Biography and Credits ...

"Well, the world is a haunted house, and Helnwein at times is our tour guide through it.
I think in anything that is really relevant and emotional art, there is some kind of a mirror that people experience. I don't think that you can recognize a feeling from something that you look at unless it's part of yourself, and so when someone is willing to take on the sadness, the irony, the ugliness and the beauty in the kind of way that Gottfried Helnwein does.
Not all of Gottfried's work is on a canvas.
A lot of it is the way he's approached life. And it doesn't take someone knowing him to know that. You take one look at the paintings and you say "this guy has been around." You can't sit in a closet - and create this.
This level of work is earned."
Sean Penn ...

* Gottfried Helnwein, artist, born in Vienna, 1948
* Theodor Herzl "founder" of Israel, lived most of his life in Austria
* Adolf Hitler, dictator of Germany from 1933-1945, born on April 20, 1889 in Braunau am Inn ...

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. ...

...

Dans mon récit, j’ai l’intention de présenter des œuvres de Gottfried Helnwein dans lesquelles il aborde le sujet du nazisme. Cependant, même si le rapport au nazisme dans l’œuvre d’Helnwein est au cœur de ma propre curiosité, il n’est pas nécessairement au centre du travail de l’artiste. D’après ma compréhension, la référence au thème du nazisme dans l’œuvre d’Helnwein fait partie d’un contexte plus vaste de sa vision du monde, que je vais présenter. Si on ignore la totalité de son œuvre et si on se concentre uniquement sur ces nombreux travaux où il parle du nazisme, on risque d’avoir une vision partielle de plusieurs niveaux d’analyse qui sont inhérents à sa pensée. Je vais traiter non seulement les sujets qu’il a choisis d’aborder, mais aussi le contexte historique de sa création qui est aussi significatif en regard de ses choix. Pour des raisons de clarté et afin de mettre en relief mon intérêt personnel pour la représentation controversée du nazisme dans l’art contemporain, je vais traiter séparément les œuvres au sujet du nazisme, sans ignorer naturellement le contexte de leur création. ...

Si on essaie de comprendre la démarche artistique et critique d’Helnwein, il est nécessaire de prendre en considération ses autoportraits. Les autoportraits sont partis intégrale de sa carrière depuis le début, et forment une clé importante pour déchiffrer de son œuvre.
“ L’artiste et son art ne font qu’un dans l’autoportrait. Ils s’expliquent, ils se répondent ”, comme l’a écrit Philippe Dagen. Si on ignore les nombreux autoportraits de Helnwein, on risque de laisser passer inaperçus les messages les plus profonds et capitaux que l’artiste transmet par son art.
...

Indifférence et reniement sont les mots clés dans une république qui se présente comme la “ première victime ” du nazisme. Lors de la Seconde République autrichienne on préfère ignorer et effacer la joie et l’acceptation du fameux “ Anschluss ”, l’annexion de l’Autriche à l’Allemagne en mars 1938, quand les troupes allemandes sont entrées en Autriche sans rencontrer aucune résistance. Le fait que Hitler ait été accueilli comme un libérateur par 200,000 personnes à Vienne est un détail réprimé dans un pays qui essaye de réhabiliter son prestige, son économie et son infrastructure. L’Autriche libre, démocratique et indépendante établit vite sa stabilité politique et même sa prospérité.
Dans la Seconde République autrichienne, la liquidation du passé nazi n’est pas radicale : les anciens adhérents du parti nazi sont vite réintégrés dans la plupart des secteurs de la société. ...

While Brown shares many interests with the surrealist Hans Bellmer (dolls, lolitas and bondage), the only other analogies within the world of contemporary art can be found in the early watercolours portraying bandaged children by Austrian artist Gottfried Helnwein and in the freak children sculptures by the Chapman brothers, besides the few artists (including Damien Hirst and Mark Ryden) that Brown declared to esteem.
(excerpt) ...

Vanessa Beecroft, VALIE EXPORT, Nan Goldin, Andreas Gursky, Ilse Haider, GOTTFRIED HELNWEIN, Birgit Jürgenssen, Marie-Jo Lafontaine,Tracey Moffatt, Thomas Ruff, Shirin Neshat, Anne & Patrick Poirier, Lois Renner, Eva Schlegel, Sean Scully, Cindy Sherman, Thomas Struth, és Rosemarie Trockel
2003. március 14 – június 1. ...