"The portraits of Hendrix, Joplin, and Lennon are particulary stirring because their ghostlike treatment translates as a poetic and humble tribute to major creative forces whose lives were tragically cut short. As exemplified by the paintings of Helnwein, the purpose of a contemporary portrait may extend well beyond biographical signification to stimulating reflection upon larger issues of social or political consequence"

"People are much more content with watching the "real world" and reality television, than living their own lives, or watching something that comes from imagination. Imagination is a necessity, and I don't think it's sort of bad. I can dream up some images like I did with Helnwein, and they get censored, forbidden, - but I can take images which are far worse, that are on CNN and it's reality.
It's bad when imagination is censored by others, but when you censor it yourself, that's the worst. That's what's happening now with the dying breed of "artists," if I can use that word. People are afraid to say and do things because of how it will affect their career."

"My favorit photographers are Nan Goldin, Anton Corbijn, Cindy Sherman. And Gottfried Helnwein. I love Gottfried Helnwein."

"An exhibition called Sensations caused a few upsets, first in London and then in New York. Central to the reaction was a large-scale portrait of a child-killer assembled from, if I remember correctly, the palm prints of children. So far, so bland. The shock element in art has been much talked about in the last five years but art that actually shocks has been thin on the ground during the same period.
Step forward then, Gottfried Helnwein.
By and large, if art is going to shock, it better have something shocking to say, and it's clear that Helnwein has found that. "

"The point of the images is that they put it up to you as a viewer. Given that, one potential line of criticism is that they are designed solely to be provocative, like Marcus Harvey's portrait of Myra Hindley. But the abiding strength of Helnwein's work is that provocation is a means rather than an end; it is - however uncomfortable - morally grounded,
if not necessarily in a way that will please all observers."

"Ich schätze seine unendliche zeichnerische Qualität, seinen enormen künstlerischen Witz. Vom malerischen Können muß man gar nicht reden, da ist er Weltklasse. Außerdem ist Helnwein ein überaus intelligenter und unruhiger Geist.
Seine Übermalungsexperimente sind hochklassig: Luxusbilder, Weltkunst.
Helnwein hat mich stark beeinflußt. Seine Federzeichnungen habe ich früher quasi unwillentlich nachgemacht. Er brachte mir Kühnheit und Wagemut bei. Ohne ihn gäbe es mich nicht. Er aber wäre nicht so, wie er jetzt ist, gäbe es mich nicht. Ein Leben ohne Helnwein kann ich mir nicht vorstellen, hoffentlich überlebt er mich."

"Das Bild des Menschen in der Leidensnot, des unschuldig Verfolgten und Gequälten, das aus der Kunstgeschichte in zahllosen Märtyererszenen bekannt ist, entsteht immer wieder neu. In den Bildern von Gottfried Helnwein ist Betroffenheit über Schmerz und Ausweglosigkeit in der Situation des Kindes dargestellt. Das Kind ist die Gestalt des Unterlegenen, Abhängigen, Ausgelieferten und Ausgenützten. Unter dem Druck einer auf Anpassung drängenden Erwachsenenwelt werden ihm tiefe Verletzungen eingeprägt, entstellende Traumata.
Die Bandagen bei Helnwein oder schon zuvor bei den Wiener Aktionisten (Schwarzkoglers Bandagenaktionen) verweisen sowohl auf die Entstellung des Körpers wie auf das Verborgene dieser Verletzungen. Sie üben auf dem Hintergrund einer Tabuisierung von Verwundung, Behindertenexistenz und Tod eine starke Wirkung aus und setzen heftige Reaktionen frei."

"Helnweins Thema ist der malträtierte, unterdrückte Mensch, am beeindruckendsten in einer Serie von mißhandelten und verstümmelten Kinderköpfen (1969). Dieses Thema inszeniert er auch in Fotoserien und Installationen sowie Performances ("Blut für Helnwein", 1972). Nach 1985 kombiniert er großformatige Fotos mit abstrakt-gestischer Malerei ("Der Beweis", 1986). In Helnweins Kunstauffassung offenbart sich ein obsessiver Realismus, der die verdrängte, tabuisierte »Nachtseite« der menschlichen Zivilisation in packenden Metaphern veranschaulicht."

