Interview Fragments
Literature and Music
Literature and music have always played the biggest roles in my inspiration, which might be strange because a lot of what I do is visual. But to me these two fields of art are extremely visual.
Autobiographical
I love fiction. Getting to make up stuff without having to cater to fact is the best. Even when I do self-portraits they are for the most part tales of fiction. I love being the outsider to the stories in my artwork and getting to ask the same questions any viewer might. That being said, I think every artist’s work is at least somewhat autobiographical by nature.
For my novel Slingshot, however, I did draw heavily on own experiences as a teenager. The story remains fiction, but the only way it was going to feel authentic was for me to really embed myself back into the mental landscape of 16-year-old me. And that was the whole point: to write a brutally honest remembrance of falling in love for the first time. So it’s the most autobiographical thing I’ve done and at the same time totally fictitious.
Films in Helnwein’s work
I've been making films since I was about fourteen. I took my dad's camcorder and began to film everything pretty much all the time. I recently discovered lots and lots of bizarre video footage.
Later on I started making films as an extension to my static work at art shows. I was going mainly pencil drawings at the time, and it felt very necessary to have another element involved that took the show a little further. In the films there were suddenly so many more layers to work with. Movement for example and choreography. Getting to work with music was another big kid-in-a-candy-store moment . And also editing—as much as it drove me insane to edit footage, it was instantly also completely exciting and addictive.
Working as a visual artist as well as a writer
As a kid I drew, made films and wrote stories, so none of these things are something new that I'm suddenly doing at this point in my life. I always found it easier to focus on a bunch of stuff artistically rather than just one thing, because there's a lot of cross-inspiration that goes on. One thing generates ideas for something else, and different channels of artistic expression are better suited for different ideas. When I get stuck in one project, I can switch to the other. The only times I feel lost is when I'm not actively getting something done. It's the worst feeling for me, and so I set things up that I always have a writing project going besides my studio work. There is also something about the back and forth between the explicit nature of dealing with words, and then switching to a completely visual creative outlet.
Writing
I desperately love writing. I think you'd have to feel pretty strongly about it in order to go through some of the terrible lows that comes with writing something like a novel. But it's ultimately so gratifying and the highs are so high that it has become a kind of comfort -- always thinking of the story that I'm writing or the possibilities of stories that I have the freedom to write. I love words and language. A good idiom can really make my day. I love the humor and creativity of “bad language”. I love the amount of work that I have to deliver in order to put together a novel. I love that I can't fake it and that when I'm done I have this thing that I created and I have no clue how I ever pulled it out of my ass.
Also, as a writer life becomes more palatable, because everything is a potential gold mine. You start to ingest things differently. Even the most mundane, boring or terrible events in your life now have that second aspect of being potentially useful.
Gottfried Helnwein
People like to ask if it's weird that I am an artist when my dad is who he is, and whether there's been any disadvantages to having him as a father, or whether it was hard for me to find my own identity, etc. etc. The answer to all of that is: no. It's been far easier than I could have expected.
Although I'm very close to both my parents, my dad has never gotten involved with what I do. Not in the least, and although his work was around me all the time as I grew up and of course I soaked in inspiration from him that way, there was never any direct influence from him. We have completely different artistic urges and subject matters that involve us. He's never given me lessons in drawing or painting, and the actual technical advice he gave me I can count on one hand. I really liked being left alone in terms of figuring out my style. I stayed away from art schools too for this reason. I didn't want any interference other than inspiration form other works of art that I admire.
I don't talk to my dad at length about my work. He doesn't give me critiques or opinions. I really appreciate that about him, because he gives you full leeway to be who you are as an artist. We talk a lot about art in general though. Other artists, music, writers, old architecture, etc. Those are really inspiring conversations to me and have far more profound effects on me than someone actually trying to discuss the details of my own work. My dad’s viewpoints are incredibly broad and fascinating. I’m always surprised at how he sees art. And that’s why going through a museum with him is a very different experience for me than going by myself. I get so much more out of it with him.
