H. R. Giger
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| H. R. Giger | |
 Giger in 2008 |
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| Birth name | Hans Ruedi Giger |
| Born | February 5, 1940 Chur, Grisons, Canton, Switzerland |
| Nationality | Swiss |
| Field | painting, sculpting, set design, movie directing |
| Movement | Science fiction, Fantasy, Occult, Macabre |
| Influenced by | Ernst Fuchs, Salvador Dalí |
Hans Ruedi Giger (pronounced /ˈɡiːɡər/, born in Chur, Grisons Canton, Switzerland, February 5, 1940) is a Swiss surrealist painter, sculptor, and set designer, who won an Academy Award for "Best Achievement for Visual Effects" for his design work on the film Alien.[1]
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[edit] Biography
Giger was born in 1940 in Chur, Switzerland, the son of a chemist. In 1962, he moved to Zurich, where he studied interior and industrial design at the School of Commercial Art until 1970.[2]
[edit] Work
Giger's style and thematic execution have been influential. His design for the Alien was inspired by his painting Necronom IV and earned him an Oscar in 1980. His books of paintings, particularly Necronomicon and Necronomicon II (1985) and the frequent appearance of his art in Omni magazine continued his rise to international prominence.[2] Giger is also well known for artwork on several records.
In 1998 Giger acquired the Château St. Germain in Gruyères, Switzerland, and it now houses the H.R. Giger Museum, a permanent repository of his work.[3]
[edit] Style
Giger got his start with small ink drawings before progressing to oil paintings. For most of his career, Giger has worked predominantly in airbrush, creating monochromatic canvasses depicting surreal, nightmarish dreamscapes. However, he has now largely abandoned large airbrush works in favor of works with pastels, markers or ink.[2]
His most distinctive stylistic innovation is that of a representation of human bodies and machines in a cold, interconnected relationship, described as "biomechanical". His paintings often display fetishistic sexual imagery. His main influences were painters Ernst Fuchs and Salvador Dalí. He met Salvador Dalí, to whom he was introduced by painter Robert Venosa. He was also a personal friend of Timothy Leary. Giger is perhaps the best-known sufferer of night terrors and his paintings are all to some extent inspired by his experiences with that particular sleep disorder. He studied interior and industrial design at the School of Commercial Art in Zurich (from 1962 to 1970) and made his first paintings as a means of art therapy.[2]
[edit] Documentary
In 2007, Giger and his work were subjects of a 19-minute documentary, H.R. Giger's Sanctuary, which toured internationally and was released on DVD in May 2008.[4]
[edit] Obscenity lawsuit
Copies of Giger's Work 219: Landscape XX, better known as Penis Landscape, were included in an insert with the Dead Kennedys album Frankenchrist and became the centerpiece of a 1986 obscenity lawsuit against Eric Reed Boucher, a.k.a. Jello Biafra, the vocalist and songwriter for the band.
[edit] Other works
In the 1960s and 1970s, Giger directed a number of films, including Swiss Made (1968), Tagtraum (1973), Giger's Necronomicon (1975) and Giger's Alien (1979).
Giger has created furniture designs, particularly the Harkonnen Capo Chair for a movie of the novel Dune that was to be directed by Alejandro Jodorowski. Many years later, David Lynch directed the film, using only rough concepts by Giger. Giger had wished to work with Lynch,[5] as he states in one of his books that Lynch's film Eraserhead was closer to realizing his vision in film even than his own films.[2]
Giger has applied his biomechanical style to interior design, and several "Giger Bars" sprang up in Tokyo, New York and two in his native Switzerland (in Gruyères and Chur). At The Limelight in Manhattan, Giger designed the VIP room and hoped to create a museum of his work.[6] The bar featured fake embryos in jars of pinkish fluid.[2] However, as of 2009 only the Swiss bars remain.
