HR Giger : In space no one can hear you dream
Curious country than Switzerland. From an unassailable political and military neutrality, she has seen the birth of Henri De, Zep, Stephan Eicher and even the sublime Ursula Andress who, emerging from the water in James Bond against Dr No, confuses Sean Connery, but also the viewer. If the temptation to write an article one day on 007 or Swiss chocolate is strong, today we are going to look at a renowned visual artist, graphic designer, sculptor, illustrator and designer: Hans Ruedi Giger.
Passionate from childhood by the fantastic, surrealism and creatures, Hans studied architecture and industrial design before making several short documentaries. And then in 1975, Alejandro Jodorowsky prepared an adaptation of Frank Hebert's Dune. Salvador Dali is in the casting (with Orson Welles and Mick Jagger), the latter will recommend Giger to the Chilean director and he is propelled to the head of artistic direction with Moebius / Jean Giraud.
Too ambitious, too long, too expensive, too crazy, too much everything, the film will never be made and will remain a unique project in the history of the seventh art. If this story interests you, a very nice documentary on the subject is called Jodorowsky's Dune and comes back to the subject while on the comic book side, the L’incal saga (with Moebius still) contains a lot of Dune ideas.
If 10 years later, the film Dune materializes under the camera of a David Lynch who we knew no longer inspired, Giger is no longer attached to the project. Regardless, since in 1979 he was approached again by a young director by the name of Ridley Scott. Still approached jointly with Moebius (because of Scott's all-consuming passion for Metal Hurlant magazine, a magazine that will do him well by releasing a special Alien issue when the film is released), he finds himself as a designer. the creature and the ship from the movie Alien while Moebius leaves the project leaving some preparatory drawings. Inspired by the painting Necronom IV, the creature is violent, sexual (phallic face, oral rape), biomechanical but fascinating.
A true revolution, this creation will make him share with the rest of the team the Oscar for special effects in 1980!
While the various sequels modify the creature to make it ever more organic, Giger does not remain the man of one work and continues to produce nightmares prolifically and in various forms. We will therefore find him pell-mell in the creation of the microphone for Jonathan Davis (the singer of Korn), in the scenography of a tour of Mylene Farmer, on preparatory drawings for Batman Forever, on two Supreme skateboards, in the credits from the movie La Mutante, or those from the Dark Seed 1 and 2 video games!
The easiest way to see Giger's original works today is to take a ticket to Gruyères and go to the HR Giger Museum, which has more than 500 works by the artist.
Although he passed away in 2014, Giger’s work continues to fascinate. If you want to dig deeper into the character and his work, two reference books are available on the site with on one side "Alien: all the archives" which is devoted solely to the cult franchise and on the other Giger, a sum of Taschen who devotes himself to the artist in a more global way.
Finally, this April 2021, we are proud to be able to bring you four new models from Bearbrick in the image of the artist’s so recognizable style.
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In all art there is not only the work itself. There is everything around it, communication, credits, packaging, in short, so many things related to the work that finish giving it visibility. Let us...
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