Gottfried Helnwein: Kristallnacht | STAMPA | Selezione di articoli dalla stampa | GOTTFRIED HELNWEIN: DER MALER UND SEIN HOLOCAUST-MAHNMAL FÜR L.A.Los Angeles

November 2003
THE ARTIST: GOTTFRIED HELNWEIN
Austrian artist Gottfried Helnwein's work is collected by many of the world's leading museums, including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. He has been presented in significant one-man exhibitions in such venues as the State Russian Museum in St. Petersburg, the Albertina Museum, Vienna, the Stadtmuseum Munich, the Fine Arts Museum in Otaru, Japan, the Musee' De L' Elysee, Lausanne in Switzeland and others.
He is currently preparing exhibitions for 2004 at the Fine Arts Museum San Francisco and the Fine Arts Museum in Beijing, China.
Mr. Helnwein, born after World War II and not a Jew, became aware during childhood of Austria's and Germany's active involvement in the hatred and atrocities of Nazism, and chose to speak out publicly and through his art, lest a country forget the past, forgive itself and repeat its errors.

1988, 50 years after the infamous "Kristallnacht" Helnwein erected a 100 meter long wall of pictures in the city center of Cologne, between the Ludwig Museum and the Cathedral to commemorate this night.
He confronted the passers-by with larger-than-life children's faces in a seemingly endless row – children lined up as though “to be sorted”.
The central theme in Gottfried Helnwein’s work is the human being. As a victim but also as a perpetrator. No other German-speaking artist of the post-war generation has so hauntingly dealt with the National Socialistic legacy and such issues as fascism, violence and intolerance.
He has developed his own provocative, disturbing and to some extent shocking visual language in which its passion above all is dedicated to the weakest of the victims: the children.
His images are a constant silent appeal against collective denial and repression.
Helnwein's installation "Ninth November Night- Selektion" has been shown in many German cities, amongst them Berlin and Cologne but also in Russia, Switzeland, Japan and Ireland.
The screening of his documentary, "Ninth November Night" at the Museum of Tolerance comes at a time so in need of its message of remembrance and tolerance.
He currently lives in Los Angeles and in the Republic of Ireland (where he is working on a portrait of Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber for the National Portrait Gallery in London).
His art installations in Public spaces throughout the world include monumental images - some of them several stories high, which have been exhibited in Los Angeles, Berlin, Vienna and recently in the city of Kilkenny in Ireland, where he showed huge pictures of Irish children, which covered many of the tallest buildings in the city.
Helnwein has a studio in the Arts district in downtown, Los Angeles.
.
THE CURATOR: Gisela Guttman, artist and artist representative, spent her childhood in war torn Nazi Germany. A Catholic, she lived a childhood of deprivation and danger as a displaced person. She was on of the few members of her kindergarten class to survive the 1942 bombings that leveled her native city of Cologne. Following the war, she learned the full truth and lessons of the Holocaust, and felt compelled (like Helnwein) to find ways to perpetuate the memory and awareness of what intolerance can wreak.

09. November 2003
Museum of Tolerance/Simon Wiesenthal Center, Los Angeles
premiering "Ninth November Night" a documentary on the work of Gottfried Helnwein
In fact, his work is insistently open-ended. Like Goya's Disasters of War, his art queries time and again, "How can this have happened?" Sometimes viewers reply, assaulting pictures of innocent children, worshipping those of a murderous dictator. Yet such reactions can only bring us to inquire again, louder and with greater urgency, "How can this have happened?" At last we recognize that Helnwein asks questions not in order to solicit answers - hate has no reason - but rather in order that we might begin to pose our own.

