Interview with Gottfried Helnwein – Brendan Maher, 2004
In November 2004 the Irish arts magazine Start published a long conversation with Helnwein, by then living in the south of Ireland.
About the interview
Brendan Maher interviewed Gottfried Helnwein for Start Magazine, a publication covering arts and culture in the South East of Ireland; the interview appeared on 24 November 2004. Helnwein had moved to Ireland in 1997 and received Irish citizenship in 2004, the same year the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco staged his exhibition The Child.
What they discussed
- Growing up in post-war Vienna: Helnwein describes a dark, silent, grief-stricken city and a childhood he experienced as deeply alienating.
- The cultural void after National Socialism and why his generation turned to American popular culture: comics, rock'n'roll and film.
- Protest through images, including his 1979 watercolour response to the Nazi-era physician Heinrich Gross, which helped spark public debate about Gross's past.
- Repetition and the image of the child: why certain motifs recur and what he hopes viewers experience.
- Art without education: whether art can reach people who know nothing about art history.
- Beauty and its place in art.
- Politics and ideology, including questions about militant movements of the 1970s.
- Life in Ireland: why he chose to settle there, finding his house, and the advantages of living far from art-world centres.
Context
The interview is notable as one of the first in-depth conversations Helnwein gave to the Irish press, and for how directly he links his childhood experience to his lifelong themes. Many of these topics are explored at greater length in the German-language book Gottfried Helnwein im Gespräch mit Andreas Mäckler (1992), particularly the chapters on childhood and school.
Source
Brendan Maher, “Interview with Gottfried Helnwein”, Start Magazine (Arts and Culture of the South East, Ireland), 24 November 2004.
More interviews: overview of Helnwein interviews (in German).