THE GROWTH OF GIGER
by D.R.Oakley
(Extracts taken from a college art assignment of the same name)
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INTRODUCTION
H. R. Giger, the son of a
pharmacists born 5th February
1940 in Chur, is known a well
respected surrealist artists
and has been for quite some
time. Hans Rudi Giger began
work aged 19, as an architect
whilst simultaneously
attending the Zurich School of
Arts and Crafts, but the
'Giger-esque' phenomenon was
not conceived until 1963, when
he was 23. Underground
magazines (Clou and Hotcha)
and the Chur Canton school
published bizarre works such
as Atomikinder (Nuclear
Children), which started life
as sketches in the margins of
plans at work. The Swiss art
world soon noticed Giger, and
by 1967 after the first of
many exhibitions, he had
[Image] enough commissions to devote [Image]
his life to art.
Giger's international impact
was when his first portfolio
'A Rh+' was published in 1971,
which now is the name of his
most successful selling book
to date, apart from 'Giger's
Alien'.
He first picked up his
legendary airbrush in February
1972, where he began making
simple drawings. This medium
for forced insistently upon
him by an acquaintance who a
jack of all trades; palm
reader, and psychedelic
artist. At the time Giger was
working on my personal
favorite, the large scale
'Passages' portfolio.
These massive paintings made for the repetition of formal structures, and
so for as a fire exit route he turned towards experimenting with his new
found 'thing'. These experiments founded a schedule of about one or two a
week, started in the afternoon and often leading to early morning. Now the
airbrush is his prime tool a way for him to 'freeze' his visions directly
onto a surface.
Giger has produced many designs for films; such as Alien, Dune, and the
Species killer Sil.
CHILDHOOD DREAMS
[Image]
It seems, that when researching into the life of H. R. Giger [Image][Image]
that he's fascination for, let's say, a certain style can be
traced back to childhood. It only takes a brief minute to flick through
glossy prints of Giger's works to notice that he is prominently a figure
artist as well as the total surreal visionary. With each their is either a
male (occasionally), babies or skulls (often) and females (most common), so
it is to no amazement that he was attracted to opposite sex from a very
early age. Even at the kindergarten age he loved to look at girls, and
would often take root in front of their houses for hours. Kindergarten
itself, of which it was highly disapproved to be talking to girls, Giger
was given the nick-name 'lady killer'.
When Giger was confronted with the reason why he so adored the sight of
free-flowing blood, his mind flashback to Catholic kindergarten, where if
you where a naughty child you where mentally tortured with a picture of
Christ's face dripping blood and told that you where to blame.
[Image]Anyway back to the roots of Giger's fetish with the female species,
on sunny days the class of kindergarten walked, holding hands, to
where Chur's murderers where executed in the early days. It was here that
the teacher would give each pair a horses harness with a whip. The girls
had the role of 'horsy', a fact that Giger seemed disappointed with as he
states that "I relished the thought of the straps and whips" It could be
this that lead him to his fascination with trouser-brace fasteners (these
he collected) and general fastenings in the 'Passage Temple Life' painting,
and other works.
Giger spent his junior-school years at a 'model school', so called because
the teachers themselves where in training. His class consisted of himself
and six girls, of whom always invented games that involved kissing (how
awful!). It was from the fourth to the firth class that Giger enjoyed most,
a teacher named Wieser who taught him modeling, drawing, and set-building.
It was here that Giger assembled his first entire railway in the school's
modeling room (see Giger: 'Making 'surreal', real').
Several years later and after Giger had failed his exams (by half a mark in
math's), he received his first lesson of English, the one thing that Giger
said he would not miss; no English, no film industry.
EARLY WORKS
Giger's early creations, began with a pencil study (something which the
airbrush eradicates to a point) painted in Indian ink, done with either a
pen or Rapidograph on tracing paper which overlaid the study. With Giger's
larger works, over A4, he constructed a small wire sieve through which he
sprayed ink from a toothbrush. To add light, Giger would scrape away at his
pictures before they where mounted on chipboard.
