Eins zeigt ein Mädchen mit frechem Gesicht und Blindenband um den Arm, das die Zunge herausstreckt. Erst habe ich gelächelt. Wer den Blick länger verharren lässt, sieht, dass dem Mädchen Blut zwischen den Beinen herunterläuft. Es wurde ganz offensichtlich missbraucht, ihm wurde Gewalt angetan.... Ja, Kinder sind verletzbar. Kindheit kann grausam sein, wenn Kinder ausgeliefert sind. Ich denke an sexuellen Missbrauch, eine unglaublich Form von Folter an Menschen, die lebenslang an dem Trauma leiden werden. Ich denke an Kindersoldaten in Togo, im Kongo, im Sudan. Zerstörte Leben, brutal geopfert für idiotische Machtkämpfe, in denen Zerstörung das oberste Gebot ist, in denen es keine Ziele mehr gibt. Ich denke an Kinder in Indien, die schuften schon mit fünf Jahren um ein paar Münzen zu verdienen, damit ihre Familie überleben kann. Ich denke an die 12-jährigen Judith Wischnajatskaja, die im Juli 1942 in ihrem letzten Brief schrieb: “Lieber Vater! Vor dem Tod nehme ich Abschied von Dir. Wir möchten so gerne leben, doch man lässt uns nicht, wir werden umkommen. Ich habe solche Angst vor diesem Tod, denn die kleinen Kinder werden lebendig in die Grube geworfen.“ ...

Catalogue cover: Gottfried Helnwein, Head of a Child 5, 1998 ...

"It was such a great pleasure showing all members of the cast Helnwein's incredible paintings. The girl who plays the "girl in the pit" was particularly impressed by the girl on the cover."
Nava Semel ...

Cover: Portrait by Gottfried Helnwein ...

Kevin Smith wept when he finally received the painting of Gottfried Helnwein
"I don't spend money on coke or whores." deadpans Kevin Smith. "And I am not a big car guy with a fleet of Ferraris or anything like that. But I can get behind an indulgence like this."
The indulgence in question is towering a nine-foot-tall canvas of Smith's daughter, Harley, which hangs in the entry of his Hollywood home.
Smith commissioned the portrait two years ago from Austrian Artist Gottfried Helnwein, who is best known for his dark, noir-style paintings.
Smith admittedly wept when he finally received the work, which has since become his pride and joy - a family heirloom that is a testament to his love for his child as well as being a serious work of art. ...

just yesterday i found out that a helnwein exhibition is in a museum near me.. about 10 mins away from here.. so i decided, as a huge helnwein freak, to go there...
69 pictures also photographs with manson, my favorite painting collection featuring the "angels sleeping" series were spreaded over 8 rooms. i was dressed up in floorlong black leathercoat, my new rock boots, a shirt with one of marilyn mansons paintings on it, lotsa spikes and make up shit.
it gives me so much.. helnwein is one of the best artist this world has at the moment.. and his kids are also cool..unbelievable how creative this whole fucking family is, a creativ chaotic household...hehe... ...

one-man show ...

The artist Gottfried Helnwein stands in front of large-sized painting which depicts a group of SS officers and a woman holding a child at the Wilhelm-Busch Museum in Hanover, Germany, Friday, 11 March 2005. The child is at the centre of the exhibition 'Beautiful Children' by the controversial artist Helnwein. 50 paintings, drawings and large-size photographs are exhibited from 13 March to 5 June 2005. Its the first time in years that Helnwein is again exhibiting in Germany. ...

"Ich habe mich immer mit dem Thema Schmerz und Gewalt beschäftigt, mit dem Holocaust, der deutsch-österreichischen Vergangenheit und mit dem Thema Kindesmisshandlung." Gottfried Helnwein.
Wahrscheinlich hat der Schauspieler Sean Penn ja Recht: Die Welt gleiche einem Gespensterhaus, sagte er einmal, und Gottfried Helnwein sei darin unser Reiseführer. Der 1948 in Wien geborene Künstler hat die Schrecken der Wirklichkeit immer wieder in alptraumähnlicher Weise aufs Papier und die Leinwand gebracht - und sie oft auch an Kindern gezeigt. Mit entstellten, vernarbten Gesichtern sehen sie uns an. Diese malträtierten Kinder wirken ohnmächtig gegenüber der Gewalt, die man ihnen antut. ...

