Luminous wounds: spectral childhoods in contemporary painting and literature

Abstract

The painter Gottfried Helnwein, born in Vienna in 1948, has made the topic of childhood his trademark through a work extending over half a century. His children embody disturbing figures. They can be recognized as specters of our contemporary culture. The impulse that leads him towards the subject is linked to his childhood experiences in his country, Austria, after the period of National Socialism, but is reinforced by the current constellations in which minors are inserted. His work is often defined as an example of “sinister hyperrealism”. Helnwein’s infants are problematic because they destabilize established ideas of what is meant by a child. In that sense, these figures are queerized through representation. The definition of “luminous wounds” finds resonances in some literary texts too. For this work, we are examining two novels as well: Austerlitz (2001) by the German writer W.G. Sebald and El Dock (1993) by the Argentine Matilde Sánchez. In both texts, the children question us with the same icy fury as Helnwein’s infants.