H R Giger - The Oeuvre Before Alien 1961 - 1976

Giger Counter

H R Giger - The Oeuvre 
Before Alien 1961 - 1976
Scheidegger & Spiess
ISBN 9783039421367

Just a quick shout out to a really lovely (and inspirational, to boot) book which a very special friend sent from her home town of Chur, in Switzerland. The subject of the book is my favourite artist and it’s called H. R. Giger - The Oeuvre Before Alien 1961 - 1976, being a reprinting of what was originally a catalogue to accompany a 2007 exhibition, H R Giger, Das Schaffen vor Alien 1961 - 1976 at the Bünder Kunstmuseum in the small town where he grew up, which also happens to be Chur, although my understanding is he later moved to Zurich. 

The book has a lot of interesting early works, including a fair few I’d not seen before so, that was a nice thing. It also includes a foreword by Beat Stutzer and a separate essay by him called Between Stool and Bench: Aspects of Giger’s Reception. This looks at the relevance of Giger’s output appearing alongside artists contemporary to this early period of his work. A conclusion to this section seems to be that, like many artists, he’s said to be drawing from all the fears in the face of the cold war, the threat by nuclear destruction and the risk that human labour would be undermined by robots.

This section is then followed by a prologue featuring the work of older artists which are supposed to have been an influence on Dali, such as Henry Fuseli’s The Nightmare and Max Klinger’s Isle Of The Dead. 

After this there are four more essays by a variety of writers, with each section split by a relevant selection of Giger’s work, relating to the upcoming sequence of writing. 

So Liberation Through Horror: Giger and the Fantastic in Art by Carlos Arenas, starts off as it means to go on by printing a quote from H. P. Lovecraft. It looks at what is considered fantasy art, talks about how he drew inspiration as a child from the works of both Lovecraft and Edgar Allan Poe (don’t we all?) and also lifts the lid a little on how Giger is also discussed in realms far beyond the usual scope of the visual arts... such as philosophy, social sciences, politics and discussions around the manifestation of the cyborg. 

Then we have The Beauty and Surrealism of H R Giger by Fritz Billeter, in which I found out that the pistol used in those sinister, baby bulleted birth machine paintings is actually a P38 Walther (turns out Giger was an avid collector of fire arms). Then we have another piece by Beat Stutzer called On Tachism, Bathtubs and Garbage Crushers; or, Observations and Remarks on Giger’s Pictorial Strategies which, aside from some of the influences made clearer, I have to confess was couched in language which was a little harder for me to understand on its own level, perhaps. Although, as always, that minor hurdle didn’t stop me from reading it. 

The book finishes with Portrait Of An Immortal Love: The Painting Li II by Kathleen Bühler, which is worth the price of the book alone (you know, if I’d actually bought it myself, thanks again Katrin) which talks about his history with his long term girlfriend of the time, aspiring actress Li Tobler. The paintings he used her in, which depict her decapitated head hooked up to his signature biomechanical shenanigans, were completed not long before she killed herself with a revolver and Bühler reflects on his relationship to her through his repeated use of her image and inspiration in his art, both then and later. It’s also noted he went on to marry someone who looked very much like Tobler too, before making a point of looking at the relationship between female death and beauty in art and... I think there’s some further reading opportunities I need to have a look out for in regard to this last subject. 

Overall, then, a pretty fantastic book and, even this jaded old book burrower was inspired once more by the works inside and, in most (but not all) cases, inspired by the more truthful ringing batches of analysis served up in this quite splendid tome. So, yeah, if you are a fan of the legendary Giger and his work then, H R Giger - The Oeuvre Before Alien 1961 - 1976, is definitely one to grab hold of.