A City on Earth

Any artist who sites Donald Duck and Jesus Christ as the most important influences in their art must be worth taking a look at. - Someone on Gottfied Helnwein

Let me tell you about Gottfried Helnwein. He’s one of the greatest artists of our times to start with. A painter, photographer and many other things… His work falls into the contemporary category. And it’s strange because I don’t usually understand contemporary art, thus I don’t get what’s so great about it (’it’ generally being an abstract piece of artworkkkkk). But Helnwein is different. I get the idea/message behind those shocking images instantly and very clearly, and to me, that should be the way art is served. You shouldn’t need a rocket scientist’s brain to get the picture.

Having born and grown in Vienna right after the WWII, Gottfried Helnwein, for the first time in his childhood life, saw someone smiling in a Donald Duck comic book that his uncle had brought for him. So, now you get the picture. That post-war trauma being so evident in whatever he creates… Even when he draws/photographs children, it is always linked with pain and the betrayal of innocence. Helnwein’s work touches me deeply. Once exposed to one of his paintings or photographs, life is never the same. This is art, if you ask me. Art as we know it. Art as it should be.

Yesterday, something triggered me and I checked his website to see what Helnwein has been doing recently. And there in the ‘news’ section, I screamed at this fantastic piece of information: 

Santralistanbul 01.September 2011
Museum for Contemporary Art, Main Gallery, Istanbul
HELNWEIN – RETROSPECTIVE
The exhibition coincides with the 12th Istanbul Biennial

Yesss!