October 8th, 2004
www.angrypirate.com
...the baby is pointing at an adult as if to say "How could you have screwed things up this much."
Alanna Spence
Friday, October 8th, 2004
I went to the Gottfried Helnwein show at the Legion of Honor today for a class assignment. Really incredible show. His paintings are disturbing images of children in bandages, with scarification, or looking like their have experienced traumas that children their age should not have to live through. The paintings are photo realistic, similar to Gerhart Richter's paintings of newspaper clippings or portraits. They are pretty disturbing and as I looked around the room, I saw many people with hands over their faces. It's not an overt, in your face kind of disturbing, it's subtle.
Helnwein was born in Austria in 1948 and grew up around adults who could not come to terms with their misjudgments during the years any of them supported the Nazis. He grew up among depressed adults who would not talk about what had happened, who never smiled. Some of the children are Jesus-like in pose or subject matter. There are a couple Virgin mother and baby paintings. In one, the baby is pointing at an adult as if to say "How could you have screwed things up this much."
alanna@angrypirate.com
