James Fennell and I met Gottfried Helnwein on a bleak and blackened Wednesday afternoon shortly before Christmas 2000. He was at his castle in Kilshelan, just on the Tipperary - Waterford border, beneath which the River Suir flows. I wondered whether I'd feel intimidated in the presence of a man evidently blessed (or cursed) with the mind of a genius. I'd read a series of essays and stories about his life. His expulsion from the Viennese School of Experimental Art for painting a portrait of Adolf with his own blood. The time he'd photographed William S. Burroughs, who'd insisted on being snapped with his notorious pistol. Or Andy Warhol, a few months before he died. And, of course, there was that momentous occasion when Gottfried's "Not Worth Living", a painting of a girl dead in her soup, brought down Dr. Grosse, Head of State Psychiatry in Austria and a one-time scientist for the Nazi's genetic modification campaign that left 250,000 children dead. ...

Programme 1 - September 4th
Horizons is Lyric fm's 12-part celebration of new music
Every Monday at 10-11pm
4 Sept - 20 November 2000. ...

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One piece of public art he did in 1988 - funded fully by himself, after he failed to raise sponsorship - commemorated the 50th anniversary of Kristallnacht. "Again, what amazed me was that nobody talked about it - and yet that was when the horror really started."

"I wanted to do it in front of the Dome in Cologne, but the City prevented it. But there was this little strip of land which belonged to the railways, and a guy who worked there said, 'go ahead'. I didn't want to use these historic photographs which are used too often - those mountains of corpses mean nothing anymore - so I used four metre high children's faces. I photographed children from the area, foreign children, German children, Jews, anything." Mounted in a long billboard line, after the huge word "Selection", the children's faces were powdered in a deathly, bruised way, many with their eyes closed. That may sound subtle, but in the context of muted German Holocaust memorials, it was like a slap in the face. Despite CCTV video-cameras, someone painstakingly sliced the throats of every single child-portrait. ...

Tom Byrne interviews Tim O'Brien, the well-established and very famous New York based, Irish-American illustrator. His work graces the covers of such magazines as Time and Newsweek. His clients also include advertising agencies and book publishers. As established professionals go, he is among the best. In 1999 and 2000 he was even selected as one of a hundred 'Irish Americans of the Year' by Irish American Magazine. Tim, a former boxer, now enters the ring to keep fit but also works up an intense sweat by creating stunningly realistic paintings in oils to very short deadlines
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Who influences you in terms of painting?
It's a long list and not necessarily similar to my style. I did learn quite a bit from studying the work of Gottfried Helnwein, Ingres, Paul Cadmus, George Tooker, Lord Leighton and Ivan Shishkin, to name a few. ...

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Project Arts Centre ...

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