Visionary Artist H.R. Giger Passes Away

Yesterday, Swiss news sources reported that H.R. Giger had died as a result of injuries sustained in a fall, he was 74. You might not have heard of Hans Rudolf Giger but it’s likely that you knew his work. He was a painter and a sculptor who tended towards macabre imagery based around biomechanics and surrealism. In 1977 he released a compendium of work called Necronomicon (an intentional reference to Lovecraft), filled with bizarre, haunting images. What with one thing and another the book eventually found its way into the hands of film director Ridley Scott and there is a generation of film enthusiasts out there who are extremely glad that it did.

Scott was so impressed with the work in the book that he hired Giger as a concept artist (and later set designer) for a mid-level budget sci-fi project he was working on in London for Brandywine Productions: Alien. Giger designed every stage of the creature as well as the ship in which the eggs are found and in so doing created perhaps the most unique, evocative extra-terrestrial in the history of on-screen storytelling. Almost every star-beast to have appeared since owes a debt of inspiration to the xenomorph, from the snapping tongue to the machine-like exoskeleton to the, ahem, phallic head. Giger was also heavily involved in the actual building of the suit and the menace that eventually appeared on the screen is as much down to his craft as it is to Bolaji Badejo, the 7ft 2 Nigerian dancer who actually wore the finished suit.

Following the success of Alien, Giger had some marginal involvement in the sequels (though usually only by proxy) and went on to work as a set and production designer for several other films including David Lynch’s rather unfortunate attempt at a Dune adaptation (watch it, it’s fucking hilarious) and the Species series. Throughout all this he continued to paint and sculpt and in 1998 he acquired a Château in Gruyères, which he turned into the H.R. Giger museum to showcase his life’s work. Said work paints a picture of a very disturbed man, Giger was a student of architecture, his painting started out as a kind of therapy that he used to deal with his crippling night terrors (well, that and a fair amount of opium) and it’s fairly self-evident when you look through his work that fear was a real guiding source of inspiration. His art was gothic, deathly and sometimes had a sexual bearing to it, but not in any way that would get you hot under the collar.

If it weren’t for his work on Alien, Giger might have slipped into obscurity but his peers still would have recognized him, he was a personal friend of writer and LSD enthusiast Timothy Leary and he was briefly acquainted with one of his own personal idols, Salvador Dalí. Giger’s artistic influence can now be felt throughout sci-fi culture and beyond, Korn front man Jonathon Davis still walks out for every live show with the microphone stand that Giger designed for him and if you’re in Switzerland and find yourself in equal parts in need of a drink and a dose of sheer terror, you can visit the Giger Bars in Chur and Gruyères. Giger was a visionary artist whose nightmarish mind’s eye helped to define foundations of modern sci-fi and horror, may he rest in peace.