ARTISTHelnwein

Modes of Behavior towards People When Affection Plays a Part.

Wir feiern Geburtstag mit Herzens- und Auslandsösterreichern: Gottfried Helnwein, Karel Schwarzenberg, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Daliah Spiegel, Max Hollein, Paul Achleitner, Johann Lafer, Hans Neuner, Petra Holzer, Nora Waldstätten, Arthur Arbesser, Walter Scheidel, Alfred Riedl, Marc Janco, Nadine Brandl, Ivan Krastev u. a.

Fascinated by the unlikely merging of the holy and the horrifying is Irish-Austrian artist Gottfried Helnwein, whose series of hyperrealist paintings Epiphany I (Adoration of the Magi), Epiphany II (Adoration of the Shepherds), Epiphany III ( Presentation at the Temple), undertaken between 1996 and 1998, collapsed conventional choreography associated with the Christian narratives in traditional old master paintings with the historical set design of German Nazism. Epiphany I uncomfortably restages the unmistakable postures of Medieval and Renaissance depictions of the Madonna and Child in the anachronistic context of late 1930s or early 1940s Germany.

Fascinated by the unlikely merging of the holy and the horrifying is Irish-Austrian artist Gottfried Helnwein, whose series of hyperrealist paintings Epiphany I (Adoration of the Magi), Epiphany II (Adoration of the Shepherds), Epiphany III ( Presentation at the Temple), undertaken between 1996 and 1998, collapsed conventional choreography associated with the Christian narratives in traditional old master paintings with the historical set design of German Nazism. Epiphany I uncomfortably restaging unmistakable postures of Medieval and Renaissance depictions of the Madonna and Child in the anachronistic context of lateof late 1930s or serly 1940s Germany.

Gottfried Helnwein is one of the most important artists alive today. As Kenneth Baker has noted, the artist’s works not only “mirrors of dark times but counterthrusts to the aggressive reach of so much contemporary culture” (Baker, n.d.). The artist himself is fully aware of the political function of art and its importance in the age of the spectacle.