Dance icon Gregor Seyffert, and Gottfried Helnwein, internationally renowned artist and stage designer, came up with a highly intelligent concept for the oratorio, which relied heavily on dance, but also comprised whatever means a modern, multimedia stage design might offer. Consequently, the audience’s eyes almost popped out of their heads. With all the media activities, one might almost forget the enchanting, beautiful music, and singing.

Storming, unceasing applause by an enthusiastic Düsseldorf audience for an evening which is unlikely to be easily forgotten. This was an example of lively music theatre, which, unchallenged, not only stole the glory of Deutsche Oper am Rhein, which presently enjoys a period of profound hibernation, but proved that Düsseldorf may well offer first class art. Why not more often?
(Peter Bilsing) ...

Im Mittelpunkt stehen 100 großformatige Fotografien von Robert Mapplethorpe, Gottfried Helnwein, Allen Ginsberg, Gerard Malanga, Marcia Resnick und anderen.
Die Beat Generation - Sie zogen gegen die bürgerliche Gesellschaft und deren Konventionen zu Felde. Anarchie, Provokation und Rebellion waren ihre Themen. Zunächst betrachteten sich die Schriftsteller der Beat Generation, deren Sprache und Stil sich an den Improvisationen des Jazz orientierte, lediglich als Vorhut einer literarischen Strömung. Doch schon bald verkörperten sie mit ihrer radikalen Subversivität, ihrem ausschweifenden Lebensstil, ihren Drogenexperimenten und ihrer Lust am Reisen ein ganz neues Lebensgefühl. ...

"NINTH NOVEMBER NIGHT"
2003, USA, Director/Producer: Henning Lohner; Producer: Gisela Guttman ...

How easy it is to pass by the things we do not understand and hand out a label that might comfort our ignorance. I could have v-lined for the exit, ignored my curiosity and not given the exhibit another thought. But how could have that helped me? How could I take and grow from that experience? Proverbs says to seek after understanding like silver, to turn my heart to understanding. Because I decided to seek and understand Helnwein’s art, I was able to see the empathy God has blessed him with – the explicit visions he is able to create to awaken our naive hearts to the sound of our children’s pain. ...

...

Gottfried Helnwein’s first one-man exhibition at a major American museum is long overdue. 35 years in the making, “The Child” is a collection of more than fifty drawings, watercolors, photographs, and paintings (several monumental in size). It’s also a show that shocks, and among the crowds thronging to see it, some patrons will be put off: the day I attended, a few seemed downright uncomfortable, if not hostile, toward the work. This is fine. Art should shock, and provoke, and make us feel queasy sometimes.
“The Child” achieves all three, but also startles us with aching beauty, bedazzles us with painterly skill, and injects a necessary perspective into the culture’s collective conscience. ...

Concernant le lieu de son mariage avec Dita Von Teese, Manson explique qu'il a été "invité par Gottfried Helnwein (artiste qui a réalisé les clichés de l'album Golden Age) dans l'un de ses châteaux en Allemagne ou en Irelande". Il poursuit en disant que "cela ressemblera à un mariage normal mais sans l'église, parce que je ne pense pas que j'y serai le bienvenue". ...

...

Marilyn Manson: "Gottfried Helnwein whom I collaborated with a lot invited us to get married at one of his castles in either Germany or Ireland," Manson said. "So we thought we would just have the pageantry and the ceremony of a normal wedding, but without the church. Because I don't think that I would really be welcome there." ...

:: Gottfried Helnwein :
»Andy Warhol, New York« [1983]
»Arnold Schwarzenegger, Los Angeles« [1984]
»William S. Burroughs, Lawrence, USA« [1990]
»Michael Jackson, Köln« [1988]
»Willy Brandt, Bonn« [1989]
»Keith Richards, Berlin« [1990] ...

Austrian-born and educated and now living Los Angeles, Helnwein employs a hyperrealist manner that will remind Americans of Gerhard Richter but, if anything, works to opposite effect. Rather than re-confirm post-modernist cynicism, Helnwein rekindles post-war anguish. This selection, going back more than three decades, emphasizes his preoccupation with the image of the child, from early Nitsch- and Schwarzkogler-influenced photo-actions (with the requisite bandages) to recent large portrait-like heads and depictions of Christ-child-like babes attracting odd, menacing crowds. A perverse streak runs through the images, but it’s not pederasty: tinged with surrealism, it’s an enduring shame and anger at the Nazi past – and the artist’s suspicion that Naziism hasn’t been eradicated. ...

In the film "Ninth November Night," painter Gottfried Helnwein describes his first encounter with Jewish people during his childhood in Austria after the war, a bleak and dark period, one, he says, with no singing, no laughter. He was nine years old when he saw the two people walking down the street, very close together, walking quickly, looking down the whole time.
Helnwein became intrigued and wanted to know who they were. He asked everyone, all the adults, "Who are they?" But no one wanted to answer. Finally, someone said the word, one that he remembers the person had great difficulty saying - "Jews." ...

The film tells the story of famed Austrian painter Gottfried Helnwein, obsessed with a mission to use his art to preserve the memory of Holocaust persecutions. ...

