing up in dreary, destructed post-war Vienna,
the young boy was surrounded by unsmiling people haunted by a recent
past they could never speak about. What changed his life was the first
German-language Donald Duck comic book that his father brought home
one day. Opening the book felt like finally arriving in a world where
he belonged:
"...a decent world where one could get flattened by steam-rollers and
perforated by bullets without serious harm. A world in which the
people still looked proper, with yellow beaks or black knobs instead
of noses." (Helnwein.
In 2000 the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art presented Helnwein's
painting "Mouse I" (1995, oil and acrylic on canvas, 210 cm x 310 cm)
at the exhibition The Darker Side of Playland: Childhood Imagery from
the Logan Collection.
Alicia Miller commented on Helnwein's work in Artweek: "In 'The Darker
Side of Playland', the endearing cuteness of beloved toys and cartoon
characters turns menacing and monstrous. Much of the work has the
quality of childhood nightmares. In those dreams, long before any
adult understanding of the specific pains and evils that live holds,
the familiar and comforting objects and images of a child's world are
rent with something untoward. For children, not understanding what
really to be afraid of, these dreams portend some pain and disturbance
lurking into the landscape. Perhaps nothing in the exhibition
exemplifies this better than Gottfried Helnwein's 'Mickey'. His
portrait of Disney's favorite mouse occupies an entire wall of the
gallery; rendered from an oblique angle, his jaunty, ingenuous visage
looks somehow sneaky and suspicious. His broad smile, encasing a row
of gleaming teeth, seems more a snarl or leer. This is Mickey as Mr.
Hyde, his hidden other self now disturbingly revealed. Helnwein's
Mickey is painted in shades of gray, as if pictured on an old black-
and-white TV set. We are meant to be transported to the flickering
edges of our own childhood memories in a time imaginably more
blameless, crime-less and guiltless. But Mickey's terrifying demeanor
hints of things to come...".
Although Helnwein's work is rooted in the legacy of German
expressionism, he has absorbed elements of American pop culture. In
the 70s he began to include cartoon characters in his paintings. In
several interviews he claimed: "I learned more from Donald Duck than
from all the schools that I have ever attended." Commenting on that
aspect in Helnwein's work, Julia Pascal wrote in the New Statesman:
"His early watercolor Peinlich (Embarrassing)- shows a typical little
1950s girl in a pink dress and carrying a comic book. Her innocent
appeal is destroyed by the gash deforming her cheek and lips. It is as
if Donald Duck had met Mengele".
Living between Los Angeles and Ireland, Helnwein met and photographed
the Rolling Stones in London, and his portrait of John F Kennedy made
the front cover of Time magazine on the 20th anniversary of the
president's assassination. His Self-portrait as screaming bandaged
man, blinded by forks (1982) became the cover of the Scorpions album
Blackout. Andy Warhol, Muhammad Ali, William Burroughs and the German
industrial metal band Rammstein posed for him; some of his art-works
appeared in the cover-booklet of Michael Jackson's History album.
Referring to the fall of the Berlin Wall Helnwein created the book
Some Facts about Myself, together with Marlene Dietrich. In 2003 he
became friends with Marilyn Manson and started a collaboration with
him on the multi-media art-project The Golden Age of Grotesque and on
several experimental video-projects.
Examining his imagery from the 1970s to the present, one sees
influences as diverse as Bosch, Goya, John Heartfield, Beuys and
Mickey Mouse, all filtered through a postwar Viennese childhood.
'Helnwein´s oeuvre embraces total antipodes: The trivial alternates
with visions of spiritual doom, the divine in the child contrasts with
horror-images of child-abuse. But violence remains to be his basic
theme, - the physical and the emotional suffering, inflicted by one
human being unto another.'
Self-Portraits
The self-portrait for the artist's blindfolded unbent head covered
with blood occurs twice in Helnwein's triptych The Silent Glow of the
Avantgarde (1986). The middle panel shows an enlarged reproduction of
Caspar David Friedrich's The sea of Ice, a depiction of a catastrophe
of 1823/24 which is generally interpreted as a romantic allegory of
the force of nature overpowering all human effort . Helnwein compared
the "quietly theatrical" ecstatic attitude of his self-portrait with
the heroic pose of the figure of the suffering figure of Sebastian and
generalizes both to the stigma of the artist in the 20th century,
making him a kind of saviour figure. In addition, its poetic title
sets the viewer onto the right track. The visual montage of the modern
artist as Man of Sorrows with Friedrich's landscape painting projects
the dashed hopes of the romantic rebellion into the present, to the
protest thinking of modernity, which has become introverted and
masochistic, and its crossing of aesthetic boundaries. Is romanticism
making a comeback? - No; actually, it had never left modernity. But
its rebellion is confining and introverting itself in the "body
metaphysics" of contemporary artists to its own flesh and blood. Thus,
the comeback of romanticism leads for Helnwein, too, to stressing just
one of its partial aspects, the stylizing in the form of a self-
portrait of a protest introverted to martyrdom which historically was
once linked in a contradictory way with social opposition, rebellion,
and utopia.
