"There's a monster in your stomach.

They [indicates the smugglers] hijacked your

cryotube and sold you to him [indicates scientist Wren] and he put an alien in
you. In a few hours it will punch its way through your chest and you'll die. Any
questions?"
"Who are you?«
"I'm the monster's mother."
- Ripley to Purvis, Alien: Resurrection

"As for those responsible for this conspiracy: all I can wish them is an Alien
breeding inside their chests, which might just remind them that the "Alien Father"
is H.R. Giger."
- H.R. Giger to 20th Century Fox, Alien: Insurrection]
 ...AND AS T H E F O U R T H instalment in
the ongoing Alien saga drew to a close, the creature known only
as Newborn was sucked out the spaceship hatch, Goldfinger-
style, leaving, the awe-struck audience to wonder if, superfluous
jaw blockage issues aside, the following weren't the poor
mutant's last words: "Mother, Father, why have you forsaken
me?"
Fans of Fox's Alien empire know that Ellen Ripley was well
within her rights when she abandoned her baby in last year's crit-
ical and commercial success, Alien Resurrection. But fanatics of
the same franchise also know that the most fascinating movie
monster since the Universal originals was actually the brainchild
of no fewer than three parents, Ripley not included.
Of course, as history tends to prove, one parent in particular
was responsible for most of the child's development. Too bad he
wasn't allowed to keep it.

n the beginning,
the only Alien
was an awk-
ward, eccentric
and dangerous-
ly intelligent young boy born
in Chur, Switzerland on
February 5, 1940. Hans Ruedi Giger's natural artistic talents - and his
disturbing perspectives - were not to blossom until his late teens, at
which point they spread like nightshade-fuelled wildfire. His years
studying industrial design at the School of Applied Arts in Zurich,
from the ages 24 to 26, provided the first turning point in the radical
artist's life, as Giger intersected practical knowledge (landscape
design) with personal interest (dreamscape depiction) in a disquiet-
ing, sexually charged manner. And if the first turning point forged
Giger's career, surely the second secured his future, when, 13 years
later, the film Alien was unleashed.
Giger describes the fruits of his vision as "Fantastic Art." An effec-
tive summary, insofar as the word "fantastic" can simultaneously
connote beauty, grotesqueness and unreality; when specifically

BY GARY BUTLER
Rue Morgue 9
pdf created by www.littlegiger.com
 the Alien creature came in the form of the line protest housed on Giger's authorised
companion pieces Necronom IV and homepage (www.HRGiger.com). The com-
Necronom V, painted by Giger in 1976 as plaint: nowhere in the movie Alien:
part of a larger series devoted to a symbolic Resurrection is the artist credited for original
realisation of H.P. Lovecraft's Alien design, though the origins of the
Necronomicon. Even at this pre-production movie's creatures are undeniable. It's hardly
stage, the Alien was essentially complete; arguable that this was an oversight on the
really, the only significant difference part of 20th Century Fox, as the company
between the Alien in Giger's paintings and was guilty of the same gaffe when Alien³
the one that would grace the screen three was first released in 1992. That mistake was
years later was the long-headedness, so to redressed at Giger's rightful insistence; the
speak, of the Giger original (perhaps this is a same, however, cannot be said in the current
good time to mention that the ever-dubbing case.
artist uses the term "erotoscapes" to describe "Alien: Resurrection is an excellent film,"
the majority of his pointedly sexual biome- Giger writes in a letter to Fox posted on the
chanical landscapes). site and dated Nov. 13/96, two full weeks
Screenwriter Dan O'Bannon and director before the official release of the movie.
Ridley Scott became the aforementioned "[But] what would it look like without my
additional parents of the Alien. Inspired Alien life-forms?" Though Alien:
beyond words by the pair of Necronom por- Insurrection also displays support from
Beauty, grotesqueness and unreality.'
traits - Scott is famous for having been able Ridley Scott, Timothy Leary, Clive Barker,
applied to an artistic viewpoint, it suggests to say little more than: "That's it!" - they Harlan Ellison, Dan O'Bannon and Alien:
something not just surreal but beyond surre- worked closely with Giger after 20th Resurrection director Jean-Pierre Jeunet, the
al. And certainly, anyone familiar with Century Fox approved six original silk- power of rhetoric has done little to advance
Giger's art would agree that his creations screen prints that the artist based upon the unfortunate artist's cause.
come from beyond. O'Bannon's script, and together the trio fur- The nature of Giger's other Alien albatross
It's tempting to further qualify Giger's spe- ther developed and refined the look and feel is simpler, though just as ironic. As fate - and
ciality as "futuristic" fantastic art. Easily the of the Alien and its setting. good marketing - had it, a compendium of
man's best-known work is his ever-expand- The result: a true monster. Giger art was published late last fall. Named
ing canon of (again as described by Giger) In more ways than one. after the aforementioned website (sans the
"biomechanical" landscapes. Giger's con- dots), WWW HR Giger com is by no means
cept of biomechanics is brilliant in its sim- Today, almost two decades later, as the the first book of collected Giger art to grace
plicity, as the term's prefix implies a living millennium looms over the horizon, Giger's a coffee table. But unlike its predecessors,
organism, while its root insists on a machine. Alien has become an almost mythical crea- which include the immensely popular HR
The artist's masterstroke came from apply- ture the world over. For the artist himself, Giger's Necronomicon, HR Giger's Alien
ing this fresh, dark idea not to the obvious though, it has likely become a chimera that is and HR Giger Arh+, WWW HR Giger com is
choice - people - but to the obscure alterna- equal parts angel and albatross. The reasons the first book of Giger art to examine the
tive: places. The master biomechanic doesn't for the angel are apparent; those for the alba- man as a career artist. Think of it as his tick-
draw living humanoid robots; he creates tross are absurd. They are nonetheless real. le trunk.
breathing industrial cities. Populated cities, One is a matter of insurrection. As cited in While Giger's thematic interests have
granted, but in this instance, the inhabitants the introduction, Alien: Insurrection is an on- remained consistent throughout his 30+ year
are a part of the landscape, and it builds them
- they do not build it.
Hence the futuristic reading of Giger's
work - for how else has the 20th century
imagined humanity's future if not in terms of
a technological Mecca that surpasses its
wildest evolutionary dreams?
And nightmares.
When Ellen Ripley and the doomed crew
of the Nostromo answer a distress call in
Alien in the far future (real time: 1979), they
learn that hell isn't other people so much as
other species.
Alien earned Giger an Academy Award for
Best Achievement in Visual Effects. In retro-
spect, this is hardly surprising, considering
that the man had been dreaming of the Alien
and its environment - and capturing those
dreams in portraits - for well over a decade
before the movie was even in its nascent
stage.
The most critical step in the evolution of Landscape design and dreamscape depiction come together in "Landscape XVIII."

