-- and the exhibit's defacement by vandals shortly after it was unveiled.
Directed by Henning Lohner and featuring on-camera appearances by Helnwein collectors Sean Penn and Jason Lee, the documentary short is largely the product of the passion and persistence of Malibu producer Gisela Guttman. When she struggled to find a venue in Los Angeles willing to show Helnwein's large-scale installation, she decided to make a documentary instead.
The art installation, which revolves around a series of pictures of small children, was vandalized after its initial showing in Germany.
"The one thing I wanted to do is just be sure that people can see the entire installation, I just really wanted to bring it to Los Angeles, no matter how," Guttman said. "The power of those images really comes across on-screen, and that's what I wanted people to see and to think about." ...

"Ninth November Night," the Holocaust remembrance documentary which debuted in Malibu last August in its New Malilbu Theatre engagement to qualify for Academy Award consideration, will be a featured entry in the AFI Film Festival Saturday (Nov. 13) and Sunday (Nov. 14.)
Produced by Malibu artist and curator Gisela Guttman with director/composer Henning Lohner, the film concerns Austrian painter Gottfried Helnwein's lifelong dedication to artworks perpetuating awareness of Holocaust attrocities.
The documentary recently was a prize-winner at the Ojai Film Festival and is invited to the Nagoya Film Festival to be held next June as part of the World Expo in Japan as well as to the Calgary (Canada) Festival which honors films of humanitarian outreach. ...

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) ...

Gottfried Helnwein’s exhibit titled The Child at San Francisco’s California Palace of the Legion of Honor testifies that the past cannot be erased from the minds of those who had lived through it, not even from the consciousness of those yet to be born: Helnwein was born three years after the death of Hitler, and yet his watercolor painting depicting the "Fuhrer" with two little girls in white dresses communicates not only sarcasm but horror and revulsion. For Hitler is not the painting’s main subject but rather these girls that have already undergone a dehumanizing initiation, these children whose gaze makes their parents shrink.
What you will see in the halls of the Legion of Honor will make you shudder.
Undoubtedly, Helnwein anticipates that reaction, and, yes, he deliberately makes you go through this ordeal, but just as undoubtedly (and therein lies his strength) Gottfried Helnwein puts himself through the same ordeal.

...

Первое, что спросил у меня Готфрид Хельнвейн когда мы познакомились – о моём детстве. Было ли у меня счастливое детство? То есть буквально этими словами хотя и по-английски.
Тот пласт русского языка, в котором живёт моё поколение, отзывается на подобный вопрос мгновенно: “Спасибо товарищу Сталину за наше счастливое детство!” ...

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. ...

The recent landscape show by Gottfried Helnwein at the Crawford Gallery in Cork contained a homage to Friedrich’s The Wreck of the Hope, while the current Walker & Walker exhibition at the Royal Hibernian Academy features a three-dimensional recreation of his work Wanderer in the Mist. Because it is a show culled from the extensive collection of Berlin’s Nationalgalerie, A German Dream does not include these two key works, both of which are in Hamburg’s Kunsthalle, but the six works that are included still offer a tantalising taster. They point the way to understanding Friedrich’s iconic idealism and energy, but what they highlight even more pointedly is the need for a comprehensive retrospective of the artist’s work. ...

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." ...

News: Ihr letztes Video "sAINT" wurde in den USA verboten. Warum?
Manson: Weil ich keine künstlerischen Kompromisse eingehen wollte und daher das dunkelste, intimste und furchtloseste Video meiner Laufbahn kreiert habe. ich habe sogar selbst die Kosten dafür getragen, um unabhängig zu bleiben.
Das Video hat mich an den Rand eines Nervenzusammenbruchs gebracht.
NEWS: Wie haben Sie sich davon wieder erholt?
Manson: Mein Mentor in allen künstlerischen Belangen, der österreichische Künstler Gottfried Helnwein hat mich daran erinnert, dass die einzige Medizin dagegen Kreativität ist, die aus dem Herzen kommt.
Als ich wieder zu arbeiten begann, war ich geheilt. ...

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. ...