References to the Holocaust
Mitchell Waxman wrote 2004, in The Jewish Journal, Los Angeles: "The
most powerful images that deal with Nazism and Holocaust themes are by
Anselm Kiefer and Helnwein, although, Kiefer´s work differs
considerably from Helnwein´s in his concern with the effect of German
aggression on the national psyche and the complexities of German
cultural heritage. Kiefer is known for evocative and soulful images of
barren German landscapes. But Kiefer and Helnwein´s work are both
informed by the personal experience of growing up in a post-war German
speaking country... William Burroughs said that the American
revolution begins in books and music, and political operatives
implement the changes after the fact. To this maybe we can add art.
And Helnwein's art might have the capacity to instigate change by
piercing the veil of political correctness to recapture the primitive
gesture inherent in art.".
One of the most famous paintings of Helnwein's oeuvre is Epiphany I -
Adoration of the Magi, (1996, oil and acrylic on canvas, 210 cm x
333cm, collection of the Denver Art Museum). It is part of a series of
three paintings: Epiphany I, Epiphany II (Adoration of the Shepherds),
Epiphany III (Presentation at the Temple), created between 1996 and
1998. In Epiphany I, SS officers surround a mother and child group. To
judge by their looks and gestures, they appear to be interested in
details such as head, face, back and genitals. The arrangement of the
figures clearly relates to motive and iconography of the adoration of
the three Magi, such as were common especially in the German, Italian
and Dutch 15th century artworks. Julia Pascal wrote about this work in
the New Statesman: "This Austrian Catholic Nativity scene has no Magi
bearing gifts. Madonna and child are encircled by five respectful
Waffen SS officers palpably in awe of the idealised, blonde Virgin.
The Christ toddler, who stands on Mary's lap, stares defiantly out of
the canvas." Helnwein's baby Jesus is often considered to represent
Adolf Hitler.
Works for the Stage
Helnwein is also known for his stage and costume designs for theater,
ballet and opera productions. Amongst them: "Macbeth" by William
Shakespeare, (director, choreographer: Johann Kresnik) , Theater
Heidelberg, 1988, Volksbühne Berlin, 1995; "The Persecution and Murder
of Jean Paul Marat, Performed by the Drama Group of the Hospice at
Charenton, under Direction of Monsieur de Sade" by Peter Weiss,
(director: Johann Kresnik), Stuttgart National Theatre, 1989;
"Pasolini, Testament des Körpers", (director: Johann Kresnik),
Deutsches Schauspielhaus Hamburg, 1996; "Hamletmaschine" by Heiner
Müller, (director: Gert Hof), 47. Berliner Festwochen, Berlin 1997,
Muffathalle, München, 1997; "The Rake's Progress" by Igor Stravinsky,
(director: Jürgen Flimm), at Hamburg State Opera, 2001; "Paradise and
the Peri", oratorio by Robert Schumann, (director, choreographer:
Gregor Seyffert & Compagnie Berlin), Robert-Schumann-Festival 2004,
Tonhalle Düsseldorf; Der Rosenkavalier" by Richard Strauss, (director:
Maximilian Schell) at Los Angeles Opera, 2005,[23] and Israeli Opera
Tel Aviv, 2006;"Der Ring des Nibelungen, part I, Rheingold und
Walküre", choreographic theatre after Richard Wagner, (director,
choreographer: Johann Kresnik), Oper Bonn, 2006; "Der Ring des
Nibelungen, part II, Siegfried und Götterdämmerung", director,
choreographer: Johann Kresnik), Oper Bonn, 2008.
Personal life
Helnwein was born in Vienna. He has four children with his wife
Renate: Cyril, Mercedes, Ali Elvis and Wolfgang Amadeus, who are all
artists.
Helnwein lived in Vienna till 1984, then he moved to Germany where
he lived and worked till 1997. In 1997 he moved to Dublin, Ireland.
In 1998 he bought castle Gurteen de La Poer in County Tipperary where
he now lives with his family. Since 2001 he also has a studio in Los
Angeles.
In 2004 Helnwein received Irish citizenship.
On December 3, 2005, Marilyn Manson and Dita Von Teese were married in
a private, non-denominational ceremony at Helnwein's castle. The
wedding was officiated by surrealist film director and comic book
writer Alejandro Jodorowsky, Gottfried Helnwein was best man. They
exchanged vows in front of approximately 60 guests, including Lisa
Marie Presley. The wedding pictures appeared in the March 2006
edition of Vogue under the heading "The Bride Wore Purple".
Prices and Awards * 1970 Maste-class award, Akademie der bildenden Künste Wien
* 1971 Kardinal-König-Preis
* 1974 Theodor-Körner-Preis
* 1984 Adolf-Grimme-Award for the Television documentary
"Helnwein" (ZDF/ORF, National German and National Austrian
Television)
* 2006 The Council of the City of Philadelphia honors and
recognizes the artistic contributions of Gottfried Helnwein in keeping
the memory of the Holocaust alive.
* 2006 Governor Erwin Pröll appoints Gottfried Helnwein
Honorable Ambassador of the state of Lower Austria.
* 2007 "Goose Egg Nugget Award" of the Carl-Barks Society, in
Recognition of Significant Artistic Contributions to the Disney Duck
Genre and the Carl Barks Legacy. |
<