...

A highly satisfying survey of his work at the Legion of Honor museum titled "The Child" was dominated by images of children, as was a current exhibition of his more recent work at Modernism. ...

I recently saw your works in San Francisco at the Palace of the Legion of Honor. I took a friend and two teen age girls to see Marylin Manson on his Lest We Forget tour and then to your awesome exhibit the next day. To see your work in person is a must. It is chilling. The girls totally loved it and I have sucessfully corrupted yet three more unsuspecting innocents. One of the girls had never been to a museum, and has had a very hard and disturbing life. She is a budding artist herself, and she was awestruck. She identified with the art, it was her. I had to drag her from the museum.
Your art is changing healing people. Thank you. ...

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." ...

Con todo estos antecedentes históricos, no es de sorprender que lo que sucede con la Muestra del Plastico León Ferrari y su posterior Censura es algo similar a la Censura que sufrio el artista plastico Gottfried Helnwein en Austria, hace unos anos, por sectores pacatos de derechas. ...

Do you have any art in your home?
- Gottfried Helnwein I own. I have a few pieces of his from his recent L.A. series. We ultimately ended up working together on a video project for Peter Gabriel [“The Barry Williams Show”]. Some things that are familiar lose their gravity after time. When someone like him makes the familiar so continually provocative, you can find a deepening appreciation for something. ...

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 (of the San Francisco Fine Arts Museums), 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。 ...

"...When I look at a work of Art I ask myself: does it challenge me, does it touch, move or inspire me? Do I learn something from it, does it startle or amaze me - do I get excited, upset?
That is the test any artwork has to pass: can it create an emotional impact on a human being even when he has no education or any information about art? I’ve always had a problem with art that you can only understand if you have a degree in art history, and I have a problem with theories in general. Most of them are bullshit anyway.
Most critics and theorists have little respect for artists, and I think the importance of theory in art is totally overrated. Real art is self-evident. Real art is intense, challenging, enchanting, exciting and unsettling; it has a quality and magic that you cannot explain. Like the Blues, a poem of Rimbaud or Rembrandt's late self-portraits.
Art is not logic, and if you really want to experience it, your mind and rational thinking will be of little help. Art is something spiritual that you can only experience with your senses, your heart, your soul. Think of Bob Dylan, Hendrix, Mozart, Howling Wolf, Goya, Bukowski or Robert Crumb - do you need to know the theories that some busybodies might attach to their art in order to experience it?
Marcel Duchamp said: "The work of art is always based on the two poles of the onlooker and the maker, and the spark that comes from the bipolar action gives birth to something - like electricity."
These two poles is all you need. ...

Her lips are parted and colored a luscious deep red. The pancake makeup on her face gives off a marble-white glow. A jacket, adorned with braided gold epaulets at the shoulders, yawns open, exposing a wide expanse of skin down her chest. She appears to be about 8 years old.
There was a time, not so long ago, when the subject of Gottfried Helnwein's new, large-format digital prints at San Francisco's Modernism Gallery might have alarmed or even scandalized a viewer. Not anymore -- or at least not so reflexively...
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, here and across town at Modernism, 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. ...

A documentary on the works of Austrian painter Gottfried Helnwein commemorating the Reichskristallnacht will bw screened on November 13th and 14th 2004.
Noted Austrian artist Gottfried Helnwein, obsessed with the fact that his society could ignore the deaths of six million victims, dedicates his art to Holocaust remembrance. When the 50th anniversary of Kristallnacht passes without commemoration, he creates an heroic art installation. Co-stars Maximiliam Schell, Sean Penn, Jason Lee. ...

-- and the exhibit's defacement by vandals shortly after it was unveiled.
Directed by Henning Lohner and featuring on-camera appearances by Helnwein collectors Sean Penn and Jason Lee, the documentary short is largely the product of the passion and persistence of Malibu producer Gisela Guttman. When she struggled to find a venue in Los Angeles willing to show Helnwein's large-scale installation, she decided to make a documentary instead.
The art installation, which revolves around a series of pictures of small children, was vandalized after its initial showing in Germany.
"The one thing I wanted to do is just be sure that people can see the entire installation, I just really wanted to bring it to Los Angeles, no matter how," Guttman said. "The power of those images really comes across on-screen, and that's what I wanted people to see and to think about." ...