cover art: blue child by Gottfried Helnwein ...

Helnwein's realization of the final scene takes the breath away: a view of dozens of bloodied children's bodies, some of them hanging, some of them turning over and over in mid-air, as a vocal ensemble sings their words while kneeling on stage.
This vision connects eerily with an exhibition in the Tel Aviv Performing Arts Centre plaza, adapted from one the Austrian Artist mounted in Cologne in 1988, marking the 50th anniversary of the Nazis' anti-Jewish Kristallnacht. It shows two rows of innocent, haunted-looking child's faces, one row with eyes open; the other with eyes closed, lined up as if in a concentration camp (Selektion is the exhibit's title). ...

Famous Austrian designer and artist Gottfried Helnwein designed the set and costumes for “The Child Dreams” Opera.  He also presents his work outside the opera. Helnwein says his work and the playwright’s have a strong internal connection.
 Gottfried Helnwein: “In my work, the center of everything was always the child, the child versus the world of death, the world of corruption, the world of greed and destruction, and the child standing for innocence, purity, and I think that's a spirit of the play.” ...

Levin's profoundly philosophical, abstract and ironic, sharply pointed ideas hardly lend themselves to the operatic medium. What came closest to Levin's spirit were Gottfried Helnwein's set and Omri Nitzan's direction. These were the main heroes of the performance, highly imaginative, altogether unconventional - without gliding into sophistication - and thought provoking. ...

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An installation by artist Gottfried Helnwein in memory of Kristallnacht will be presented in Israel for the first time to coincide with the staging of The Child Dreams - the first opera to be based on a play by Hanch Levin - for which Helnwein designed the stage. ...

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"In a very poetic way [Hanoch Levin] describes the world we live in," says Helnwein, "with the child as metaphor for innocence, purity, confronted with the corrupt adult world. The adult characters, even the mother and father, are all archetypes; the child doesn't understand this world. With complete trust, he thinks that the bond between himself and his mother is unbreakable, but, of course, it's broken…
A huge picture-wall of a sleeping child, through which the soldiers break, is the first of four amazing sets, culminating in a "universe of dead children in an infinity of space." ...

2001 - Gottfried Helnwein at Kilkenny Arts Festival ...

Sales reports were extremely upbeat. These included a Chuck Close tapestry for $120,000 and “a major Miro” that brought six figures at Contessa Gallery, two Jean Dubuffet pieces that sold in “the hundreds of thousands” at David Klein Gallery, an Eric Fischl painting at $300,000, a Frank Stella for $145,000, and two works by John Chamberlain at $200,000 and $300,000 at Mark Borghi Fine Art Inc.; a Gottfried Helnwein painting that went “for six figures” at Barry Friedman Ltd; ...

Directed by Melina Matsoukas (who's helmed videos for the likes of Beyoncé, Eve and Lady Gaga), "Hard" is a high-gloss, expensive-looking thing, featuring Rihanna wearing a Mickey Mouse helmet à la Gottfried Helnwein and Marilyn Manson. ...

Friedman Benda announces representation of the Austrian-born artist Gottfried Helnwein. The artist's first New York solo exhibition opens September 17th featuring painting and documentary film. A second exhibition presenting a new body of work, currently in progress, will open at Friedman Benda in May 2010. ...

Works by Nobuyoshi Araki, Peter Beard, Annie Leibovitz, Helmut Newton, Thomas Ruff, Jörg Sasse, Wolfgang Tillmans as well as an unusual portrait of Michael Jackson by Gottfried Helnwein (estimate of 5,000-7,000 EUR) will be put up for auction. ...

For designer Helnwein, receiving the text of Levin's play was "an epiphany," because "when I read the play… I felt that I was looking at my [own] work." Much of this work concerns the images of children that society would rather not see. For IO general manager Hannah Munitz, this is a milestone production. ...

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I've walked into Modernism, and I can't seem to leave. A young girl of perhaps 9 or 10 is the central figure in a riveting series, called The Murmur of the Innocents by renowned artist Gottfried Helnwein. She is large-eyed and blond-haired, with a gravity that belies her years, both mesmerizing and painful to look at. I make the rounds of the gallery with the rest of the visitors, each of us transfixed. First she looks directly at us, then she's lost in her own sadness, oblivious to our stares. Around the next corner, she's sullen, then defiant, then helpless in a blindfold; finally she's bloody and bandaged, and we don't know why. I finally tear myself away, but she stays with me, along with the questions I cannot voice. ...

Earlier this week, it emerged that controversial Austrian artist Gottfried Helnwein will unveil a tribute to Michael Jackson at the event. The artist, photographer and installation and performance artist, who was a friend of the singer, will reportedly show larger than life portraits of children and paintings of Jackson himself. Helnwein collaborated with Jackson several times and the singer used a Helnwein painting of wounded children for the booklet for his 1995 album Save "HIStory”. The Vienna-born artist has in the past caused controversy and public outrage with his work, much of which focuses on children and the Holocaust. ...

World-renowned artist Gottfried Helnwein, known for his hyper-realistic and provocative paintings will dedicate his unique installation at the SAVE THE WORLD AWARDS ON July 24 at the Zwentendorf Nuclear Reactor to Michael Jackson. Helnwein was a close friend of the late artist for many years. The Austrian artist will present over-dimensional works of children from his “Murmur of the Innocents” cycle and “The Last Child” as well as his photo portraits of Michael Jackson, currently on exhibit at the Albertina Museum in Vienna. Gottfried Helnwein and Michael Jackson worked on various projects together. ...

"My first performance was with six-year-old Sandra, who was considered a problem child by her parents. I think her mother had a hard time coping with Sandra’s wicked sense of humor. One time, as protest for being locked in her room, she cut up all her mother’s clothes into tiny little pieces, arranged them in a neat pile in the middle of the floor and called her mum with the innocent voice of an angel. Another time she set fire to her parent’s apartment. She was one tough and mean little lady, but I liked her instantly. She had the pride of a Latino street gang leader. When she looked at you, her piercing little eyes had a very clear message: “Don’t mess with me!” ...

HELNWEIN: "LA is a strange place. A few blocks from my studio the streets are filled with thousands of homeless people, huddling on sidewalks or staggering through the streets - and from time to time some lost soul is gesticulating franticly and shouting at invisible enemies. I live and work in the so called “artist district” in downtown Los Angeles - an innocent little island with old warehouses and brick buildings that look like leftovers from a noir movie set, inhabited by artists, photographers, musicians, skinny girls with nice tattoos, freaks and Japanese students from SCI-Arc (The Southern California Institute of Architecture) placed in the former Santa Fe Rail Road freight-depot, a concrete block one-quarter of a mile long.
The heart of the artist district is the Groundworks Cafe in a red-painted building across from the old, run-down American Hotel where Bukowski once wrote the screenplay for Barfly. The air is heavily polluted from all these diesel trucks that blow their unfiltered exhaust gases through their erected chrome-pipes into the air of downtown. When I touch my paintings my hands gets black from the layers of black dust that sets on everything." ...