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Hobby Forum Index » Arts - Fine » SCREAMING MEEMIES...
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 Posted: Thu Jul 17, 2008 1:29 am |
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02. July 2008
The Prague Post
Czech Republic
Tony Ozuna
SCREAMING MEEMIES
Galerie Rudolfinum in Prague - Helnwein's images of pain and innocence
won't let history sleep
Gottfried Helnwein’s exhibition “Angels Sleeping” is a cross-section
of this provocative, hyper-realistic painter/photographer’s work in
five thematic sections that span the late 1980s to the present. Born
in Vienna in 1948, Helnwein has only a few main themes in his work, or
at least in this cross-section at the Rudolfinum: beautiful children,
war or general violence and the suffering of children, and mobs of
people and their leaders (especially in Germany and the United States,
or, as he calls it, Amerika).
The first room has one wall lined with eight sublime paintings in a
dark blue/black monochrome tint. Titled the “Fire” series (from 1999),
these works are barely perceptible portraits of underground cultural
icons: the Russian poet Vladimir Mayakovsky, Jimi Hendrix, Arthur
Rimbaud, Yukio Mishima, Samuel Beckett, Martin Luther King Jr, Che
Guevara and Frank Zappa.
There are larger, abstract portraits, ethereal ghosts of things to
come titled Fire Man and Ice Man (from 1999). This room also features
a self-portrait by the artist: A man’s screaming head wrapped in a
bandage, with forks blinding his eyes. Finally, there is a hyper-
realistic painting of a young girl with red lipstick, alone and
seemingly unprotected — except that she is wearing an SS uniform and
looking up to someone with teary eyes. She is the poster girl and
guiding light of this exhibition.
The next room bridges art and politics with a photolike portrait of
one of Germany’s most important postwar artists in Nazi uniform,
Before the Crash (Joseph Beuys) II (1988). This one is done in the
same bluish-green tint as the “Fire” series, though with a clearer and
lighter image. Beuys almost looks like Frank Sinatra in uniform.
One recent painting offers an obvious ode to Prague, relating to the
German occupation of the Czech lands: Heydrich Contemplating Golem’s
Daughter (2008), in which the Golem’s daughter is a golem-shaped
plastic doll. Heydrich and his SS officers, looking at the doll with
expressions of angst, are painted in the hyper-realistic style that
Helnwein is best known for, almost like a documentary photograph.
Other monochrome paintings concentrate on leaders or masterminds of
human atrocities and masses moved by their leaders. In Epiphany III
(Presentation at the Temple) (1998), a group of men with horribly
deformed faces surrounds a precious young girl in a white dress lying
on a table. One of Helnwein’s best-known works, Epiphany I, Adoration
of the Magi (1996), has Nazi officers surrounding a Madonna figure and
babe (copying a work of Caravaggio from 1607).
In the main salon, there is a row of dark bluish-green tinted
portraits from the “Sleep” series (2008). These show young girls (or
possibly the same delicate girl) “sleeping” with eyes either closed or
open. In the center is Head of a Child (2004), like most of the others
a mixed-media work (oil and acrylic on canvas), though this one stands
out for its extraordinary size and exquisite detail.
Across from these are Helnwein’s most recent works, from the series
“The Disasters of War 2” (2007), showing more innocence (young girls
in white dresses), either bandaged or caked in blood, or standing or
lying serenely in mesmerizing scenes of isolation.
Another room is devoted to America. A wickedly aggressive Mickey Mouse
titled Mouse (X) (2008) is joined by older works such as Oath (2000),
which shows a group of 1950s-era all-American boys pledging an oath to
a wounded Vietnamese child sitting on some steps. In The Resurrection
of the Child (1997), an American policeman helps to prop up an injured
girl in an anti-civil rights mob scene.
The last room contains Helnwein’s series of portraits of Marilyn
Manson, the Goth-rock superstar. These are perhaps the most
disturbing. In some, Manson is caked in white or black makeup, wearing
Mickey Mouse ears or a white military uniform. In images where the
singer is wearing a shiny black mask (revealing one real and one glass
eye), Manson represents both mass destruction and the self-inflicted
variation.
An alternative title to “Angels Sleeping” for this exhibition could be
“All Hail to the Wounded Child,” as many of the works center on
irreparably wounded children (both externally and internally) as the
innocent victims of war. The children in Helnwien’s works may also
represent the lost or destroyed child in all of us, not only as
victims of war, but as victims of modern society, with all its
mindless violence and perverse attraction to aggressive mobs and
disturbances.
If there were a soundtrack to this exhibition, it would be a long,
endless scream.
go: www.praguepost.com
scream·ing mee·mies
pl.n. Slang (Used with a sing. or pl. verb)
Nervous hysteria, an attack of nerves; the jitters.
(Merriam-Webster) |
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