Helnwein's preoccupation with the dark side of modern history, including its abuse of images, has never left him. He did a whole series of paintings (the Legion show includes a couple) so dark as to appear imageless. But he intended them not as mirrors of dark times but as counterthrusts to the aggressive reach of so much contemporary culture.
Despite the grotesquerie it contains, the Legion show also has elements of pathos.

Helnwein nodded yes when asked whether he has made a theme of innocence. "It's a dangerous word, it's so abused and misused, but yes that's probably the basic essence of what I'm interested in."
"As soon as somebody's grown up they have so many issues," he said. "When you look at a person -- what social level, what country they're from, what fashion they affect -- all this stuff comes in, but I'm interested in the stage of a human being where it's not so important whether it's a male or female, before we can tell any social background or anything, it's just ... abstract, almost."
...Probably few visitors will appreciate the detachment in Helnwein's work. They will more likely respond to his concern with the power of images. We willingly subject ourselves to their power every day without really understanding it. If nothing else, his pictures, no matter how confrontational, stand still and permit us, even defy us, to understand how they work upon us. ...

When I was in seventh grade, I was always bullied. Now in eight grade, the bullying has become worse. They make fun of me, throw things at me, kick me, hit me, and do other violent things. It was a waste of time complaining to the teacher when I couldn't tolerate it. They'd throw my textbooks at me and harass me for telling the teacher. I have no friends who sympathize with me in class. My close friends in clubs outside school have learned to hate me, too. I'm too tired to hold out any longer. The world's not right for me.
...

Adding To The Discussion Gottfried Helnwein is an artist whose work - "giant color portraits of stillborn babies, paintings that merge Nazi-archive photographs with pictures Helnwein has taken, enigmatic portrayals of apparently wounded or menaced children" - tends to provoke strong reactions, and in recent years, several individuals have expressed their displeasure with some of his images by defacing them. Helnwein confesses to being initially startled by the vandalism, but these days, he has decided that the viewer has as much to contribute to the larger discussion as the artist, and if people are moved to destroy what he has created, he can at least salute their passion. ...

Har du nogle kunstneriske forbilleder? I så fald, hvem? Og har det påvirket din tegnestil?
Uuh, der er mange! Hmm, nogle af mine store forbilleder er Ashley Wood, Gotfried Helnwein, Cam De Leon og selvfølgelig min mester fra tegneskolen her i Viborg som har betydet min absolut største fremgang Artem Alexeev, men også folk som Jean-Michel Basquiat og Jackson Pollock .... ser jeg utroligt meget op til! Jeg har 100´vis af forbilleder, men dette må regnes for nogle af de største! De har påvirket mig rigtig meget!
Også musikalsk har jeg mange forbilleder, de afspejles så til gengæld sjældent i mine billeder, men er folk alligevel intereserede er der nogle links i min profil til lidt af hvert. ...

Neben einer Vielzahl von Skizzen und Vorzeichnungen für Ölgemälde lag der Schwerpunkt der Ausstellung in Reproduktionen von Panels aus dem Comicwerk von Carl Barks. Zeichnungen, die man möglicherweise aus dem Micky-Maus-Heft in colorierter Form und in der Grösse einer Streichholzschachtel kannte, wurden für die Ausstellung in der Schwarz-Weiss-Urfassung auf Abmessungen von 3x4 Meter und grösser gigantiert. Diese Ehrfurcht vor der Präzision des graphischen Werkes Carl Barks kann im Buch von Helnwein, welches eher ein Ausstellungskatalog denn eine Biografie ist, gut nachvollzogen werden. Barks pur, sattes Schwarz auf weissem Bilderdruckpapier, Fadenheftung. Alles fast zu bibliophil für das Geld. Wer es sich leisten kann, sollte deshalb neben der Softcover-Ausgabe noch eine der 999 Ex. der von Helnwein signierten Hardcover-Edition erwerben.
Wenn man das Glück hat, diese irgendwo noch käuflich erwerben zu können... ...

Gottfried Helnwein (Viena, 1948
1948: Nace en Viena
1969/73: Estudia pintura en la Academia de Fine Art en Viena y realiza sus
primeras exposiciones para audiencias pequeñas.
1979: Protesta contra el psiquiatra forense número uno de Austria, Dr. Gross, que admitió en una entrevista que en la era Nazi, él había envenenado a centenares de niños.
1985: Se muda a Alemania, vive y trabaja en un castillo cerca de Cologne, comienzan a producir los cuadros que se componen de varias piezas, Helnwein examina de cerca áreas del taboo y aborda términos tales como arte sub-humana, degenerada y vida indigna de vida. En este mismo año Rudolf Hausner propone a Helnwein como su sucesor y como cabecilla de los profesores para los pintores en la academia de artes visuales en Viena. ...

Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
The Child: Works by Gottfried Helnwein
31. jul. 2004 - 28. nov. 2004
Lincoln Park, San Francisco
http://www.thinker.org/legion/exhibitions/exhibition.asp?exhibitionkey=407 ...

Al famoso museo Legion of Honor di San Francisco è stata inaugurata la prima mostra personale negli Stati Uniti dell’artista austriaco. 19 dipinti, più di 20 foto, 13 disegni ed acquarelli documentano il percorso artistico di Helnwein (*Vienna 1948) dagli anni ’70 fino ad oggi. ...

San Francisco Chronicle - Monday August 9 -
Gottfried Helnwein likes to stand shoulder to shoulder with museum patrons when they look at his work, but he doesn't bask in his own glory. ...

The Child: Works by Gottfried Helnwein
31.7. - 28.11.
Fine Arts Museum of San Franscico, 2501 Irving Street (at 26th Avenue) , 94122 San Francisco, CA USA

The Child: Works by Gottfried Helnwein ...