[Image][Image][Image]
[Image]The most monumental of these 'ink' drawings, where Giger's Shafts
constructions. These produce around 1966 originated in his dreams as
a plague of nightmares as Giger describes:
"In the stairwell of my parents' house in Chur was a secret window, which
gave onto the interior of the Three Kings Hotel next door, and was always
covered with a dingy brown curtain. In my dreams, or nightly wanderings,
this window was open and I saw gigantic, bottomless shafts, bathed in a
pale yellow light. On the walls, steep and treacherous wooden stairways
without banisters led down into the yawning abyss"
These first creations, or though primitive, show the glimmer of the so
could 'Giger-esque' we love today. In mid 1968, Giger turned his attention
painting small landscapes in oils, of which he himself states as his most
colourful works.
STUDY OF 'THE SPELL II'
Where to start?, to focus on the picture, where should I look? With a
painting there's always a little something that reaches out, jolts your
eye-balls, something to you and possibly to no other living soul. But
with this, and many of Giger's other works, the seeming-less of the
airbrush creates an almost photographic construction. Enticing you closer,
like the lips of a beautiful woman, closer still until you cant help but
stand in awe, utter amazement at the detail.
This, a four-part temple, is a picture of a satanic cult performing a
ritual -a black mass. With a, if not 'totally' fitting background of huge
scraggy gothic cathedral, the cathedral of the devil no doubt. The middle
construction, difficult to see as it is due to the obstructing alter, is of
two crosses; one facing as the true Christians symbol, and the other an
upturned cross both represented just as equal as the other.
Lets start at the top of painting, the point of the first cross, as we see
the horned demon mounted, if not welded, to the head of a witch who is
performing for the audience. It becomes clear, as the critic's fog
disappears, that this is purely a fundamental surreal piece. Take, as an
example mind you, the rack of condoms with grotesquely depressing baby
heads; is Giger making a statement here on contraception as he has done in
the past?
[Image]
Now at the middle of the composition, we see a torturing device fashioned
with metallic properties, balancing the two Giger women either side. And
then below that a cloth covered with the almost soiled bits of brain and
skull fallen from the poor spawn. But what of these women, sitting
comfortable in a chair of pipes and mechanics, one clothed/bondaged in
fasteners (see Giger: 'Childhood dreams') and an organic head dress. The
other a fragile gargle, hunched and crippled, with the back of heard
stretched to form with the mechanical chair a technique as seen in Dali
paintings. To the left of the left women, sits a massive
organic/biomechanic scaffolding housing, towards the bottom, smooth bodies
textured as bones, pieces I assure that would look good on anyone's mantel
piece.
[Image]
Just before we leave this show, via the door marked exit, just take one
more look at the poor tortured head clamped with dagger either side, look
familiar? It's Giger himself screaming into our faces, and what better way
to end this tour of the 'The Spell III' then a quote about this work:
"Perhaps it has helped me overcome my fear of such forces, a fear so bound
up with my fascination"
THE AIRBRUSH, OR SPRAYGUN
The airbrush, or spraygun can be dated as far back as Man Ray, who under
Duchamps's influence used it his photos, as well as a host of other
materials such as glass.
The paintings by Giger are formed by the use of an airbrush, which he finds
the most direct medium. The airbrush can be only mastered when the
technique in no longer visible. I supposed by 'mastered', you must be able
to use the airbrush as fluent as a pencil or pen like a connection to you
fingers, spraying from the nails onto paper. The technique evolves thinned
Indian ink, orange and white acrylic, this helps to make corrections or to
bathe the background in a milky, bluish light.
If you can facilitate the airbrush to it's maximum potential, a la Giger,
then you to can create stunning realism that once caused Giger to be
detained at the Dutch customs. Apparently the staff though that his
pictures where photographs, and was only let go after an expert had
certified them as works of art. Where did they think Giger had taken these
photo's, in a secrete underground experiment facility, where genetic
cripples and beautiful girls are tortured and aroused?
GIGER'S WOMEN
The beauty of Giger's women, beautiful as they are, can apparently be
compared to the neo-romantic literature at the turn of the century, and the
symbolism of the pre-Raphael. Showing their unhealthy bodies to us for
inspection, their pale white milky skin and tight uniforms covering the
over lengthy body.
These women, life-less as they are, seem to participate with the machinery
as natural as it is to watch the sun rise. Exposing their virginity, their
tender hearts that are constantly tortured, raped, by these mechanics.
