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. ...

(Auszug)
SZ: Deutlicher: Ist die Beschäftigung mit dem Horror Edgar Allan Poes und die Beschäftigung mit dem Raben „Nimmermehr“ eine Therapie für Sie?
Lou Reed: Glaube ich nicht. Vielleicht ist es ja eine Therapie für Sie.
SZ: Grundsätzlich kann es ja trostreich sein, sich mit dem Dunklen . . .
Lou Reed: . . . das ist keine Therapie für mich. Kennen Sie Gottfried Helnwein?
SZ: Den österreichischen Künstler?
Lou Reed: Ja, Gottfried Helnwein.
SZ: Nicht persönlich. Einige seiner Sachen kenne ich, ja.
Lou Reed: Mögen Sie seine Sachen?
SZ: Nein.
Lou Reed: Aha.
SZ: Wieso?
Lou Reed: Er ist ein Freund von mir.
SZ: Ist er das?
Lou Reed: Ja. Er hat ein wunderbares Bild von Poe gemalt... ...

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

Marilyn Manson's new Interscope album, "The Golden Age of Grotesque," arrives this week. The set, produced by Manson and Tim Skold, is led by the single "mOBSCENE." Says Manson, "This album is about expression. The imagination and personality of the individual cannot be trapped by small minds or defined by any one person. The genius of art finds sanctuary among children and madmen to survive. That, is who we are." ...

Marilyn Manson:
About a year ago, I hooked up with Gottfried Helnwein, and he and I have been working together on various projects that, again, cross the boundaries between photography, painting, film, and installation. It's part of what I'm going to unleash and put into effect as the next couple of months unfold. It's stuff that people dont get to see anymore; it's stuff that happened in the '30s, '40s, '50s and even the '60s with the Panic Movement and Action. Gottfried really pushes the envelope, not just for shock value but for the betterment of art, to make people want to have style because they like it, not because they want to impress other people, to want to be creative because it feeds them and it makes them exist. ...

This was the moment when I sensed for the first time," Helnwein has since written, "[that] you can change something with aesthetics, you can get things moving in a very subtle way, you can get even the powerful and strong to slide and totter, anything actually if you know the weak points and tap at them ever so gently by aesthetic means." For the following three-and-a-half decades he has relentlessly pursued that goal, masterfully incorporating everything from painting to performance to photography, regularly causing art world outcry and public fury. Yet as his knockout exhibition at Modernism last October made clear, his art is successful less for its evident tendency to provoke than for its extraordinary ability to perplex. ...

Otra de las obras de vanguardia del menú cultural será "Kleines Helnwein", una pieza teatral con una instalación museográfica que viene de cosechar lauros en un recorrido internacional. Su protagonista será Belén Blanco y la dirección estará a cargo de Rodrigo Malmsten. ...

MMW antwortet live
Thema war natürlich sein neues Album "In den Wahnsinn", ein "Back-to-the-Roots"-Album, wie es MWW selbst nennt. Für die Scheibe gibts schon jetzt über 400.000 Vorbestellungen - und damit Platin-Status vor dem Erscheinen!
- auf dem Cover ist zum ersten Mal nicht Marius selbst, sondern das Porträt eines Kindes zu sehen. Der Grund: "Ich habe den Künstler Gottfried Helnwein bei der Verleihung des Bundesverdienstkreuzes kennengelernt. Der Katalog mit diesem Bild lag auf meinem Schreibtisch. Während der Arbeit am neuen Album bin ich immer wieder daran vorbeigelaufen - und es assoziierte sich immer mehr mit der Musik." So kam der Kinderkopf auf das Cover. ...

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To help promote their controversial film, "Rules of Attraction", writer/director Roger Avary and producer Greg Shapiro contracted artist Gottfried Helnwein to create an image for the poster. Helnwein chose to recreate a scene where a girl commits suicide and Lauren (Shannyn Sossamon) discovers her body. In the studio shot, it almost looks like Sossamon is kissing the dead girl.
Since the suicide is a wrist slitting in the bathtub, the girl is nude and therefore the shot couldn't be used for wide release posters. The one you see displayed in theaters features stuffed animals in compromising positions, but Helnwein's poster did make it onto the soundtrack CD and other outlets. Helnwein himself spoke with Madblast about his work. ...