05. September 2003
Yaso magazine, Japan
Helnwein:
I always thought – how did I end up in a place like this? What was I doing here? The only thing I knew was that this was not home – I didn’t belong here. But who was I then? Where did I come from?
I was a stranger, whose spaceship had crashed on an unknown planet and so was stranded with no possibilities of ever leaving again. Not only did I seem to have lost my orientation through the impact of the crash, but my memory as well, because I had forgotten who I was and where I came from. There was only one thing I was certain of: that this was an alien world in whose merciless embrace I was now caught. It was like the aftermath of a sloppy end of the world, where the few people that had survived, now continued cautiously to vegetate amongst the ruins, hoping to remain unnoticed by the Eternal Judge.
What I didn’t know then was that I had been born shortly after my stupid ancestors had lost the second of the two world-wars that they had caused within the last 30 years – which had turned 1000 years of culture into ashes and annihilated the lives of more than 50 million people
And when I found the photographs of my father, my grandfathers and my uncles all in uniforms of Hitler’s army, I started to ask questions.
Unfortunately, I was speaking either in the wrong tongue or they also suffered amnesia, because I never got any answers. But I was a very insistent child and I never gave up asking, despite the fact that it didn’t get me anywhere.
And then there was this one miraculous moment when I turned 18, this instance of revelation - suddenly I knew there was a way out: I had to become an artist. And I started to paint. I didn’t know much about the art-world and other artists, and I didn’t care about styles and techniques. I just began to formulate my old questions now as images, and step by step I developed my own visual language.
And I was not prepared for the avalanche of emotional reactions that my little watercolor-paintings triggered, I was quite surprised to realize that suddenly I seemed to be in possession of a superior magic language, capable of cutting through everything and reaching deep into the hearts of people and moving and touching them. And to my amazement this nation of mutes started to talk, to respond, to shout, to cry and to whisper. And I found myself in a very emotional and powerful dialogue with a growing number of people, that never stopped and became the momentum and destiny of my life.
When I started to paint I didn’t feel I had any message, my art was not an answer – it was a question.


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		03. novembre 2003 ORF Austrian National Television Claudia Teissig GOTTFRIED HELNWEIN: DER MALER UND SEIN HOLOCAUST-MAHNMAL FÜR L.A. Treffpunkt Kultur: Neunter November Nacht ORF, Treffpunkt Kultur, 3. November, um 22.30 Uhr, Barbara Rett prasentiert: Gottfried Helnwein: Der Maler und sein Holocaust-Mahnmal für L.A. Ein Film von Claudia Teissig. Schock-Therapeut: Gottfried Helnwein 50 Jahre nach der Reichspogrom-Nacht - im November 1988 - ließ Österreichs Schockmaler Gottfried Helnwein vor dem Kölner Dom auf eigene Kosten eine Galerie des Schreckens errichten. Hundert Meter lang, jedes der Bilder vier Meter hoch: Fotos von Vier- bis Achtjährigen - der Tod in ihre bleichen Gesichter geschrieben. Kaum war die Bilderstraße errichtet, kam es zu den ersten Beschädigungen. Nun stellt Helnwein seine künstlerische Auseinandersetzung mit dem Holocaust in seiner Wahlheimat Los Angeles aus. Dort fühlt Helnwein sich am "äußersten Punkt im Prozess des Untergangs des Abendlandes" angekommen - und sieht die Stadt als Herausforderung. Für 2004 bereitet er eine große Retrospektive in Pekings "verbotener Stadt" vor. TREFFPUNKT KULTUR hat den Maler in L.A. besucht.


		ORF, Treffpunkt Kultur, 3. November, um 22.30 Uhr. http://tv.orf.at/program/orf2/20031103/293076901/68308/


		Museum of Tolerance / Simon Wiesenthal Center November 2003 THE ARTIST: GOTTFRIED HELNWEIN Austrian artist Gottfried Helnwein's work is collected by many of the world's leading museums, including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. He has been presented in significant one-man exhibitions in such venues as the State Russian Museum in St. Petersburg, the Albertina Museum, Vienna, the Stadtmuseum Munich, the Fine Arts Museum in Otaru, Japan, the Musee' De L' Elysee, Lausanne in Switzeland and others. He is currently preparing exhibitions for 2004 at the Fine Arts Museum San Francisco and the Fine Arts Museum in Beijing, China. Mr. Helnwein, born after World War II and not a Jew, became aware during childhood of Austria's and Germany's active involvement in the hatred and atrocities of Nazism, and chose to speak out publicly and through his art, lest a country forget the past, forgive itself and repeat its errors. 1988, 50 years after the infamous "Kristallnacht" Helnwein erected a 100 meter long wall of pictures in the city center of Cologne, between the Ludwig Museum and the Cathedral to commemorate this night. He confronted the passers-by with larger-than-life children's faces in a seemingly endless row – children lined up as though “to be sorted”. The central theme in Gottfried Helnwein’s work is the human being. As a victim but also as a perpetrator. No other German-speaking artist of the post-war generation has so hauntingly dealt with the National Socialistic legacy and such issues as fascism, violence and intolerance. He has developed his own provocative, disturbing and to some extent shocking visual language in which its passion above all is dedicated to the weakest of the victims: the children. His images are a constant silent appeal against collective denial and repression. Helnwein's installation "Ninth November Night- Selektion" has been shown in many German cities, amongst them Berlin and Cologne but also in Russia, Switzeland, Japan and Ireland. The screening of his documentary, "Ninth November Night" at the Museum of Tolerance comes at a time so in need of its message of remembrance and tolerance. He currently lives in Los Angeles and in the Republic of Ireland (where he is working on a portrait of Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber for the National Portrait Gallery in London). His art installations in Public spaces throughout the world include monumental images - some of them several stories high, which have been exhibited in Los Angeles, Berlin, Vienna and recently in the city of Kilkenny in Ireland, where he showed huge pictures of Irish children, which covered many of the tallest buildings in the city. Helnwein has a studio in the Arts district in downtown, Los Angeles. . THE CURATOR: Gisela Guttman, artist and artist representative, spent her childhood in war torn Nazi Germany. A Catholic, she lived a childhood of deprivation and danger as a displaced person. She was on of the few members of her kindergarten class to survive the 1942 bombings that leveled her native city of Cologne. Following the war, she learned the full truth and lessons of the Holocaust, and felt compelled (like Helnwein) to find ways to perpetuate the memory and awareness of what intolerance can wreak. http://www.wiesenthal.com/social/press/pr_item.cfm?ItemID=8467


