Art is also valiant and strident
Controversial, controversial and indisputably great in his art is the artist Gottfried Helnwein. Some of his art images, such as „I saw this (I saw this)“, the viewer can hardly bear. This is because it makes him, the viewer so busy and sometimes really finished. So affected, that he, the viewer, almost gets angry about him, the artist, the artist Gottfried Helnwein. Of course this art should move, it should excite and make you look. For this art is finally there. Provocation is what happens in the world and not what the artist reflects with his art. And that is exactly what Helnwein sees rightly when he says that he does not want to provoke, but that he feels provoked by the state of the world. It is only because of this, he says, that he paints – almost manically – his pictures, which is the only reason why he creates, as he says, his uniquely irritating works of art.
I saw this – I saw this
Just as Goya, the great Goya, did not look away, so Gottfried Helnwein not look away. I saw this – (I saw this) is his artwork. It can be seen in the heart of Vienna for a whole year. And that hurts, that really hurts. So now in Vienna, the charming cosmopolitan city. There stands the art as protest against war and cruelty, against violence and meaningfulness, against the idiocy of horror. The picture is so
BIG
and it literally screams at you and something else becomes very clear. The observer gets a direct impression of the war with the artwork, because he stands in the middle, so to speak. Just as in many parts of the world the earth burns, so it burns – symbolically – with this very startling image. Gottfried Helnwein says he „does not paint primarily for aesthetic reasons.“ Rather, he (quote) „someday realized that art is the only way for me to deal with this issue.“ It also has a lot to do with Goya, who created a memorial with his cycle of lithographie about the atrocities committed by the Napoleonic soldiers against the Spanish people.
notice: this post i wanted already weeks ago….