… ces peintures photo apparaissent même plus réelles qu’une photographie : elles sont hyper-réelles, des descriptions super-saturées du monde qui nous entoure, tel qu’on aimerait bien le voir. Les paysages de Helnwein nous offrent le monde tel qu’on le voit devant notre œil intérieur, nos mémoires.
Ce qui est certain c’est qu’avec ces travaux, Helnwein a levé la barre pour de futurs artistes avec un art qui est révolutionnaire en termes d’échelle, d’habileté et de vision. Peintures de montagnes, champs et du ciel ne pourront plus jamais être le même … ...

For Helnwein, the child is the symbol of innocence, but also of innocence betrayed. In today’s world, the malevolent forces of war, poverty, and sexual exploitation and the numbing, predatory influence of modern media assault the virtue of children. Robert Flynn Johnson, the curator in charge of the Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts, has assembled a thought-provoking selection of Helnwein’s works and provided an insightful essay on his art in this exhibition catalogue.
Helnwein’s work concerning the child includes paintings, drawings, and photographs, and it ranges from subtle inscrutability to scenes of stark brutality.
Of course, brutal scenes—witness The Massacre of the Innocents—have been important and regularly visited motifs in the history of art. What makes Helnwein’s art significant is its ability to make us reflect emotionally and intellectually on the very expressive subjects he chooses. Many people feel that museums should be a refuge in which to experience quiet beauty divorced from the coarseness of the world. This notion sells short the purposes of art, the function of museums, and the intellectual curiosity of the public.
The Child: Works by Gottfried Helnwein will inspire and enlighten many; it is also sure to upset some. It is not only the right but the responsibility of the museum to present art that deals with important and sometimes controversial topics in our society. ...

Editor -- I am writing to suggest that the large image accompanying the review of the Gottfried Helnwein show at the Legion of Honor ("The art of Gottfried Helnwein demands a response," Monday) was inappropriate to place on the first page of the Datebook section, especially above the fold and in such a large format. It is certainly right for art to be dark and disturbing, and certainly right for people to have relatively easy access to art of all kinds -- hey, I'm an ACLU member and an avid fan of some pretty disturbing artists -- but you have to remember that The Chronicle is a family newspaper and that the Datebook section is often the one that children turn to first when they pick up the paper to search for the comics. Anyone with younger children can easily imagine the really horrifying effect this particular image would have. Couldn't you have found an image that would have suggested the nature of Helnwein's art without being such so frightening to children? Barring that, you should have printed it inside the fold and smaller.
Thanks for thinking about the kids next time.
Leif Brown
Berkeley ...

Au-delà de son traitement de motifs d’enfants communs – poupées, jouets et des nymphes ambivalentes – la vision du peintre autrichien Gottfried Helnwein est enveloppée dans une aura d’obscurité énigmatique. Avec ses gigantesques portraits en couleur de bébés mort-nés ; peintures qui juxtaposent photographies de l’ère Nazie avec ses propres images ; et peintures d’enfants déformés, aux visages misérables emmaillotés en bandages, Helnwein est préoccupé avec le souffre indélébile qui reflète les aspects plus délicats de la jeunesse. Ces travaux sont d’une merveille irritative et baignés en pathos, justement parce que les spectateurs sont tout de suite conscient de la menace plus grande qui veille dans les œuvres : la rupture de l’innocence. ...

Die Maschine, die immerfort höchste Qualität produziert, kann nicht still stehen.
Gottfried Helnwein, 56, arbeitet auch im Sommer wie ein Besessener. Der Österreichische Maler, einer der spärlichen heimischen Weltstars seiner Profession, eröffnet soeben im "Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco" seine erste amerikanische Einzelausstellung.
Verstörte, verwundete, misshandelte Kinder: das Thema lässt ihn seit den österreichischen Anfängen in den siebziger Jahren nicht los. Seit fünf Jahren bereitet er eine Retrospektive im Nationalmuseum von Peking vor, im Mai zeichnete er für die Ausstattung des Oratoriums "Das Paradies und die Peri" beim Schumannfest in Düsseldorf verantwortlich.
Und derzeit arbeitet er am Bühnenbild für den "Rosenkavalier", den Maximilian Schell an Placido Domingos Opernhaus von Los Angeles inszeniert. ...

...

Helnwein's preoccupation with the dark side of modern history, including its abuse of images, has never left him. He did a whole series of paintings (the Legion show includes a couple) so dark as to appear imageless. But he intended them not as mirrors of dark times but as counterthrusts to the aggressive reach of so much contemporary culture.
Despite the grotesquerie it contains, the Legion show also has elements of pathos.

Helnwein nodded yes when asked whether he has made a theme of innocence. "It's a dangerous word, it's so abused and misused, but yes that's probably the basic essence of what I'm interested in."
"As soon as somebody's grown up they have so many issues," he said. "When you look at a person -- what social level, what country they're from, what fashion they affect -- all this stuff comes in, but I'm interested in the stage of a human being where it's not so important whether it's a male or female, before we can tell any social background or anything, it's just ... abstract, almost."
...Probably few visitors will appreciate the detachment in Helnwein's work. They will more likely respond to his concern with the power of images. We willingly subject ourselves to their power every day without really understanding it. If nothing else, his pictures, no matter how confrontational, stand still and permit us, even defy us, to understand how they work upon us. ...