The women's faces (or masks) depicted with a either disfiguring skin
diseases or smoothly un-blemished. Their eyes closed, tensed with a painful
ecstasy or open, pupil pointed upwards so barely seen. Their mouths with
teeth showing, lips painfully dry, opened as if ready for something to be
inserted. The forehead an outstretched metal shell, or a magnificent
head-dress similar to those of ancient Egypt.
MAKING 'SURREAL', REAL
Giger, renowned for his surreal paintings and creature designs, but he also
stems his creative talents to sculpture (or Biomechanics), especially for
films but also for his own personal joy. His 'Watch Abart'93' exhibition
and the aptly named 'Giger-Bar' are just a few examples of creations
outside of the film industry. For now, though, we concentrate on his film
work, as it is this that is well documented in his books.
We only have to look at the life-form in the Alien series to know [Image]
that what frightened audiences was a Giger creation, with origins
you can trace back to early paintings ('Necronom' series). Take, for
example, its stretched skull, a typical trademark that has graced a portion
of his works.
Giger really went to town on this repulsive creature; that gestates inside
you, and has concentrated acid for blood, having done almost thirty
pictures in three months you can tell that Giger was keen.
The Ghost Train is more interesting, being a theme that has been
resurrected many a time. It began as toy that everyone in his class at
school enjoyed, then as a monumental amusement, with girls getting in free
leaving the boys to pay. Nobody could describe it better than H. R. Giger
himself:
"My ghost train was a one-way ride which started at the entrance of
Storchengasse 17 and led via a double hairpin band to a swing-door, which
is banged open by the front of the cart and subsequently pulled back into
place by a spring. The dark, narrow corridor beyond which ended in a
left-hand bend, was crammed full of skeletons, monsters and corpses of
cardboard and plaster. The low-voltage battery lamps, which we had stolen
from the bicycles parked on the street and painted in different colours,
gave out an eerie, spectral light. The ghosts - villains, hanged men and
the dead arising from their coffins - were manipulated by my friends,
accompanied by appropriate noises. The exit was in the back yard, which led
out into the Scharfrichtergasse, an alleyway parallel to the
Storchengasse."
[Image]
A ride of which I wish I had the opportunity to help create, as well as
taken for a spin on. The next documented excursion into the elusive Ghost
train was in December 1975, where Giger was introduced to filmmaker
Alejandro Jodorowsky, via the Spanish surrealist Salvador Dali, who thought
that Giger would be the perfect to conceptualize a film version of Frank
Herbert's Dune. Unfortunately Giger's production designs for 'his' world
(-'Harkonen Castle'), which was strangely "ruled by evil, a place where
black magic was practiced, aggressions where let loose, and intemperance
and perversion where the order of the day." To quote the man himself, where
to come to nothing, all that is left is several exquisite airbrush
paintings, and sketchbook details. But with these we can make an assumption
that he had the Ghost Train in mind as we move on (bypassing Ridley Scott's
'The Train', of which I was unable to resource) to his latest reincarnate.
Giger's self written scene for the film Species, of which was made last
year and has only just been released for rental, thought finally that his
dream could be realized in true blistering 3-dimensionality. But as with
all other of Giger's film ideas, things did not turn out how planned. The
original sequence (That Giger conceived by himself and was not in the
original script, budget, or contract.) was to take place on a railway
station, casting an evil engine with their powerful vacuums, and each
section independently moving and connected by accordion bellows. Those
vacuum arms extended as that 'suck' up fleeing young girls, all clones of
Sil. Behind the engine, a trail of tiger ribcage carriages.
The first try of the Ghost Train was not up to Giger's high standards made
from normal skulls, until Cony de Fries saw one of Giger's older
sculptures; a 'biomechanoid' head which had non existent eyes. Fries
suggested that Giger take a cast from the sculpture, but use bigger teeth!
Once the locomotive was built to the satisfaction of a frustrated inventor,
costing $80,000, Giger decided then to construct a huge station a backdrop
to the magnificent nightmare. Adding $20,000 for this alone and all coming
from Giger's own pocket, he plundered on creating what was to achieve one
minute and eight seconds of film.
Alas his mechanical monsters was not even to achieve that short space of
show time, as for actual fact Giger creation was unused. Instead, due to
financial reasons, a scaled down cheaper version (with a background) was
built by the special effects company. Giving the train a measly eight
seconds of steam time in the final cut, poor Giger was left with no
additional credit to his name.
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