Internationally known Austrian artist Gottfried Helnwein will have his first one-man museum exhibition in the United States, opening at the Legion of Honor in the summer of 2004. The exhibition, Gottfried Helnwein: The Child features a major theme that has appeared in his work over the last 35 years. For Helnwein, the child is the symbol of innocence, but also innocence betrayed. In today’s world, the malevolent forces of war, poverty, sexual exploitation, and the numbing predatory influence of modern media assault the virtue of children. Helnwein, who grew up in Austria in the somber atmosphere of a defeated country in the years following World War II, has an emotional tie to children who have been robbed of experiencing childhood without trauma. ...

...gegen die Manhunt ein harmloser Kindergeburtstag ist. Ich mag die Bücher und Filme nämlich. ...

"... I believe the cure for any depression is expression in your heart, and Gottfried Helnwein was one of the most supportive people towards me. He was the one who gave me that advice, and he was correct with it.
'Personal Jesus' says everything that I would say if I were to write a song right now. I was listening to it on a CD I just bought because I wanted to really take a step away from the world. I wasn't sure if I was going to put out a 'best of' or if I was going to do anything in general with music, because there's a frustration level that the more commercial you are, the more marginal you are - also, the lack of art that exists in entertainment, and the lack of interest. People are much more content with watching The Real World and reality television, than living their own lives, or watching something that comes from imagination.
You know what it is? It's not even Bush's fault. It's America making itself the Third Reich.
Imagination is a necessity, and I don't think it's sort of bad. I can dream up some image like I did with Helnwein, and they're "bad," they're forbidden, but I can take an image that's far worse, that's on CNN and it's reality. So we can't get censored. It's the real world.
But that's a bad message to send to kids growing up, I think.
('The Golden Age of Grotesque':)
...I was not allowed to put the paintings on the cover of the record! Our anticipation was not to create album artwork. We wanted to collaborate and create something together, and we did not consider the Golden Age of Grotesque to be limited to an album.
...All I can say about it is I'm glad that it makes it into the collection of images that represent me as best as it could. I think that it just scratches the surface of what Gottfried and I could do together"
Marilyn Manson
Los Angeles, July 2004 ...

Mit der szenischen Inszenierung des Oratoriums "Das Paradies und die Peri" erwartet das Publikum heute einen glanzvollen Höhepunkt des 8. Düsseldorfer Schumannfestes. Unter der künstlerischen Leitung des Startänzers Gregor Seyffert und der Ausstattung des Künstlers Gottfried Helnwein entsteht eine faszinierende Deutung des 1843 komponierten Werkes. ...

Director, Choreographer: Gregor Seyffert & Compagnie Berlin
Conductor: John Fiore
Sopran: Jörg Waschinski
Düsseldorfer Symphoniker
Chor des Städtischen Musikvereins Düsseldorf ...

An urban oasis — The California Palace of the Legion of Honor is San Francisco's most seductively situated museum
From July 31-Nov. 28, the museum will present paintings, drawings and photographs by Austrian artist Gottfried Helnwein. The exhibit, titled "The Child: Works by Gottfried Helnwein," looks at children as innocent, yet exploited. ...

Düsseldorf (ddp-nrw). Vom 4. bis 18. Juli steht die Stadt Düsseldorf ganz im Zeichen des Komponisten Robert Schumann. Nach vierjähriger Pause widmet sich das 8. Schumannfest mit rund 80 Einzelveranstaltungen dem großen Musiker der Romantik, der als Musikdirektor seine letzten Tage in Düsseldorf verbrachte
Zu den spektakulärsten Programmpunkten zählt die szenische Aufführung des Oratoriums "Das Paradies und die Peri" in der multimedialen Ausstattung des österreichischen Malers und Aktionskünstlers Gottfried Helnwein. Das 8. Schumannfest versteht sich als Brückenschlag zwischen Tradition und Moderne, historischer Aufführungspraxis und aktuellen Klangadaptionen, wie eine Pressesprecherin am Freitag in Düsseldorf erläuterte.
"Ehre das Alte hoch, bringe aber auch dem Neuen ein warmes Herz entgegen." Diesen Satz des Komponisten hat das Schumannfest sich zum Motto gemacht. ...

The Times:
"...these photo-paintings appear even more real than a photograph: they are hyper-real, super-saturated depictions of the world that surrounds us, as we would like to see it. Helnwein’s landscapes offer us the world as we see it in our mind’s eye, our memories.
What is certain is that with these works Helnwein has raised the bar for artists to come with art that is groundbreaking in terms of scale, skill and vision. Painted mountains, fields and sky can never be the same again." ...

1979: Protesta contra el psiquiatra forense número uno de Austria, Dr. Gross, que admitió en una entrevista que en la era Nazi, él había envenenado a centenares de niños.
1985: Se muda a Alemania, vive y trabaja en un castillo cerca de Cologne, comienzan a producir los cuadros que se componen de varias piezas, Helnwein examina de cerca áreas del taboo y aborda términos tales como arte sub-humana, degenerada y vida indigna de vida. En este mismo año Rudolf Hausner propone a Helnwein como su sucesor y como cabecilla de los profesores para los pintores en la academia de artes visuales en Viena. ...

Gottfried Helnwein portraitiert in der Serie „Faces“ Persönlichkeiten wie Michael Jackson, Willy Brandt, Maximilian Schell, Elton John, Andy Warhol, Leni Riefenstahl u.a.. Obgleich vielmals zuvor fotografiert und jedem aus den Medien bekannt, zeigen sie sich in den Bildern jenseits aller Eitelkeiten, in einer ungewohnten Offenheit und Ehrlichkeit, die geprägt ist von Verfall und Tod. ...