		http://kristallnacht.helnwein.com/en_US/kristallnacht/kristallnacht/home.html


		http://kristallnacht.helnwein.com/de_DE/kristallnacht/kristallnacht/home.html


		THE ART OF HUMANITY, by Jonathon Keats 09. November 2003 Museum of Tolerance/Simon Wiesenthal Center, Los Angeles premiering "Ninth November Night" a documentary on the work of Gottfried Helnwein In fact, his work is insistently open-ended. Like Goya's Disasters of War, his art queries time and again, "How can this have happened?" Sometimes viewers reply, assaulting pictures of innocent children, worshipping those of a murderous dictator. Yet such reactions can only bring us to inquire again, louder and with greater urgency, "How can this have happened?" At last we recognize that Helnwein asks questions not in order to solicit answers - hate has no reason - but rather in order that we might begin to pose our own. THE ART OF HUMANITY, by Jonathon Keats


		MY ART IS NOT AN ANSWER - IT IS A QUESTION, Yuichi Konno talks with Gottfried Helnwein 05. September 2003 Yaso magazine, Japan Helnwein: I always thought – how did I end up in a place like this? What was I doing here? The only thing I knew was that this was not home – I didn’t belong here. But who was I then? Where did I come from? I was a stranger, whose spaceship had crashed on an unknown planet and so was stranded with no possibilities of ever leaving again. Not only did I seem to have lost my orientation through the impact of the crash, but my memory as well, because I had forgotten who I was and where I came from. There was only one thing I was certain of: that this was an alien world in whose merciless embrace I was now caught. It was like the aftermath of a sloppy end of the world, where the few people that had survived, now continued cautiously to vegetate amongst the ruins, hoping to remain unnoticed by the Eternal Judge. What I didn’t know then was that I had been born shortly after my stupid ancestors had lost the second of the two world-wars that they had caused within the last 30 years – which had turned 1000 years of culture into ashes and annihilated the lives of more than 50 million people And when I found the photographs of my father, my grandfathers and my uncles all in uniforms of Hitler’s army, I started to ask questions. Unfortunately, I was speaking either in the wrong tongue or they also suffered amnesia, because I never got any answers. But I was a very insistent child and I never gave up asking, despite the fact that it didn’t get me anywhere. And then there was this one miraculous moment when I turned 18, this instance of revelation - suddenly I knew there was a way out: I had to become an artist. And I started to paint. I didn’t know much about the art-world and other artists, and I didn’t care about styles and techniques. I just began to formulate my old questions now as images, and step by step I developed my own visual language. And I was not prepared for the avalanche of emotional reactions that my little watercolor-paintings triggered, I was quite surprised to realize that suddenly I seemed to be in possession of a superior magic language, capable of cutting through everything and reaching deep into the hearts of people and moving and touching them. And to my amazement this nation of mutes started to talk, to respond, to shout, to cry and to whisper. And I found myself in a very emotional and powerful dialogue with a growing number of people, that never stopped and became the momentum and destiny of my life. When I started to paint I didn’t feel I had any message, my art was not an answer – it was a question. MY ART IS NOT AN ANSWER - IT IS A QUESTION, Yuichi Konno talks with Gottfried Helnwein