Un rientro in Austria, dopo un volontario esilio. Sembra che ad averlo trascinato da queste parti sia stata la corrente del Danubio, giacché l’approdo è avvenuto sulla riva di questo fiume. Dove spicca un museo...
Lentos ha fatto, e fa, parlare di sé. È il nome della nuova sede del museo d’arte contemporanea di Linz, ricca e famosa città danubiana. Lentos è un grande edificio dalla forma di parallelepipedo con epidermide di vetro, che dal tramonto all’alba cambia colore in continuazione. Ha la vocazione cromatica del camaleonte, ma non per mimetizzarsi, anzi tutto il contrario. In effetti anche le mostre che propone hanno la seduzione del richiamo impetuoso e un taglio particolarmente penetrante. Come quella in corso, per esempio: sfacciata, perturbante, provocatoria fino all’insostenibilità. È tutta così l’opera di Gottfried Helnweil (Vienna, 1948): le sue armi pittoriche sono fin troppo figurative, il suo linguaggio più che realistico, le sue trame sempre inquietanti. Face It, titolo della mostra, è una retrospettiva e una mostra tematica nello stesso tempo, dove il viso umano è soggetto e leitmotiv. ...

Estava mexendo nos meus arquivos no computador e achei algumas fotos de desenhos de um artista alemão, meio maluco, Gottfried Helnwein, pintor de tragédias e mazelas sociais, que se baseia no grotesco, no feio, nas escaras da Segunda Guerra Mundial na Alemanha. ...

"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. ...

Die Zurschaustellung des eigenen Körpers als Verwesungsmasse beginnt mit den Selbstporträts von George Grosz als Suizidgestalt im Kaffeehaus und reicht über die wie durch den Fleischwolf gedrehten Konterfeis eines Francis Bacon bis hin zur Leichenfledderei am eigenen Leib bei Günter Brus, Kurt Kren oder Frank Tovey, dem jüngst verstorbenen Enfant terrible der experimentellen New-Wave-Szene der 1980er Jahre. Die Befreiung des melancholischen Bewusstseins durch den Tod bietet keine philosophische Perspektive mehr. Es ist ihm ohnedies schon anheim gefallen. Stattdessen wird der Suizid in einer Performance masochistischer Selbstverstümmelung kultisch sublimiert.
In einer fotografischen Inszenierung Gottfried Helnweins erhebt sich der Künstler, fäulnisschwarz und monumental wie das Mahnmal einer letzen Einsicht: “So ist Verzweiflung, diese Krankheit im Selbst, die Krankheit zum Tode. Der verzweifelte ist todkrank. Der Tod ist nicht das letzte der Krankheit, aber der Tod ist in einem fort das Letzte. Von dieser Krankheit erlöst zu werden durch den Tod ist eine Unmöglichkeit, denn die Krankheit und deren Qual und der Tod ist gerade, nicht sterben zu können.”
So ist die Geschichte der Moderne nicht zuletzt auch eine Erfolgsgeschichte der Melancholie und des Eindringens ihres schwarzen Spuks in die letzten Paradiese des Seins- und Weltvertrauens. ...

The production of the Disney studios quickly attracted artists, especially from the movie world. Eisenstein and Prokofiev, when they were working on Ivan the Terrible (1945), took an interest in the work of Disney and the conductor Léopold Stokowski on Fantasia. By the mid-sixties Disney enjoyed immense, universal popularity. Since the release of Snow White in 1937, several generations have been raised on his films and have not forgotten them. Pop Art made Mickey and Donald into icons.
As the French painter Robert Combas put it in 1977: “Mickey is no longer Walt’s property, he belongs to us all”. After drawing on Western art from all periods, Disney’s world became in its turn a source of inspiration for artists as diverse as Christian Boltanski, Gottfried Helnwein, Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Bertrand Lavier, Peter Saul and Gary Baseman. ...

Continuando la perspectiva del ritual, Günter Brus, Rudolf Schwarzkogler, Yoko Ono, Saburó Murakami, Atsuko Tanaka, Gottfried Helnwein, Ushio Shinohara, Peter Wiebel, Otto Muehl, Stelarc (en su etapa inicial de Suspension), entre otros, proponen la exposición de un hecho que sucede en tiempo real y que supera la noción de ficcionalidad o emulación. ...

For the past twenty-four years the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the Academy Foundation, in association with the UCLA Film and Television Archive, has presented a series of film programs featuring the outstanding documentaries of the previous year.
The film, NINTH NOVEMBER NIGHT, was considered by the Academy’s Documentary Screening Committee to be one of the outstanding documentaries of 2004. It is our wish to include a screening of "Ninth November Night" in this prestigious series on the evening of Wednesday, November 30, 2005. ...

この本を読んで何年もたってから、まさにこの女の子に偶然出会ったときは、言いようのない驚きで頭の中が混乱した。『写真都市』（伊藤俊治著）という本で偶然に見つけたのだ。ゴットリープ・ヘルンバインGottfried Helnwein(1948-)というオーストリア生まれのアーティストによるBeautiful Victim II という1974年の作品。 ...

Help us find visual, aural, metaphors that will let others understand the importance of engagement in this process. Look at Helnwein's painting under Visual Sociology. I left it up. What was Helnwein saying? Why was he willing to offend. Why do Beau and Michael want to shake us up? How are those things related? Why did one of my students make a giant box that when opened had a lovely smiling face inside that said "F^&* the Patriot Act"?? Isn't that a lot like what Helnwein and Kiefer and Beuys were doing? Maybe saying "wake up and look at what you're doing?" ...

A virtuoso and a visionary with one eye behind the veil of the world, the other reflecting endless horror, beauty, loss, humour and melancholy - all with a steady hand. The position is supreme, the means are penetrating and the message as deep as it gets. To me the strange silent directness in Helnweins work is unrivaled, no other artist today tells the dim story of the world in a more disturbing and moving way. His work, views and perspectives are completely congruent and appeals to me in a very direct and personal way. ...