Museum Exhibition Catalogues, Monographs, Artist's Projects, Curatorial Writings and Essays
"In a way, I was privileged when I began painting because I was completely free. I had no influences from other artists and I had no goals regarding a career. I took cheap watercolors and started to paint. It was like talking to myself; I didn't know where this would lead to and if anyone would ever notice my little paintings. I had no idea if they were any good either because I had nothing to compare them to." Gottfried Helnwein, excerpted from his interview with Peter Frank in I Was a Child.
Published by Silvana Editoriale. Edited with text by Beate Reifenscheid. Text by Demetrio Paparoni.
This is the first large-scale survey of the work of Ireland- and Los Angeles–based artist Gottfried Helnwein (born 1948), who is known for his hyper-realistic images and his photo portraits of celebrities such as Mick Jagger, Michael Jackson, Andy Warhol, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Marilyn Manson. In his recent, more provocative images, Helnwein articulates themes of violence and abuse in compelling and shocking ways. In particular, children, whose innocence, naivety and tenderness he brings into focus, are projection surfaces for this body of work. The iconography of children, from the innocence of the early years to young girls taking up guns, shows differentiated facets of the soul that are stirring, emotionally gripping and brilliantly realized. Above all, the culture of European Romanticism, with its abysses of the soul lost in nightmares, provides Helnwein with motifs which act in their own dramaturgy of fear and cruelty.
Published by Skira. Preface by Sean Penn. Text by Demetrio Paparoni, Klaus Schröder, Martin Muller. Interview by Jonathon Keats.
This substantial volume is the most complete monograph to date on the work of the provocative Austrian painter, photographer, filmmaker, performer and set designer Gottfried Helnwein (born 1948). Helwein’s work—whether it be his hyperrealistic images of distressed children or his bandaged self-portraits—expresses a traumatic human condition barely suppressed by the conventions of polite society. His unflinching approach to his subject matter has earned him prominent fans and detractors alike. As Klaus Schröder, director of the Albertina Museum in Vienna puts it, “Gottfried Helnwein shakes people at their core.” Edited by art critic Demetrio Paparoni, Gottfriend Helnwein: The Epiphany of the Displaced features a preface by the actor Sean Penn, essays by Schröder and gallerist Martin Muller, and an interview with the artist conducted by experimental philosopher Jonathon Keats.
Published by Hatje Cantz. Edited by Klaus Albrecht Schröder. Text by Elsy Lahner, Klaus Albrecht Schröder, et al.
Austrian artist Gottfried Helnwein (born 1948) has enjoyed longstanding notoriety for his cross-media depictions of wounded children. Updating an artistic tradition of transgressed childhood innocence (Goya, Messerschmidt) with the visceral brutality of Viennese Actionism, Helnwein’s hyperrealistic paintings--as well as his photographs, multimedia works and performances--are truly confrontational, insofar as they permit the viewer no complacency and no escape. His subjects are most often children, usually depicted in a menacingly cold, shadowy light, who are very clearly in emotional or physical pain (or both). Like his near-contemporary Anselm Kiefer, Helnwein has also broached the topic of the Holocaust, mostly famously in his painting “Epiphany I,” in which a group of SS officers surround a mother and child. The question Helnwein’s works dare to pose is: how can such ‘adult’ violence befall such fragile and unworldly creatures? The most substantial Helnwein overview yet published, this volume marks the artist’s 65th birthday, and presents all stages of his artistic development, from landmark works of photorealism such as “Peinlich” (“Embarrassing”) from 1971 to 1982’s “Self-Portrait” (“Blackout”), which achieved fame worldwide as a Scorpions album cover, to more recent works such as the disturbing series Disasters of War, which focuses on severely injured children and teens.
Published by Friedman Benda/Barry Friedman Ltd.. Edited by Jennifer Olshin, Janine Cirincione, Renate Helnwein. Text by Peter Frank.
The artist Gottfried Helnwein (born 1948) has been known for decades as a master of provocation and technique in the visual and performing arts. While his early works were drawn from the horrors witnessed by his own generation, as well as his youth in post-World War II Austria, Helnwein's more recent paintings present more hallucinatory images of reverie, combining powerful gestures of light and shadow with depictions of the aftermath of violence, brutality and suffering. In the works gathered in this monograph, Helnwein particularly dwells on children as victims of unexplained violence (as the image used on the book's front cover conveys). I Was a Child was published for the first major exhibition of Helnwein's work in New York.
PUBLISHER Friedman Benda/Barry Friedman Ltd.
BOOK FORMAT Hardcover, 9.75 x 13 in. / 80 pgs / 35 color.
PUBLISHING STATUS Pub Date 12/31/2011 Out of print
DISTRIBUTION D.A.P. Exclusive Catalog: FALL 2011 p. 74
PRODUCT DETAILS ISBN 9780982911204TRADE List Price: $50.00 CAD $60.00
Gottfried Helnwein: The Epiphany of the Displaced
Gottfried Helnwein
Gottfried Helnwein: I Was a Child