To say H.R. Giger had his demons is an understatement. The man's life was fraught with troubles. He had a girlfriend commit suicide, a well-known rivalry with friend and fellow artist Salvadore Dal
í, and had a mind filled with so many horrific images that I must admit, as much as I love staring at them I would not want to spend a minute in any one were they to become a reality. I think he was as brilliant as he was disturbing, and I think the world is somehow diminished now that he's gone. And it's important when viewing his art to try and see it through the lens of his own eye: Giger wasn't painting fantasy but showing us the modern world as he saw it. Disturbing right? Take a look at this image.
The creator of the Xenomorph (and the mythology that surrounded it) from the original
Alien and
Prometheus movies died as a result of injuries suffered when he fell down the stairs at his home. He was 74. My dad often tells me that "falls take out most old people." Ridley Scott and Giger had meltdowns that became legendary on the set of
Alien, as the artist had a vision that didn't quite match up with the famed director's own and this led to much fighting and bickering and for Giger being labeled "Impossible to work with." Giger's work both graced and inspired aspects of
Species, Poltergeist 2, Alejandro Jodorwsky's
Dune, and
Batman Forever (they should have used his Batmobile design).
By all accounts, he was a quiet and subdued individual. I'd love to take a stroll in his Swiss gallery some day. I think that his art will go on to escalate in price now that he's dead and become prized among collectors in the future (even moreso than it is now). When I watch Alien and Prometheus and see the derelict spacecraft, it makes me think that what I'm looking at is something so utterly inconceivable in a human mind that it has to come from another world. I don't ever get that watching Star Trek or Star Wars. There are traces of humanity in nearly all science fiction designs. Not so with Giger. He was one of a kind, able to scare the bejeezus out of me, and was able to tap into visceral, instinctual fears that was the stuff of nightmares.
