1998
Evgenija Petrova
Chief curator, State Russian Museum St Petersburg
The State Russian Museum St. Petersburg
Palace Edition
THE LUDWIG MUSEUM IN THE RUSSIAN MUSEUM
The Ludwig Donation
Pg. 278
The early stages of this monumental head can be seen in Helnwein's widely varied
portrayals from the seventies of suffering children, but above all in the Cologne
installation of anonymous children's portraits "9th November Night"
from 1988.
The human face, in particular the child's face, is of great fascination for Helnwein and consequently accounts for one of his central pictorial subjects. The monumental face of a little girl which is introduced here is, as it were, representative of all children. In our adult society oriented towards profit and success, children can almost be described as a fringe group, their interests indeed being observed in a comparatively modest fashion. Against this background, this monumentalizing of the face in connection with the hyperrealistic style of painting is to be understood as an oppressive irritation of our customary experience of perception.
Originally the child's head was shown in a Minorite church in Krems, Stein;
in fact it was placed at the focal point of a huge early Gothic room which lent
the picture a positively sacral tone.
authors: Evgenija Petrova, Aleksandr Borovskij, Marc Scheps, Irene Ludwig
The Ludwig Donation
The present-day art process is definitely dependent on context. The real, non-mythologized
value of concrete phenomena of Russian art cannot be determined without understanding
the entire situation of world art. "German Neoexpressionism from the Sanders
Collection", "Verging on the Limit" (American video art) "Gottfried
Helnwein", "Installation by Brian Eno" are only a few examples
of the exhibitions which have already been organized within the framework of
the project.
Perhaps the best proof of the high cultural value of the project "Ludwig
Museum in the Russian Museum" is provided by the exhibition room in the
Marble Palace - a room laden with great artistic suspense - a vivid transposition
of the idea of the general context in which the present-day art process develops.
Aleksandr Borovskij
HELNWEIN, Gottfried
Austria
Born 1984, Vienna
Lives and works in Ireland and USA
Pg. 278
The early stages of this monumental head can be seen in Helnwein's widely varied
portrayals from the seventies of suffering children, but above all in the Cologne
installation of anonymous children's portraits "9th November Night"
from 1988.
The human face, in particular the child's face, is of great fascination for Helnwein and consequently accounts for one of his central pictorial subjects. The monumental face of a little girl which is introduced here is, as it were, representative of all children. In our adult society oriented towards profit and success, children can almost be described as a fringe group, their interests indeed being observed in a comparatively modest fashion. Against this background, this monumentalizing of the face in connection with the hyperrealistic style of painting is to be understood as an oppressive irritation of our customary experience of perception.
Originally the child's head was shown in a Minorite church in Krems, Stein;
in fact it was placed at the focal point of a huge early Gothic room which lent
the picture a positively sacral tone.
Pg.274
Just less than twenty years after Gerhard Richter did his portrait series of
famous men, Helnwein created forty-eight portraits of women, the photographic
versions of which are seen here. Prompted by the public protest of feminist
Alice Schwarzer against Richter's exclusively male cast of celebrities, Helnwein
conceived his female series as a counterpart and alternative artistic statement.
Unlike Richter, whose selection was based primarily on the formal criteria
of head position or direction of gaze, Helnwein oriented himself more towards
personalities and moreover provided a brief documentation. His panorama brought
together historical and contemporary personalities who contributed to cultural
and scientific life in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, including
such fields as popular music, comics, and children's literature. In addition
to female authors, poets, artists, actresses, politicians, and physicists, Helnwein
depicted pop star Tina Turner, the German translator of Mickey Mouse, Erika
Fuchs, and the children's book author Astrid Lindgren. As a supplement to Richter's
portraits of Einstein, the artist included a portrait of Mileva Einstein, the
physicist's first wife.
Pg 280
Helnwein's interest concentrates on the investigation of the human face. In
addition to anonymous sitters, including many children, he has portrayed numerous
people active in public affairs.
The portraits of the Ludwig couple are conceived as monumental diptychs with a hyperreal portrait on the left panel and a monochrome repetition of it on the right. Viewing this type of portrait as belonging to the tradition of official, courtly portraiture, Helnwein conceived the works not for private display but for a representative public space.
In the course of time the artist came to the realization that a single painting
alone was insufficient to capture a sitter's entire personality in all its complexity.
Consequently, the dark versions can be seen as an attempt to visualize the mental
and intellection aspects or at the very least, to take these into account.
The State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg
The State Russian Museum St. Petersburg, about the museum
The State Russian Museum is the world's largest museum of Russian art. It is
located in the very center of St Petersburg, just of the city's central magisterial,
Nevsky Prospekt. The museum is housed in the former Mikhailovsky Palace, a stunning
monument of Empire architecture.
The State Russian Museum St. Petersburg,
about the museum
The State Russian Museum St. Petersburg, The
Collection
The State Russian Museum St. Petersburg, Department of Contemporary Art
The Department of Contemporary Art was opened at the Russian Museum in the late
1980s. The department collects and exhibits new and often unconventional art
forms -- installations, objects, assemblages, video art, photography and photo-based
art. Many works find their way into the collection directly from exhibitions.
The first major acquisition was in 1990, following the Territory of Art show
curated by the Russian Museum in collaboration with the Institut des Hautes
Etudes et Arts Plastiques.
State Russian Museum,
St. Petersburg, Department of Contemporary Art
http://kristallnacht.helnwein.com
http://www.helnwein.com/texte/international_texts/artikel_892.html