Sept. 1-Jan. 2, 2001
Over 30 playful but nightmare-inducing works (including a mutilated Rug Rat by Heidi Zumbrum and a monstrous Mickey by Gottfried Helnwein) drawn from the collection of L.A. contemporary art patrons Kent and Vicki Logan. Other artists are David Levinthal, Laurie Simmons, Yoshitomo Nara and Hung Tung-Lu.
Curator: Heather Whitmore Jain, SFMOMA.
Catalogue: 44 pp., with essay by Jain and an interview of the Logans by Janet Bishop, SFMOMA.

Kunstenaar Gottfried Helnwein daagt uit met zijn gemanipuleerde beelden van de werkelijkheid. Vooral politieke figuren, uit verleden en heden, zijn in zijn werk de klos. Heimat Oostenrijk heeft hij moeten ontvluchten. Bas Groes sprak hem: ‘Isolatie helpt niet, zonder dialoog verandert er niets. ...

Excelentes, la dirección precisa y sintética del autor y la antológica actuación de Belén Blanco, hacen gala de un virtuosismo que sorprende por su juventud y que prefiero adjudicar al talento natural más que a una experiencia profesional que necesariamente suponemos en los comienzos. La escenografía, el vestuario, los elementos, la luz, el sonido en vivo, se integran armónicamente para subrayar la expresividad de este hecho teatral infrecuente. ...

Deutschbauer:
"Was sind am Schluss eines Buches für gewöhnlich Ihre Gedanken?"
Maler Gottfried Helnwein:
"Ich habe Bücher gern, die mich am Ende hängen, ratlos lassen.
Da fange ich dann an nachzudenken."
Gottfried Helnwein über "Auf der Suche nach der verlorenen Zeit" von Marcel Proust.

With ironic images of toys and cartoon figures, a number of contemporary painters, photographers and sculptors take incisive aim at the emotional underbelly of childhood in The Darker Side of Playland: Childhood Imagery from the Logan Collection, on view at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) from September 1, 2000, through January 2, 2001. Explaining how these representations question deeply rooted social mores, this exhibition includes over 30 playful and wicked works-drawn from the collection of Vicki and Kent Logan-by such contemporary artists as Gottfried Helnwein, David Levinthal, Takashi Murakami, Yoshitomo Nara, Laurie Simmons and Hung Tung-lu. As Kent Logan states, "Of the themes in our collection this exhibition will explore what I like to call 'Children's Hour.'" ...

City officials in Pontiac, Michigan are pressing ahead with obscenity charges against Detroit-area artist Jef Bourgeau. A pretrial hearing is scheduled in district court on June 28.
Here is the list of artists—provided by Jef Bourgeau—included in the FEAR NO ART exhibition and the dates (when known) of the works:
78. Lucien Freud, 1998
79. David Salle, 1980
80. Imogen Cunningham, 1932
82. Gottfried Helnwein, 1988
83. Martin Kippenberger, 1990
84. Laurie Simmons, 1990 ...

Kleines Helnwein es la primera obra escrita y dirigida por Rodrigo Malmsten, hasta el momento un joven asistente a talleres de dramaturgia y actuación. Su fuente de inspiración fue la obra del pintor austríaco Gottfried Helnwein, de quien vio una muestra en Europa, hace tres años. El artista plástico trabajó como escenógrafo en algunas puestas del dramaturgo y director Heiner Müller. El personaje central de su espectáculo surge en escena como escapado de una de las obras del artista para exponer “su distanciamiento ante el dolor y su intimidad, presa en una atmósfera infantil”. En el panel central de la escenografía son proyectados algunos cuadros de Helnwein.
...

A year or so back, an exhibition called Sensations caused a few upsets, first in London and then in New York. Central to the reaction was a large-scale portrait of a child-killer assembled from, if I remember correctly, the palm prints of children. So far, so bland. The shock element in art has been much talked about in the last five years but art that actually shocks has been thin on the ground during the same period.
Step forward then, Gottfried Helnwein.
By and large, if art is going to shock, it better have something shocking to say,and it's clear that Helnwein has found that. ...

"He earned his first gallery show in the 70s by driving around his native Vienna dressed in Nazi uniform, his head bandaged, fake blood trickling from his mouth. It caught the eye of an art dealer who signed him up and has remained faithful to Austria's enfant terrible ever since." The Guardian 05/16/00 ...

This made perfect sense, I thought, considering the visuals attached to their recent album Sehnsucht: portraits of the band by Gottfried Helnwein, the brilliant German artist whose gauze-wrapped and fork-embellished self-portrait had been an album cover for the Scorpions -- you know the one I'm talking about?
Helnwein had photographed the Rammstein faces after mangling and compromising them with arcane medical apparatus; and here I was, with my back mangled and compromised, being photographed by arcane medical apparatus! How very synchronistic it all was!
Why, Helnwein was probably out there right now, conducting the band in their concerted hammerstrikes, perhaps even forming a mini mosh pit with my wife or discussing the finer points of arcane medical apparatus-based face-mangling with the MRI tech! Of course! And there were streamers, too! Multicolored streamers that descended from the antiseptic rafters and twisted and shimmered like silken snakes dancing in time to the music ... ...