10 Rue Morgue
 skis (pictured)!
Necessity is The book concludes with photographs and
plans of two Giger works currently under-
the mother of way, both inspired by the artist's original
designs for the 1995 movie Species. The
invention, but Garden-Train (now tracking in the artist's
for Giger, it has backyard) and the Giger-Museum (proposed
to be built in the form of a spiral railway in a

Freudian Grip: the proposed (and

become the gutted castle in Gruyère, France) are easily
the biggest visions that the man has ever
rejected) sandworm from Dune.
father of insur- attempted to realise. Gaudy as it may seem,
it's arguable that these works could poten-
career, WWW HR Giger com introduces the
world to a visionary artist who creates much rection. " tially be the first physical step in what
promises to be the very long road to actual
more than mere Aliens and who has never
societal bio-mechanisation. Then again,
hesitated to experiment with mediums of
maybe he just has a different kind of one
expression.
track mind these days.
Granted, the Alien was an afterbirth of
Giger's airbrushed erotoscapes, and it is for Regardless of the path that Giger chooses
those works that he is best known. That said, from hereon, there is no doubt that he will
significantly less than the majority of the travel it on his own terms. The greatest irony
book is comprised of either biomechanical that emerges from the Alien: Resurrection
studies or erotoscapes; the two categories credit farce is that H.R. Giger is an artist who
combined likely account for 1/4 of the 280 must now cry out to be evaluated in the lim-
illustrations represented, though theirs are iting terms of his most famous creation, as
admittedly the most lavish and sizeable when the world continually fails to consider how
included (employed mostly as chapter much more he actually has to offer.
dividers). Necessity is the mother of invention, but for
Giger, it has become the father of insurrec-
WWW HR Giger com also offers commen-
tion. WWW HR Giger com paints the true
tary from Giger throughout; indeed, the artist
portrait of the man; that this brave book was
designed the book himself. As his works are
presented for the most part sequentially, the released only heartbeats ahead of Alien:
result is a biographical odyssey through a Resurrection borders on tragedy. The com
heretofore undiscovered country. Though before the storm? Certainly. And the tip of
only a few true blue Aliens raise their heads the proverbial iceberg, too.
for the passers-by, the sights are still well Keep up the good work, HR. In space, no
worth writing home about. one can hear you scream - but the audience is
Here are just some of the highlights. Giger listening.
"confirms" Freud's dream theory in the early
sketch series A Feast for the Psychiatrist. He Erotoscape: one of the many sights Gary Butler is a company man who thinks
along Giger's Garden Train. that "alienation" should never have been
shows off his personal and professional fur-
niture design and interior decoration, the developmental sketch phases and their fully two words long. He is currently the editor of
professional aspect of which includes plan- fleshed-(inside-)out phases; this section also Watch magazine.
ning maps and realised photographs of includes the obvious killer condom proto-
Giger-Bars in Tokyo and Chur (featuring the type: the Dune sandworm, from the failed
latter's bathroom, which inspires leg-cross- 1976 film project.
ing) as well as set design for a scrapped 1976 Artistic variety aside, though, truly the
film version of Dune. Giger displays what most surprising sections of WWW HR Giger
are in his eyes the most important works in com are humour-oriented, despite the fact
his private collection of art, the contents of that Giger undertakes every humorous pro-
which vary from the surreal to the surrealer ject with an attitude of abject seriousness.
(incl. Brus, Sandoz and one of his greatest His 1994 "modest" proposal plans for the
inspirations, Kuhn). Some of his classic bio- Swiss transit system to be restructured in the
mechanic studies are presented in rich, gor- shape of a pentagram must be read and stud-
geous 3D; Necronom IV is one of them. ied for their arguable practicability to be
Pictures of the "open-air museum" of tat- believed. The chapter on Giger's real-life
tooed Giger fans receive an entertaining biomechanical Swatch watches features a
chapter. Album cover art evolution is exam- joke page that contains 13 types of time-
ined, including the 1981 bio-mechanisation pieces ready to made upon commission, the
of Blondie's Debbie Harry and the 1993 best being Gigers Watch-Off, with its acid-
Cronenberg-via-Dead Ringers sculpture filled, ceramic housing to help the wearer's
entitled Life Support for metal band Carcass' hand "timelessly fall away." And while it's
Heartwork. The equally Cronenbergian not immediately apparent, the Alien that
Beyond Hollywood: Giger's Alien con-
"killer condoms" are shown in both their graces the cover of the book itself is wearing
tinues to evolve.

Rue Morgue 11