Artist Hans Reudi Giger, was a Swiss-born proponent of “biomechanical art” blending human and machine. His work in the 60s and 70’s went on the influence monster and set design for the Alien film series. He often collaborated with his muse and sometimes lover Li Tobler until her death at age 27. Her face is visible in some of his best known work.
If you’re ever in Switzerland, Gruyere has an amazing castle, a cheese factory with incredible toilets, and a museum dedicated to this bloke
Oh and a chocolate train
That sounds promising, not least the toilets…
H. R. Giger’s contributions to Alien were so extensive that many speak of the film as a cinematic realization of the artist’s oeuvre. His designs have transformed the aesthetics of the science fiction and horror genres, as illustrated by Star Trek, Predator, and The Matrix. In his work on Alien, Giger employed the same style, themes, and motifs as his biomechanical art. A nightmarish double of Donna Haraway’s cyborg, and a casebook study of Noël Carroll’s category jamming, Giger’s Alien breaks down the binary divisions between body and machine, human and non-human, male and female, death and birth, beauty and terror. His exploration of the impact of technology on organic bodies leads many viewers to think of Giger’s biomechanics as futuristic, but retrofuturistic would be the more appropriate term, as illustrated by his designs for the derelict spacecraft and extraterrestrial pilot in Alien, as well as his earlier designs for Jodorowsky’s unrealized Dune. In the sequels and prequels of the Alien franchise, however, the artist’s creations are stripped of their key stylistic traits and molded to fit more traditional ways of thinking about technology, life-forms, sexual reproduction, and more.
Giger’s most distinctive stylistic innovation was that of a representation of human bodies and machines in cold, interconnected relationships, which he described as “biomechanical”. His main influences were painters Dado, Ernst Fuchs, and Salvador Dalí. He was introduced to Dali by painter Robert Venosa. Giger was also influenced by Polish sculptor Stanislaw Szukalski, and by painters Austin Osman Spare and Mati Klarwein, and was a personal friend of Timothy Leary. He studied interior and industrial design at the School of Commercial Art in Zurich from 1962 to 1965, and made his first paintings as art therapy.
Can’t believe I never noticed the similarities in The Matrix, that’s a wide influence.
Yeah, me too. I wonder how? My bad, I forgot to cite my comment above. I’ll look around for it.
Edit: oh, I guess the parts where humans are all connected to machines in the future.
A dude I know has this huge hardback book with a bunch of this guy’s stuff in it. His art is craaaazy lookin’.
A lot of it is terrifying to be fair, but I love Aliens!
A lot of his art was also very much influenced by genitals. Afaik the first scripts of the Alien movie were also a lot more sexual, including a sex scene between the xenomorph and Ripley.
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