His art has greatly influenced tattooists and fetishists worldwide. Ibanez guitars has released an H.R. Giger signature series: the Ibanez ICHRG2, an Ibanez Iceman, features "NY City VI", the Ibanez RGTHRG1 has "NY City XI" printed on it, the S Series SHRG1Z has a metal-coated engraving of "Biomechanical Matrix" on it, and a 4-string SRX bass, SRXHRG1, has "N.Y. City X" on it.[2]
[edit] Popular culture
Giger is often referred to in pop culture, especially in science fiction and cyberpunk. In particular William Gibson (who wrote an early script for Alien 3) seems particularly fascinated, describes a minor character in Virtual Light, Lowell, as having New York XXIV tattooed across his back and in Idoru has a secondary character, Yamazaki, describe the buildings of nanotech Japan as Giger-esque.
[edit] Movies
- Dune (designs for unproduced Alejandro Jodorowsky adaptation of the Frank Herbert novel; the movie Dune was later made in an adaptation by David Lynch.)
- Alien (designed, among other things, the Alien itself, The Derelict and the Space Jockey)
- Alien 3 (designed the puma-like Alien bodyshape, plus a number of unused concepts, many mentioned on the special features disc of Alien 3)
- Poltergeist II: The Other Side
- Killer Condom
- Species (designed Sil and the Ghost train in a dream sequence)
- Batman Forever (designed radically different envisioning of the Batmobile; design not used in the film)
- Future-Kill (designed artwork for the movie poster)
- Tokyo: The Last Megalopolis (creature designs)
[edit] Work for recording artists
- Celtic Frost: To Mega Therion
- Magma: Attahk
- Emerson Lake & Palmer: Brain Salad Surgery
- Steve Stevens' Atomic Playboys
- Deborah Harry, portraits for Koo Koo album cover and videos "Backfired" and "Now I Know You Know" (1981)
- hide: Hide Your Face
- Danzig: Danzig III: How the Gods Kill
- Dead Kennedys' album Frankenchrist, Poster insert of Landscape XX (which led to an obsenity trial)
- Atrocity - Hallucinations
- Black Sun Productions
- Island: album cover for Pictures [1]
- Korn's Jonathan Davis commissioned Giger to sculpt his microphone stand. Five microphone stands were made but only two were given to Davis. The design was very similar to Giger's earlier "Nubian queen" design.
- Carcass used Life Support 1993 for the cover of their 1993 album, Heartwork.
- Designed the stage for Mylène Farmer's 1999 "Mylenium" tour.
- Blondie's Chris Stein commissioned Lieber Guitars to create Stein's unique "Gigerstein" guitar based on Giger's artwork.
- Helped to design the first professional video clip of "Böhse Onkelz" called "Dunkler Ort" (dark location) from their album "Ein böses Märchen...aus tausend finsteren Nächten", which was released in 2000.
- Ibanez Guitars has released second generation of H.R. Giger Signature Models hr giger RG & hr giger S series with legacy artwork on the guitar body, second generation of 4-string guitar bass SRXHRG1 also released with the same concept.
[edit] Interior decoration
- Giger Bars in Switzerland's Chur and Gruyères
- Museum H. R. Giger in Gruyères
[edit] Computer games
- Dark Seed and its sequel, Dark Seed II, both adventure games for the Amiga, Amiga CD32, and the PC, were published by Cyberdreams. The games were also released for the PlayStation and Saturn in Japan.
[edit] References
- ^ "Out of this world", by Samantha Warwick, The Guardian, 29 April 2006. Retrieved Jun 18, 2009.
- ^ a b c d e f g Hans Ruedi Giger, HR Giger Arh+, tr. Karen Williams, Taschen, 1993, ISBN 9783822896426
- ^ Gary Singh, "Giger Harvest," Silicon Alleys, Metro Silicon Valley, July 8-14, 2009, p. 8
- ^ http://www.psfilmfest.org/festival/film/detail.aspx?id=19130&FID=31
- ^ Sheldon Teitelbaum, "Giger's Necronomicon Imagery Comes Alive on the Screen", Cinefantastique vol. 18 no. 4, May 1988, http://www.littlegiger.com/articles/files/Cinefantastique_18_04.pdf p. 13 (PDF) viewed July 9, 2009
- ^ Frank X. Owen, Clubland: The Fabulous Rise and Murderous Fall of Club Culture, New York: St. Martin's, 2003, p. 269.
[edit] External links
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Wikimedia Commons has media related to: H.R. Giger |
- Official website
- H. R. Giger at the Internet Movie Database
- Issue of Cinefantastique devoted to Giger (PDF)
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