„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) ...

"Anyone who sees and paints the sky green and pastures blue ought to be sterilized." Adolf Hitler
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This single sentence sums up the essence of the totalitarian mindset. The world must adhere to an order of which no variation or independence is acceptable. "Epiphany I", 1996 is from an important series of three paintings created over a three-year period. This seamless stapling of a version of the Adoration of the Magi into a scenario out of the Third Reich is in keeping with Helnwein's desire to press the limits. Helnwein wrote, "In the Epiphany trilogy, I refer directly to my (our) own historical background. The most significant issue on the time track of the occident is Christianity and the male dominated world of conquering and oppression. The constant slaughter of the ‘weak’: women, children, the Jews, and other ethnic minorities, through holy wars, crusades and the constant extermination of the inferior."
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by Robert Flynn Johnson
Curator in charge, Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco ...

Biography and Credits ...

Any artist who sites Donald Duck and Jesus Christ as the most important influences in their art must be worth taking a look at.
In the row of pristine gallery fronts in London's Cork street, you cannot miss Gottfried Helnwein's show; it's the one with the gigantic Mickey Mouse staring out at you.
The Robert Sandelson Gallery has given us a stunning show of the infamous, Austrian born artist's recent work. Helnwein is on a mission to find the answers to questions that no-one in Austria would give him; such as why the post-war republic portrayed itself as a victim rather than as one of the first main perpetrators of Nazism. ...

Gottfried Helnwein, der Künstler als Agressor und vermaledeiter Moralist, S. 10-19, in: Helnwein, Arbeiten von 1970-1985, Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Wien, 3.4.-5.5.1985, Wien 1985. ...

Project Arts Centre ...

Gottfried Helnwein's artistic and intellectual approach is to aim quite subtly at producing a crucial feeling of insecurity and a concomitant change of consciousness in the viewer, by using seemingly familiar or usual images that have a certain amount of tradition and an apparently well known composition. ...

Nach 1945 trumpft die Kunst umfänglich erst wieder mit der 68er Bewegung schockierend auf. Etwa in der Pop-Art. Etwa mit den Bildtafeln eines Roy Lichtensteins. Seine Arbeiten, wie auch die anderer Pop-Artisten, tendieren indes zu einer Ästhetisierung des Schreckens. Zitatförmig nimmt Lichtenstein etwa Comic-Motive vom Krieg auf. Doch die Darstellung oszilliert zwischen Wohlgefallen an der Szenerie und Kritik an der Szenerie. Ähnlich ambivalent erscheinen die zahlreichen Drucke von Andy Warhol zum Thema "Kennedy-Mord".
Der wirkliche Schrei, Signum einer Vorkriegsepoche, taucht nicht mehr auf. Ausnahme von der Regel sind die Werke von Gottfried Helnwein. Sie zielen nochmals auf die Scham- und Peinlichkeitsschwelle. Oder sie machen aus dem täglichen Schrecken im Fernsehen ein formatfüllendes Standbild, ("Das Wunder I", 1980, "Das Lied I", 1981). ...