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.
But 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. ...

"She is not as old as she seems, though age, at least in her case, is an elusive notion. In fact, it is her childhood that is fixated, and not out of nostalgia. True, it would take a daring leap of imagination to connect pudgy little hands to the body as it is now, or to visualize the dimples and the baby teeth. The little-girl-who-once-was thought: Maybe I am really dead. Because only dead people get pushed so deep down".
(From: And the Rat Laughed, by Nava Semel).
Helnwein is a great believer in the ability of art to pass emotional memory on, as a reminder of the past or mainly as a warning of what the future might hold, for humanity, as far as he is concerned, has not learnt its lesson. Is there atonement in his artistic endeavors? I prefer the Jewish concept of - tikkun, purification of the soul. It has a deeper meaning than the physical healing of scars, for it elevates us to the highest sphere of the spirit. The wounded girls close their eyes, but they are not blind. Behind their closed lids their gaze is clear and penetrating. ...

Das Mädchen krachte durch mein Browser-Fenster und der Text, an dem ich gerade arbeitete, begann auf meinem Monitor zu zittern. Dieses Bild hatte einen Cybersprung zu mir geschafft:
Von einer Londoner Galerie bis nach Israel.
Zwei Jahre lang war ich in die Arbeit an meinem Buch "Und die Ratte lacht" vertieft gewesen, dessen Kern die Erinnerung an den Holocaust und ihre Überlieferung durch die Generationen bis 2099 ist. Meine Protagonistin war ein kleines Mädchen, das in diesen dunklen Zeiten in einer Kartoffelgrube versteckt wurde, schwere Misshandlungen erlitt und überlebte. Und jetzt erschien dieses Mädchen plötzlich vor mir. Eine klare Vision, die auf mysteriöse Art und Weise meine eigenen, kleinen Worte ergänzte. Das verschlossene, reine Gesicht - betend oder verzweifelnd - und ein Hauch einer Träne, kaum sichtbar, im Winkel ihres Auges. Dieses Mädchen mit geschlossenen Augen, dessen Erinnerungen in den Gräben ihres Gehirns geistern, platzte auf unerklärliche Weise in mein Leben. Und heftiges Mausklicken brachte mich schließlich zum Namen jenes Mannes, der mein Grubenmädchen gemalt hatte – Gottfried Helnwein. ...

Wounds of Memory - The Art of Gottfried Helnwein
היא מושג מתעתע. שכן אצלה דווקא הילדות היא קיבעון, ולא מתוך נוסטלגיה. צריך אמנם להיעזר בדמיון נועז על-מנת לחבר לגוף הנוכחי ידיים קטנות ושמנמנות, לחיי גומות ושיני חלב... הילדה שהייתה חשבה: אולי אני מתה בכלל, כי רק את המתים דוחפים עמוק כל כך.
מתוך "צחוק של עכברוש", הוצאת ידיעות אחרונות, ישראל, 2001.
מוזיאון לודוויג, מעין רוחות רפאים מן העבר. מימדי היסורים הועצמו נוכח הרחוב הגרמני, והלנויין כפה על העוברים ושבים לצפות מבעד לזכוכית מגדלת אל המציאות שכה רבים נוטים להתעלם ממנה, להדחיקה, ואפילו למחוק אותה כליל מתודעתם.
לגביו, העבר הנאצי איננו דף חולף מספר ההיסטוריה, אלא סכנה ממשית, רעל שלא חדל מלפעפע מתחת לפני השטח; גזענות, שנאת הזר והאחר, השמדת מיעוטים, הוצאה להורג של נכים, חסרי ישע ולוקים בנפשם - אלה לא עברו מן העולם.
למרבה הזוועה, גם בהתגלמותם הציורית, עברו הילדים ב"סלקציה" אקט זדוני של אלימות
ואלמונים שיסעו באחד הלילות בלהב חד
את קלסתרי הפנים התמימים. צא וראה שהרוע האנושי מחפש לו תמיד הזדמנות לבקוע מבֵּיצָת הדרקון. ...

Austrian-born and educated and now living Los Angeles, Helnwein employs a hyperrealist manner that will remind Americans of Gerhard Richter but, if anything, works to opposite effect. Rather than re-confirm post-modernist cynicism, Helnwein rekindles post-war anguish. This selection, going back more than three decades, emphasizes his preoccupation with the image of the child, from early Nitsch- and Schwarzkogler-influenced photo-actions (with the requisite bandages) to recent large portrait-like heads and depictions of Christ-child-like babes attracting odd, menacing crowds. A perverse streak runs through the images, but it’s not pederasty: tinged with surrealism, it’s an enduring shame and anger at the Nazi past – and the artist’s suspicion that Naziism hasn’t been eradicated. ...

..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.
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"Children and lunatics cut the Gordian knot, which the poet spends his life patiently trying to untie."
Jean Cocteau ...

* Helnwein's Epiphany I has been up on our site for years now. For a while I used it as wallpaper on my desktop. Perhaps that explains how the first hypertext poem came to be one about the Virgin. But as I struggled with updating the site, I checked all my old resources and came across materials that explain Helnwein's commitments and meanings far better than I could alone. ...

„Meine Kunst gibt keine Antworten,” hat Helnwein gesagt. “Sie stellt Fragen.” Seine Arbeiten lassen bewusst vieles offen, und genau wie Goyas Serie „Desastres de la Guerra“ (Die Schrecken des Krieges), werfen sie immer wieder die Frage auf: „Wie konnte das nur passieren?” Manchmal reagieren die Betrachter in unbeabsichtigter Weise und verunstalten Bilder von unschuldigen Kindern.
Aber selbst solche Reaktionen führen nur dazu, dass man umso eindringlicher fragt: „Wie konnte das nur passieren?” Schließlich sieht man ein, dass es keine klare Antwort auf diese Frage gibt, denn Hass kennt keine Gründe.
Helnwein arbeitet in den unterschiedlichsten Kunstformen wie Malerei, Bildhauerei, Performancekunst und Fotografie, welche auch die Grundlage für eines seiner bis jetzt kühnstes Projekte war: „Neunter November Nacht“, seine Installation in Köln zur fünfzigste Wiederkehr der Reichskristallnacht. ...

Ninth November Night, 1938, was the night the synagogues burned in Germany.
Jewish people were killed in the streets without police interference, their businesses and homes were looted and the windows of their stores were shattered. Inspired by the splinters of glass that covered the streets of Germany the next morning, propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels cynically called this night "Kristallnacht" - crystal night.
50 years later, Austrian-born artist Gottfried 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.
(page 13) ...

The artist Nolde said, "harmless pictures seldom mean anything".
Nolde was banned from painting by the Nazi regime.
(page 44) ...