PRESENT: A crowd described as groovy and Hollywoodish -including actor/skateboarder Jason Lee - turned up Thursday for the opening of Austrian-born L.A.-and-Ireland resident Gottfried Helnwein's show at Modernism in San Francisco. Sean Penn was said to have bought three paintings. ...

THE FRENCH SAY, "CONDEMNANT IL FAIT Q'UOD": "WE CONDEMN WHAT WE DO NOT UNDERSTAND." BUT THAT STOPS RIGHT HERE. LAY YOUR OPINIONS OF THE MAN TO REST UNTIL AFTER YOU'VE READ THE ENTIRE CONVERSATION BETWEEN CYRIL HELNWEIN AND MARILYN MANSON
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Manson:
Of course, for everybody who reads this – they won’t know that our meeting has been very important to my career, because you introduced me to your father (Gottfried Helnwein) and we'’ve gone and will go on to do lots of great stuff together.
So that’s the behind-the-scenes story for everybody who’'s going to read this.. ...

His private collection of abstract expressionists, contemporary and Native American art is considered by dealers and curators to be one of the nations best, and he has seats on the boards of the museums of modern art in San Francisco and New York. Much of his collection, including works by Wayne Theibaud, Naomi Kremer, GOTTFRIED HELNWEIN and Nathan Oliveira, is on display throughout the company's offices.
In November, Sotheby's will hold a sale of more than 20 abstract works owned by Weisel. The paintings are expected to fetch as much as $60 million. ...

Some of his work is disturbing to say the least, and has been described as "the visual equivalent of a contact sport". He uses art as a way to fight back at society, his pictures forcing people to face things they might prefer to forget about.
Children feature heavily, as do bandages and chilling images from the wartime era. All very challanging, yet fascinating. ...

The art in the loft is primarily representational and often haunting, veering towards an eerie hyperphotorealism. A large painting by Gottfried Helnwein shows a group of men - perhaps doctors or veterans of war - surrounding the body of a young girl on an examination table. They gaze directly at the viewer, as if posing . It could be an antique photograph - the men are from another time - but for the disfigured faces of the physicians.
"I don't think they know how they look," says Lee. ...

Die von William Hogarths Kupferstichserie von 1733/34 inspirierte Oper weckt von je den Ehrgeiz der Maler, Bühnenbildner zu sein: David Hockney, Jörg Immendorf, zuletzt in Hamburg Gottfried Helnwein. Die Orte des Niedergangs von Tom Rakewell - Landidylle, ein Londoner Bordell, Friedhof und die Endstation Irrenhaus - kitzeln reflexhaft die Inspiration: es zucken und schnappen Drastik, wilde Farben, Travestie und Parodie. ...

When Austrian artist Gottfried Helnwein opened a show of his paintings recently, celebrities crowded his downtown studio.
Leonardo DiCaprio rubbed Elbows with Marilyn Manson. Beck chatted with Kevin Smith. Mena Suvari stopped for a photo op, and Sean Penn lent his cool.
For a recent transplant, Helnwein attracted much Hollywood. ...

Skräckrockaren Marilyn Manson ska samarbeta med den österrikiske avantgarde-konstnären Gottfried Helnwein.
På Mansons officiella sajt beskrivs satsningen som "A world of horror in pictures".
Helnwein är kontroversiell på grund av sina referenser till nazismen. En serie porträtt, som förstördes av nynazister, ska nu ställas ut på Los Angeles Museum of Tolerance. Samtidigt planerar Marilyn Manson en egen utställning i september av sina målningar.
Han är också i full gång med att spela in sitt nästa album, The golden age of grotesque. Dessutom har han en roll i filmen Party monster i New York

“This is a very serious and somewhat disturbing exhibition,” said Mayor Meralee Goldman, who is supportive of the exhibit and was first approached by the Austrian artist.
“There is an important component of education to go along with this exhibit,” Human Relations Director Mary O’Gorman said. “This is a Holocaust Memorial, and the intent at times is to overwhelm.”
The exhibit is described as “an art event to focus the conscience of the viewer and, through media exposure, the conscience of the widest possible public” by the artist’s draft proposal. “An art installation a city block long...will rise into public view to cry out against not only one of history’s most tragic and horrific episodes of prejudice, but also against the current resurgence of the endangerment of children through intolerance around the world.” ...

...Helnwein opens up"Nighthawks" to closer iconographic inspection, exposing the symbolic meanings of the painting to cement its position as a landmark of twentieth-century anti-urbanism. ...