Perhaps one of the toughest things to do is to capture the creative process on film. A movie showing a writer tapping away at a keyboard, or a musician putting down the notes he hears in his head, tells you nothing about what the artist is actually going through. Perhaps the closest we’ve gotten is the 1956 documentary “The Mystery of Picasso” where the camera is placed on one side of a canvas and an unseen Picasso creates pictures on the other side. We watch as the pigments bleed through while the work is being formed, and try to anticipate what the artist will do next. “Gottfried Helnwein and the Dreaming Child” is a similar attempt. The 2011 documentary, newly released to DVD, is about a different kind of art: the production of an opera. As with a dramatic film, a stage performance like an opera is a collaboration of many talents, which means there are going to be compromises, differences of opinion and, sometimes, an artistic vision that must fight through competing visions. That is what occurred here. ...

Two days after the Sandy Hook school massacre, a survival gear company called Black Dragon Tactical composed a new slogan to promote sales of armored backpack inserts. “Arm the teachers,” the company declared on Facebook. “In the meantime, bulletproof the kids.”...
The question may be political, but the keenest response is to be found in a museum in Mexico City, the Museo Nacional de San Carlos, at a retrospective of paintings and photographs by the Austrian-American artist Gottfried Helnwein. Helnwein’s extraordinary work depicts the fragile innocence of children. Devoid of grown-up sentimentalism, his images can be overwhelming, especially those that show how that innocence falters in an adult world. ...

It’s been a great year for documentaries, from Chad Friedrichs‘s exploding of The Pruitt-Igoe Myth to filmic glimpses into the life and work of artists including Marina Abramović, Gerhard Richter, Ai Weiwei, Wayne White, Gregory Crewdson, and Gottfried Helnwein. ...

Mendelsohn would not comment on any specifics, but we've heard that the painting already is complete, and that the well-known artist Gottfried Helnwein did it. Schwarzenegger is fond of Helnwein's work, and had his landscape painting of the Mojave Desert hanging in the governor's office. ...

Auxiliary Magazine: Many pieces of your work are intimate glimpses to fascist figures and groups. Is this a theme you still feel is relevant?
Helnwein: Mussolini once said: "Fascism should rightly be called Corporatism, as it is the merger of corporate and government power". Well, look around - does it look like there is a growing influence of bankers and big corporations on our governments and our lives? The new Fascists will not come as grim looking brutes in daemonic black uniforms and boots, they will wear slick suits and ties, and they will be smiling. ...

We see the painter and designer jousting with the lighting designer over what will prove to be Helnwein’s greatest coup de theater, a hypnotic final-act tableau of dozens of “dead children” suspended in black space. This time there can be little doubt that Helnwein’s judgment is correct; even on screen the effect is startling and eerily beautiful. ...

One of the great things about this documentary is that, while many out there might be familiar with Helnwein’s artwork or installations, they may not be familiar with where his ideas come from, or what it’s like when he works. In that way, the film is a wonderful look at a stunning contemporary artist. ...

The sets and costumes designed by the artist are indeed visually impressive, especially a haunting image of children suspended over the stage like ascending angels. ...

It’s fascinating to watch Helnwein, unaccustomed to creative compromise, navigate the details and politics of a large-scale theatrical production, whether by rolling up his sleeves to daub cobalt onto a foam boulder so that it matches a craggy Caspar David Friedrich scene or micromanaging the stage makeup. In the end, Helnwein is pleased. “It brought all of the children I have painted before together,” he says of the opera’s fourth act. “I treat the staging like a canvas, but it’s three-dimensional and everything moves.” ...

When the powers behind the 2010 Tel Aviv production of Hanoch Levin's Holocaust opera The Child Dreams sought a designer, it seemed like plain sailing to bring on the Austrian provocateur Gottfried Helnwein, distinguished alumnus of what he calls "the same academy that rejected Adolf Hitler twice—which is, of course, the biggest mistake that any university has ever made in history." ...

A look behind the scenes as the Austrian artist designs an opera about the Holocaust, “The Child Dreams,” for the Israeli Opera in Tel Aviv. Lisa Kirk Colburn directed. ...

The proof is in the pudding, however, and, although limited, what we are allowed to see of the actual production is impressive indeed, in terms of set design, color, lighting and dramatic impact. Helnwein pulls off a fourth-act coup de theatre, staging Levin’s idea of a pile of dead children as a more viscerally exciting image of suspended bodies, like barely alive puppets, which is quite breathtaking. ...

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In Gottfried Helnwein and the Dreaming Child, the Austrian artist Gottfried Helnwein clashes with the production team of the Israeli opera as he collaborates with them on an adaptation of a play about children and the Holocaust. Behind-the-scenes footage gives viewers a sense of the artistic conflicts and the acclaimed result. (First Run; Nov. 23) ...

GH: People are constantly bombarded with millions of images of the daily horror from around the world, through mass media, television, internet, which makes us feel helpless, because it tells us there is nothing we can do about it.
Art is the exact opposite; with art you can approach any subject, no matter how horrible, because aesthetics can transcend and transform any uglyness, into something beautiful, it can elevate, inspire and might be able to open doors to understanding. My images always dealt with what's happening around me, I wasn’t making things up.
From early childhood on when I looked at people around me I perceived them as suffering in some way, without being conscious about it. I thought that most people seemed to be somewhat damaged , and that’s what I started to show in my paintings. ...

My work process is based on passion, intuition and curiosity. I don't have a specific plan or method. I just keep moving forward, and each work is a new attempt to get closer to my basic vision, knowing that I will never fully reach it. ...

Gottfried Helnwein and The Dreaming Child offers a rare and intimate glimpse into the creation of The Child Dreams, an opera designed by world-famous Austrian artist Gottfried Helnwein for the Israeli Opera in Tel Aviv in 2010. The Child Dreams is based on the play written by Israel's most celebrated playwright, Hanoch Levin, who died in 1999. ...

Yet, a step inside the cool, white, 2,000-square-foot gallery – currently filled with the strange and steampunky works of Ray Caesar, Gottfried Helnwein and Anita Kunz. ...

Tolerate this.
Imagine penitents scuttling down a valley of tears, as every thing around them erupts in squeals of meaty humbuckers and slithering single-coils, leaving nothing but scorched bloody earth. A cloud of burning flesh. A tremble of misshapen shadows. Everything is shot to hell. A vision of Bosch, with a backdrop by Gottfried Helnwein, and soundtracked by a tiger moon quartet called Intolerant. ...

How many art handlers does it take to hang a giant Damien Hirst painting just right? You’d be surprised. From perching a 70,000 pound Do Ho Suh ”house” into the side of the roof of a university building to de-installing Carsten Höller’s mirrored carousels to lugging a precious Gottfried Helnwein through the halls of the Russian State Museum — the professional installation of art requires a keen eye, physical precision, a practical sense of aesthetics, and the ability not to drop anything under pressure. ...