"Scale is an important part of his strategy because, he wants to engage with the widest possible public. To this end, transgression is also central. Many of his images set out expressly to stop us in our tracks, confronting us with scenes of what look alarmingly like grotesque surgical experiments, of horrible torture, of children in distressing situations, of distorted and mutated flesh.
It's not all Grand Guignol though.
An extremely impressive work "Selection", made in 1988, consisted of a series of uniform, huge images of children's faces, stretching from Cologne's Ludwig Museum to its cathedral. The subtitle, (Ninth November Night), gave the clue to the event the work marked - the start of the Holocaust on Reichskristallnacht, November 9, 1938.
In presenting people with a series of entirely neutral, if rather beautiful, pictures of innocence and implicitly pointing out that just such innocents were sorted and selected for extermination, Helnwein was resurrecting an aspect of the past that most Germans and, perhaps even more so, Austrians, have preferred to forget.
It certainly annoyed someone to the extent that they came and vandalised it, symbolically cutting the throats of some of the images. Selection shares with Helnwein's more sensational work a desire to prod us into thought about our own attitudes and roles.
The real horror, as his work reiterates, is indifference and complacency. "

"In his last will, the Austrian playwright Thomas Bernhard, who died in 1989, banned the production of his texts on home soil. Bernhard never hid his fury at Austria's refusal to admit its history. Helnwein, born in 1948, clearly shares Bernhard's view. He is furious about Austria's self-image as victim of the Third Reich, rather than its willing collaborator.
In 1965 posters for the Freedom Party, later led by Jörg Haider, demanded: "Forget about the past! Look ahead at the future." Helnwein, then still a teenager, reacted by painting a portrait of Adolf Hitler that got him expelled from art school. His "crime" was to have reminded Austria of its best-known son."

"Helnwein is a great believer in the ability of art to pass emotional memory on, as a reminder of the past or mainly as a warning of what the future might hold, for humanity, as far as he is concerned, has not learnt its lesson. Is there atonement in his artistic endeavors? I prefer the Jewish concept of “tikkun”, purification of the soul. It has a deeper meaning than the physical healing of scars, for it elevates us to the highest sphere of the spirit. The wounded girls close their eyes, but they are not blind. Behind their closed lids their gaze is clear and penetrating."

"Austrian artist Gottfried Helnwein's powerful and haunting paintings provide a disturbing commentary on Nazism and the Holocaust, regularly provoking outraged reactions from right-wingers in his native land and in Germany.
'I was amazed how deep pictures could reach into the hearts and minds of people - and how much they would talk to me about it,' he said, 'for me, art is like a dialogue.
- But my art is not giving answers, it is asking questions."

"The disturbing Work of Helnwein comes to Ireland Helnwein is a headline artist who works in tight sound bites on a very large scale. The works brand themselves with proof of his technical know-how in various media and are endorsed by the coolest celebrities of his generation. So much for the cover-story, so what lies within? Headlines lure you into stories that make you want to cry, smile or help to change the world. But when they stop at your own skin, you can get a sinking feeling, a sense of the bigness and badness outside and the impossibility of change."

"Not even the children were spared; they, too, fell victim to the destruction.
It was Gottfried Helnwein's most convincing idea to present the consequences to this period without mercy" in such an unconventional manner. He made no use of photos of heaped corpses; children's portraits force the observer to stop and consider this idea. The fury with which the neo-nazis reacted to these portraits is understandable inasmuch as it is the very same fury with which they have for years been fighting against The Diary of Anne Frank; the murder of children rouses abhorrence and conflict in every human, whether they are motivated by ideology or insanity. The urge to destroy has survived; the portraits bear witness to its rage - an attempt was made to cut them to shreds. "People, please, stop,... look at these children's faces, multiply their number by a few hundred thousand. Only then will you realise or gain an inkling of the extent of the Holocaust, of the greatest tragedy in human history!
(About the installation 'Ninth November Night') "

