Week 7 [14.05-20.05.2018] The World of H.R.Giger

Biography and information 

Hans Rudolf Giger (German Hans Rudolf "Rüdi" Giger, February 5, 1940, Cours, Switzerland - May 12, 2014, Zurich, Switzerland) is a Swiss artist, famous for his gloomy stories. Since childhood, he suffered from nightmares and coped with them, transferring them to paper. He began to publish his work in magazines after graduation. Giger is considered the ancestor of "biomechanical" painting. Based on one of his drawings from the cycle "Biomechanoids" the Alien from the Ridley Scott’s film was created.

He preferred dark colors and fantastic subjects. His visit card were the anthropomorphic and zoomorphic creatures with mechanical parts of bodies. Most of his large works Giger created with the help of an airbrush, but in the last years of his life he completely abandoned this technique.

Giger has managed to "mark" in various fields of art, in addition, he has created the design of jewelry shops in his own unique style. He became the first and so far the only Swiss to receive an Oscar. Gloomy creations have gave the artist the worldwide fame, but painting has always been for him a way to cope with his own nightmares. By frightening the others Giger has provided himself a few quiet nights, deprived of the usual terrible dreams.

Death

When on May 12, 2014, the death of Hans Rudy Giger has appeared in the news, his fans lamented not so much about the fact that the artist passed away, but about how exactly has this happened. In their opinion, Giger must certainly have died under mysterious circumstances or completely disappeared without a trace - either by returning to his home planet, or by becoming a victim of abduction of aliens. Or, at least, die from an overdose of hallucinogens with an airbrush in their hands. The dark and mysterious aura that the artist surrounded himself with during his lifetime did not imply a ruthless prose of life. In fact, there was a "stupid and ridiculous" death in all its glory. Hans Rudy Giger died in the hospital after spending the last three days of his life there. The cause of his death was the damage that the artist received, falling from the stairs in his own house in Switzerland.

This house, or the chateau named Saint-Germain was bought in 1998. An impressive part of the space Giger has took under the museum, where he began to post his own paintings and the work of colleagues, also creating paintings in the style of fantastic realism.

For the residents of the small Swiss town of Gruyere, famous for the cheese of the same name, it was hard to get used to such a strange neighbor. The respectable and mostly religious provincial cheese makers did not want their cozy town to be associated with the "satanic" pictures of Giger. To reconcile them with such neighborhood could only the perishing flow of tourists, who come to the museum of Giger all year round. Now he occupies the entire territory of the castle Saint-Germain, and after the death of the artist the number of visitors has instantly increased.

Birth

Hans Rudy suffered from nightmares all his life. His friend psychologist Stanislav Grof believed that the reason for this was the circumstances of the birth of the artist and the first years of his life. Giger was born on February 5, 1940, at the very beginning of the Second World War. Of course, the military horrors did not touch the future artist: he was lucky enough to be born in Switzerland, which in those years was an oasis of tranquility due to the preservation of neutrality. However, news summaries and television stories did not leave the boy indifferent. He was especially impressed by the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The spirit of death that hung over Europe, left its imprint on the hobby of little Hans Rudy. In particular, the boy was obsessed with bones. He hid every bone he found under the bed and even arranged excavations under the "pink hill" (where criminals were executed long ago) to replenish his collection. His favorite "toy" was the human skull given by his father, which he carefully preserved throughout his life.

Another of his childhood passion was the guillotine. He not only often painted these devices, but has even assembled his own full size guillotine (albeit without a blade), ordering all the necessary details to the carpenter. Modern parents would certainly have dragged such a strange child to a psychologist. It can not be said that the parents of Hans Rudi were not disturbed by the hobbies of his son but they also did not panic, they decided that one day he would calm down. Well, so it happened, only the nightmares did not disappear anywhere. But Giger already knew that they can be fought with spilling out the terrible images on the paper.

Immortality

Why did Hans Rudy Giger become an artist? It's simple: he never did anything else. Shortly after graduation, he already published his works in magazines, later began to produce collections of drawings. The favorite place of little Hans Rudy was the basement, he was not afraid of dark corners and monsters under the stairs at all. He had enough of his own nightmares.

The real glory of Giger was brought by the book "Necronomicon", which, contrary to popular belief, has nothing to do with the eponymous book of Lovecraft. Back in 1968, the artist published a collection of "Biomechanoids", creating completely new, previously unknown creatures - the creation of a harmonious synthesis of engineering and organics. Since that time and until now, the name of Giger is synonymous with the term "biomechanical art". And, of course, his name is most often mentioned in conjunction with the title of the film Ridley Scott. A series of films that became a separate phenomenon in the cinema and after that release on the screens Giger began to be called only "the father of the "Alien"”. The artist himself often lamented the fact that the fans of "Alien" are not interested in his other works, because the cinematic monster eclipsed all his achievements. But he did not stop loving the alien monster: "He is like a child. You have to love your own children for the whole life, don’t you? "

The Giger’s pictures are also interesting by the techniques of creation. He liked to work with gloomy shades: black, brown, dark green and cold blue, generously flavored with metallic luster. For many years the artist worked exclusively with the help of an airbrush, creating fantastic worlds of hundreds of tiny details (which is not easy to do with such a tool). People who saw him at work claimed that at these moments Hans Rudy did not belong to himself, as if his hand was driven by some unknown force. Anyway, in the last years of his life, Giger has completely abandoned the airbrush and refused all requests to demonstrate his work.

The talk of the town was a story about how an artist with a series of pictures was detained by customs officers, whether in Danish, or at the Dutch airport, because they have mistaken the works of Giger with photographs. Only after the invited expert has confirmed that they were painted using a spray gun, the artist was released. "Where, I wonder, did they think I photographed it all?" - Giger was indignant then. - In hell?"

Nowadays people talk that the paintings of Hans Rudy Giger predict the future. The artist said: "We are now living in a world where the fantasies of the Surrealists can easily come true." Robotics, genetic engineering, cloning, implants of bones and organs printed on 3D printers... Who knows, maybe in many years all of the humanity will live in the gloomy fantasy world of Giger’s paintings.

Are you familiar with Giger’s art? What is your opinion about it? How do you think - is such talent a gift or a curse?

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._R._Giger

https://kiri2ll.livejournal.com/91198.html