Exhumed Artists ~ Helmut Newton

German Photographer, Helmut Newton (1920-2004)

His aesthetic was branded 'porno chic'. To radical feminists, helmut newton was the antichrist - his work outraged many and they protested one of his exhibits by throwing paint on his photos.

'In my vocabulary, ART is a dirty word,' he said, but it can be assumed that the spirit of helmut newton's work has sympathised with the movement of the surrealists. He portraited amazonian women who live, sleep and breathe in immaculate make-up, heavy jewellery and vicious stiletto heels, gorgeous women, expensive gowns, and exotic locations - to create a unique imaginative world. His pictures are showing members from the margins of society engaged in fetish driven meetings with the social elite, surrounded by sumptuous hotels and ancient midnight streets, all of them saturated with decadence, luxury, and privilege. The magic of his art is its complete elusiveness, its cunning refusal to admit the true nature of its subject matter: the failure of reality and the triumph of desire.

Newton reintroduce elements of violence (or the implied threat of danger) by featuring semi-nude, highly germanic, intensely voluptuous models photographed from the rear holding pistols discreetly hidden from their beaus behind their backs. Knives or other instruments of carnage are held in reserve by delicious femmes fatales for moments of ostensible tenderness - and blindly trusting intimacy - with unsuspecting men ripe for the kill.   www.designboom.com

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