"I admire the work of Gottfried Helnwein a great deal. This photographic testimony encourages reflection and provokes the examination of conscience, which is necessary for every one of us where racism is concerned. The laceration of the portraits is proof of the fact that we cannot be indifferent to the warning of the "final solution". I consider myself lucky to be able to exhibit this gallery of memories in its present form in Lausanne.
The childrens' faces are to remind us that innumerable victims were needed during the past sixty years to get out of "the Night and the Fog.
(About the installation 'Ninth November Night')"

"Congratulations Gottfried - you are the greatest inspiration."

"Helnwein hat den "ruhig theatralischen" Verzückungsgestus seines Selbstbildnisses mit der heroischen Haltung der leidenden Sebastians-Figur verglichen und beides zum Stigma des Künstlers im 20. Jahrhundert, einer quasi religiösen Erlöserfigur, verallgemeinert.
Sein poetischer Bildtitel bringt den Betrachter zusätzlich auf die richtige Spur. Die optische Montage des modernen Künstlers als Schmerzensmann mit dem Landschaftsbild Friedrichs projiziert die gescheiterte Hoffnung der romantischen Rebellion auf die Gegenwart, auf das verinnerlichte, masochistisch gewordene Protestdenken der Moderne und ihre ästhetischen Grenzüberschreitungen.
Kehrt die Romantik wieder?
Nein, sie hat die Moderne in Wahrheit nie verlassen. Doch verengt und verinnerlicht sich ihre Rebellion in den irrationalen "Körpermetaphysiken" der zeitgenössischen Künstler auf das eigene Fleisch und Blut."

"Amstetten zwischen Fassungslosigkeit und Medienrummel: Ein Verlies mitten im Ort, ein Vater, der den Kindern ein Martyrium antut - wie man nun die Teile von etwas Unbegreiflichem zusammenzufügen versucht. Das Verlies von Amstetten berührt auch etwas im Innersten der Österreicher, ihre dunkle Seite, die sich spiegelt in den Gedichten ihrer Autoren. Und in den Bildern von Gottfried Helnwein, wo Menschen zu sehen sind, denen Gabeln in die Augen gedrückt werden. Oder Mädchen, denen das Blut die Beine herunterläuft. Helnweins Bilder sind Albträume, sie handeln von Verliesen in den Köpfen..."

"Von jeher hat die Verwundbarkeit von Kindern im Mittelpunkt von Helnweins Schaffen gestanden. In seinem neuen, 2003 begonnenen Zyklus kommt die digitale Fotografie zu ihrem Recht, die den Aufnahmen liegender uniformierter Mädchen eine neue Qualität der Kälte verleiht. Weiß geschminkt, eine Träne im Augenwinkel und stieren Blicks starren diese Protagonistinnen eines zeitgemäßen Schlafs ins Nichts, und wie selten gelingt Helnwein dabei der Spagat zwischen Intimität und Überwältigung.
Helmweins Körperbilder haben immer Unterwerfung und Eigensinnigkeit miteinander verbinden können, ganz autonom aber sind in seinem Werk nur die Comicfiguren - als Angehörige einer anderen Welt. Die Kinder aber sollen für ihn etwas Größeres sein. "

"Karikatur ist nach Werner Hofmann, dem ehemaligen Direktor der Hamburger Kunsthalle, "als Darstellungstyp eine sublimierte Form der Verletzung." Francisco de Goya gehört mit seinen Caprichos, besonders seinen "Desastres de la Guerra" deshalb ebenso dazu wie Käthe Kollwitz - oder Gottfried Helnwein. Die Arbeiten von Helnwein stehen aber auch in einer Linie mit den Kupferstichen eines William Hogarth. In der Mitte des 18. Jahrhunderts hat er seine "modern moral subjects", seine "modernen Sittenbilder" entworfen, die der Gesellschaft den Spiegel vorgehalten haben - und Helnwein wie Hogarth haben eine subtile Balance zwischen ästhethischer Form und erschreckendem Inhalt gefunden."