Ripley to Purvis,Alien: Resurrection - the little HR Giger Page

Beauty, grotesqueness and unreality.'applied to an artistic viewpoint, it suggestssomething not just surreal but beyond surreal.And certainly, anyone familiar withGiger's art would agree that his creationscome from beyond.It's tempting to further qualify Giger's specialityas "futuristic" fantastic art. Easily theman's best-known work is his ever-expandingcanon of (again as described by Giger)"biomechanical" landscapes. Giger's conceptof biomechanics is brilliant in its simplicity,as the term's prefix implies a livingorganism, while its root insists on a machine.The artist's masterstroke came from applyingthis fresh, dark idea not to the obviouschoice - people - but to the obscure alternative:places. The master biomechanic doesn'tdraw living humanoid robots; he createsbreathing industrial cities. Populated cities,granted, but in this instance, the inhabitantsare a part of the landscape, and it builds them- they do not build it.Hence the futuristic reading of Giger'swork - for how else has the 20th centuryimagined humanity's future if not in terms ofa technological Mecca that surpasses itswildest evolutionary dreams?And nightmares.When Ellen Ripley and the doomed crewof the Nostromo answer a distress call inAlien in the far future (real time: 1979), theylearn that hell isn't other people so much asother species.Alien earned Giger an Academy Award forBest Achievement in Visual Effects. In retrospect,this is hardly surprising, consideringthat the man had been dreaming of the Alienand its environment - and capturing thosedreams in portraits - for well over a decadebefore the movie was even in its nascentstage.The most critical step in the evolution ofthe Alien creature came in the form of thecompanion pieces Necronom IV andNecronom V, painted by Giger in 1976 aspart of a larger series devoted to a symbolicrealisation of H.P. Lovecraft'sNecronomicon. Even at this pre-productionstage, the Alien was essentially complete;really, the only significant differencebetween the Alien in Giger's paintings andthe one that would grace the screen threeyears later was the long-headedness, so tospeak, of the Giger original (perhaps this is agood time to mention that the ever-dubbingartist uses the term "erotoscapes" to describethe majority of his pointedly sexual biomechanicallandscapes).Screenwriter Dan O'Bannon and directorRidley Scott became the aforementionedadditional parents of the Alien. Inspiredbeyond words by the pair of Necronom portraits- Scott is famous for having been ableto say little more than: "That's it!" - theyworked closely with Giger after 20thCentury Fox approved six original silkscreenprints that the artist based uponO'Bannon's script, and together the trio furtherdeveloped and refined the look and feelof the Alien and its setting.The result: a true monster.In more ways than one.Today, almost two decades later, as themillennium looms over the horizon, Giger'sAlien has become an almost mythical creaturethe world over. For the artist himself,though, it has likely become a chimera that isequal parts angel and albatross. The reasonsfor the angel are apparent; those for the albatrossare absurd. They are nonetheless real.One is a matter of insurrection. As cited inthe introduction, Alien: Insurrection is an onlineprotest housed on Giger's authorisedhomepage (www.HRGiger.com). The complaint:nowhere in the movie Alien:Resurrection is the artist credited for originalAlien design, though the origins of themovie's creatures are undeniable. It's hardlyarguable that this was an oversight on thepart of 20th Century Fox, as the companywas guilty of the same gaffe when Alien³was first released in 1992. That mistake wasredressed at Giger's rightful insistence; thesame, however, cannot be said in the currentcase."Alien: Resurrection is an excellent film,"Giger writes in a letter to Fox posted on thesite and dated Nov. 13/96, two full weeksbefore the official release of the movie."[But] what would it look like without myAlien life-forms?" Though Alien:Insurrection also displays support fromRidley Scott, Timothy Leary, Clive Barker,Harlan Ellison, Dan O'Bannon and Alien:Resurrection director Jean-Pierre Jeunet, thepower of rhetoric has done little to advancethe unfortunate artist's cause.The nature of Giger's other Alien albatrossis simpler, though just as ironic. As fate - andgood marketing - had it, a compendium ofGiger art was published late last fall. Namedafter the aforementioned website (sans thedots), WWW HR Giger com is by no meansthe first book of collected Giger art to gracea coffee table. But unlike its predecessors,which include the immensely popular HRGiger's Necronomicon, HR Giger's Alienand HR Giger Arh+, WWW HR Giger com isthe first book of Giger art to examine theman as a career artist. Think of it as his tickletrunk.While Giger's thematic interests haveremained consistent throughout his 30+ yearLandscape design and dreamscape depiction come together in "Landscape XVIII."10 Rue Morgue