Gottfried Helnwein is known for his hyper-realistic images and his photo portraits of celebrities such as Mick Jagger, Michael Jackson, Andy Warhol, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Marilyn Manson and the band Rammstein. In his provocative images, he articulates themes of violence and abuse in ways that are as compelling as they are shocking. In particular, children, whose innocence, naivety and tenderness he brings into focus, are projection surfaces for him. From Wagner and Nietzsche, a stringent arc develops to Hitler’s propaganda machinery, the staged epic mass marches of the SS, and leads in Helnwein’s case not least to his great Carl Barks admiration, whereby he himself fits Mickey Mouse into the context of Nazi rule.

This book is dedicated for the first time to this level of reflection in Helnwein’s work and first summarises those dark paintings in which the image is developed out of blackness and deep blue (as a romantic keynote) and leads over to the atrocities of the Nazi regime, in that in particular the experiments on imprisoned persons and those segregated into psychiatric wards underpin the racial ideology.

Text in English and German.