Gottfried Helnwein Quotes (14 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

Gottfried Helnwein: 14 quotes1 like

Famous Gottfried Helnwein Quotes

“Art is a weapon for me, with which I can strike back.”

Interview by Marc Kayser, art-magazine Quest, Berlin, March 2004

“When I look at a work of Art I ask myself: does it inspire me, does it touch and move me, do I learn something from it, does it startle or amaze me - do I get excited, upset? That is the test any artwork has to pass: can it create an emotional impact on a human being even when he has no education or any information about art? I’ve always had a problem with art that you can only understand if you have a degree in art history, and I have a problem with theories. Most of them are bullshit anyway. Most critics and theorists have little respect for artists, and I think the importance of theory in art is totally overrated. Real art is self-evident. Real art is intense, enchanting, exciting and unsettling; it has a quality and magic that you cannot explain. Art is not logic, and if you want to experience it, your mind and rational thinking will be of little help. Art is something spiritual that you can only experience with your senses, your heart, your soul.”

Gottfried Helnwein

Interview by Brendan Maher http://www.gottfried-helnwein-interview.com/index.html, Start, Ireland, November 24, 2004

“In retrospect I would say from Donald Duck I have learned more about life than from all the schools I ever attended.”

Gottfried Helnwein

Memories of Duckburg, http://www.helnwein.com/texte/helnweintexts/artikel_398.html, Zeit Magazin, Hamburg, 1989

“Opening my first Donald Duck comic book felt like seeing the daylight again for someone who had been trapped underground by a mine-disaster for many days. I squinted cautiously because my eyes hadn't gotten used to the dazzlingly bright sun of Duckburg yet, and I greedily sucked the fresh breeze into my dusty lungs that came drifting over from Uncle Scrooge's money bin. I was back home again, in a decent world where one could get flattened by steam-rollers and perforated by bullets without serious harm. A world in which people still looked proper, with yellow beaks or black knobs instead of noses. And it was here that I met the man who would forever change my life - Donald Duck.”

Gottfried Helnwein

Memories of Duckburg, http://www.helnwein.com/texte/helnweintexts/artikel_398.html, Zeit Magazin, Hamburg, 1989

“The first time I saw a picture of Elvis - I was in a state of shock, because I couldn't believe that a human being could be so beautiful.”

Gottfried Helnwein

Interview by Helmut Sorge, Los Angeles, 2006

“"High" and "low" are completely arbitrary and artificial distinctions that some bloated assholes invented to make life more complicated. Comics are considered "low", but when Roy Lichtensein comes and picks out one panel of a comic, projects and paints it on a canvas then it's suddenly "high" art? Give me a break. The only thing that I care about in art is quality, intensity. Is a work of art capable of touching and moving me? Does it cause an emotional impact on me? Does it startle, surprise, upset, excite me? Does it make me think? Does it inspire me? Does it stimulate my imagination? Does it change the way I view the world to some degree?”

Gottfried Helnwein

Interview by Michal Szyksznian http://www.gottfried-helnwein-interviews.com/interviews/celebritarian.html, celebritarian.pl, 2009

Gottfried Helnwein Quotes

“I never understood why some people seemed to have fun causing pain to someone smaller.”

Gottfried Helnwein

Interview by Brendan Maher http://www.gottfried-helnwein-interview.com/index.html, Start, Ireland, November 24, 2004 <br class="br">Context: When I started to paint, I painted children because I just felt that I wanted to take their side. What always upset me was how children are getting abused simply because they are physically weaker and not capable of defending themselves – how they get raped, enslaved and killed. I never understood why some people seemed to have fun causing pain to someone smaller.

“My question always was: why do people always cause so much pain to other people? Why does everybody look so hurt? When I started to paint I didn’t feel I had any message. My art was not an answer – it was a question.”

Gottfried Helnwein

Interview by Yuichi Konno, Yaso magazine, Japan, 2003

“Imaginations and illusions are always so much more powerful and bigger than this mediocre and boring thing called reality.”

Gottfried Helnwein

Interview by Yuichi Konno, Yaso magazine, Japan, 2003

“Most societies are ruled by mediocre people that have no vision and no imagination. Most rulers are scared of creation and creative people. Artists are funny people. All they want is to touch and move, challenge and surprise others. But dictators hate surprises more than anything else. All they want is to turn their territory into a neat little toy prison camp and play with their little toy people. Push them around, rip a leg or a head off now and then or throw them into the garbage when they are tired of their stupid, little doll faces.”

Gottfried Helnwein

Interview by Michal Szyksznian http://www.gottfried-helnwein-interviews.com/interviews/celebritarian.html, celebritarian.pl, 2009

“If anyone from Austrian fine art of the last fifty years could be called a star, then there is only one person who meets all the criteria: Gottfried Helnwein.”

Gottfried Helnwein

Presence and Time: Gottfried Helnwein's Pictures http://www.helnwein-museum.com/article2534.html, Stella Rollig, director of the Lentos Museum of Modern Art Linz, 2006

“Helnwein is a very fine artist and one sick motherfucker.”

Gottfried Helnwein

Robert Crumb, letter to his San Francisco art-dealer Martin Muller, 1992

“It is the function of the artist to evoke the experience of surprised recognition: to show the viewer what he knows but does not know that he knows. Helnwein is a master of surprised recognition.”

Gottfried Helnwein

William S. Burroughs, Helnwein's Work http://www.helnwein.com/texte/selected_authors/artikel_103.html, Lawrence, Kansas, 1990

“The grimaces on these mocking distorted faces signalize disobedience, opposition and turmoil, as well as a kind of childlike autonomy in the depraved world of adults. The grin found on the faces of ill-treated children, a grotesque picture puzzle which includes both the martyrdom and subversion of mankind is entirely Helnwein’s invention. It is manifested in the metamorphic images of injured bodies. It is an obsessive pattern which is repeated in Helnwein’s pictoral representation of the world and in his staged artistic actions, serving as a metaphor for the invulnerability and invincibility deeply seated in man.”

Gottfried Helnwein

Peter Gorsen, about the depiction of wounded children in Helnwein's work, Albertina Museum catalogue, Gottfried Helnwein solo-exhibition, 1985, www.gottfried-helnwein-child.com http:////www.gottfried-helnwein-child.com/index.html