HR
GIGER ONLINE
I'm sure this picture must have made you react somehow : either you hate it or
you like it. If you dislike it, then don't go any further... But if it appeals
to you, stay tuned and read what follows.
introduction
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HR Giger is a Swiss painter born in 1940. No need to spend hours talking about
his childhood, just know that as a teenager he spent long hours locked up in
his dark room working on weird photos. Years later, the genius came out to
meet the light and amaze/terrorize us !
Even though you think the name of HR Giger doesn't sound familiar, I can tell
you that you _ALREADY_ know him ! How come ? Well Giger had many occasions to
work on movies, some of them being worldwide famous today. Need and example ?
Well do you know Alien ? Surely you do ! Do not be surprised then when I tell
you that the Alien creature(s) was designed by Hr Giger ! You can also trace
Giger's art in other movies such as Species I and II. Other pieces of art were
designed but unused for movies such as Dune and Batman.
Biomechanical ?
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Erm, what are you telling me ?? Yes, Giger's art is a lot about __mechanical__
creatures, in other words creatures which are half biological half mechanical.
When humans and machines combine... Something uncommon... Quite often you will
realize that machines are equipped with a penis while the human being shows a
female figure... Hum I really like that...
HR Giger is definitely not an artist for these "shy" guys who like traditional
artwork. You'd better be a bit twisted minded and mad to like it, but as things
happen to be this way, I am weird enough to see beauty in these paintings.
Meeting Giger
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Of course it sounds a bit like nonsense telling you about a visual artist
while I can only offer you two pictures... If you feel interested in Giger,
you surely have already seen the movies mentioned above. There are quite many
books about Giger that you can find out there, so let's try to list a few of
them :
* HR Giger's ARh+ Postcard (edited by Taschen) : 30 postcards in an A5 format
for your greatest pleasure ! These are obviously copies of bigger paintings,
thus a bit small compared to the original. Still it allows you to enjoy
various sides of Giger's art at a reasonable cost and maybe send some morbid
postcards to your beloved ennemies !
* HR Giger's ARh+ (edited by Taschen again) : a weird format for this 96 pages
fat book since it's a bit bigger than the usual A4 format you could expect. If
you liked the postcards then get a rush on this book now ! It features many
pictures both paintings and photos, not to forget additional biography (in
French in my edition, therefore surely translated to your own language).
* HR Giger's Film Design (published by Morpheus International) : this is the
real Artwork book you need if you are a real Giger fan ! This 137 pages book
edited in a much bigger format than A4 (still not A3) focuses - no shit ? - on
Giger's intervention into movies. As mentioned above a part of his work gave
birth to movies while other paintings have never been used. You will of course
find a lot of paintings and sketches related to Alien and Species but also a
lot more. You will find extra pages, telling you a bit more about the Alien
morphology (with an incredible folded central page). This book features a lot
of pictures and comments from Giger but also from other people such as Ridley
Scott, famous director of the first Alien movie. This time, this book is
restricted to English fanatics since it's an imported book.
HR Giger Online
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At last, we reach the core of this article :) Of course you need to go out and
buy the mentioned books... but you only need to get your computer started and
get connected to learn more about Giger... online !
Basically I'm just gonna tell you about two sites, the official ones ! There
must be tons of other sites, both professional and amateur ones, but I don't
know them and couldn't lead you to the best of them (but any further
suggestion will be welcome !).
http://www.hrgiger.com
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A Switzerland based homepage which features a lot of Giger pictures, many of
them on the menu. This site offers many sections starting with the latest news
about new paintings, posters, erm... new things :). There is also an Alien
Insurrection section which tells you that The Twentieth Century "accidentally"
forgot to give credit to Giger in the Alien Resurrection movie... nice ! There
are too many sections to be described, so let's just list them all : Giger's
Alien, Biography, Books (about 20 of them !), Exhibitions, Furniture (as Giger
also designed different pieces of furniture), Giger's room, Giger's bar, the
Webstore, Guestbook... Yeah there are an incredible number of paths to be
walked through ! Now, make your own choices.
http://www.giger.com
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The second official sites features similar sections and... many more ! But the
first and nice thing is the site design. It's gonna take a while to get fully
loaded but once complete, you will be given a nice biomechanical panel control
with animations and scary sounds. It really looks superb ! As said before this
site offers the usual sections plus : Film design, biomechanoids, audio and
video files and a __very__ complete store from which you can buy t-shirts,
posters, books, signed copies, pieces of furniture, models.... Speaking of
models, you'll read about the collaboration between Giger and Todd Mc Farlane,
wellknown Spawn creator. They are currently working on a new model and you can
already have an idea about the final result looking at what follows :
Then what ? I cannot make sure this site offers more than its counterpart but
one thing is sure : it looks so much more eye-catching ! Also it seems to be
updated more regularly and again is more attractive in many ways. The only bad
thing is that it's a USA based site which means more expensive to buy from. If
you feel like going shopping, then better check the other site first :)
conclusion ?
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Not much to add... I hope Giger's fans will have a lot of fun thanks to this
humble tribute to my favourite painter. Feel free to reach me if you have any
useful piece of information for me. Email to larnac@hotmail.com and see you !
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