H. R. Giger



A Swiss surrealist painter and sculptor known for his disquieting, biomechanical, often sexual imagery, Giger has achieved much of his fame from his work in films as a set and creature designer. Among the film projects he's worked on are Alien, Dune, Poltergeist 2, and Species. Before this he provided two paintings for Emerson Lake and Palmer's album Brain Salad Surgery, one of which had to be airbrushed for purposes of censorship. The Dead Kennedys included a poster of his painting Penis Landscape with their album Frankenchrist. They got in a little trouble for that. Danzig used his art for the cover of Danzig III: How the Gods Kill.

Giger also contributed art to the Darkseed games, has a number of bars in Switzerland themed after his art (which are probably nice, comfortable places to get a drink), and designs incredibly menacing furniture.

And his name's pronounced GEE-ger.

Common themes in Giger's work include:

 * Body Horror: Tons of it.
 * Diesel Punk: Giger's art gives the impression that he was raped by a diesel engine when he was a child.
 * Eternal Engine: Whenever he decides to do a "landscape."
 * Evil Is Visceral: Much of his artwork is based on this, thus leading to many of the subtropes of this.
 * Nightmare Fetishist: He appears to be one, considering the sexual imagery common to his art and the fact that it was literally inspired by his night terrors. He even has a portfolio collection entitled Xenoerotica.
 * Organic Technology: Much of his art portrays humans fused with machines, or humans boning machines, or humans that are fused with machines boning other humans fused with machines, etc. He even coined the term "biomechanical."
 * What Could Have Been:
 * Giger contributed artwork for two Dune movies, specifically for the decadently corrupt Harkonnens (naturally).
 * His concept artwork for Alien included a huge dome-like structure separate from the derelict spaceship where the facehugger eggs would have been housed, and a wall sculpture showing the alien life cycle from egg to chestburster and implying that the eggs came from a "mother"-like figure, hinting that the aliens were much more of an actual intelligent society than the insect analogues they became in Aliens.