• Intelligencer
  • The Cut
  • Vulture
  • The Strategist
  • Curbed
  • Grub Street
  • Subscribe to the Magazine Give a Gift Subscription Buy Back Issues Current Issue Contents
    Subscribe to New York Magazine
  • Subscribe
  • Profile
    Sign Out
  • TV
  • Movies
  • Comedy
  • Music
  • TV Recaps
  • What to Stream
  • Vulture Lists
  • Books
  • Theater
  • Art
  • Awards
  • Podcasts
  • Videos
  • About
  • Newsletters
  • Vulture Insiders
  • Vulture Festival
  • NYMag.com
  • New York Magazine
  • Intelligencer
  • Vulture
  • The Cut
  • The Strategist
  • Grub Street
  • Curbed
Subscribe Give A Gift
  • TV
  • Movies
  • Comedy
  • Music
  • TV Recaps
  • What to Stream
  • Vulture Lists
  • Books
  • Theater
  • Art
  • Awards
  • Podcasts
  • Videos
  • About
  • Newsletters
  • Vulture Insiders
  • Vulture Festival
  • NYMag.com
  • New York Magazine
  • Intelligencer
  • Vulture
  • The Cut
  • The Strategist
  • Grub Street
  • Curbed
  • Share
  • Tweet
  • Pin It
+Comments Leave a Comment
obits
May 13, 2014

Ebiri on Alien Artist H.R. Giger, 1940-2014

By Bilge Ebiri

Share

  • Share
  • Tweet
  • Pin It
Photo: The Kobal Collection

Over the course of his five-decade-plus career, H.R. Giger, who died yesterday, produced countless paintings, sculptures, interior decorations, films, books, and furniture designs. But of course, it’s the main creature from Alien for which he is best known today. And while this doesn’t do justice to his immense body of work, the importance of Giger’s achievement in that film cannot be overstated. Initially, director Ridley Scott and his producers fought the Fox suits who were worried that Giger’s work was too disturbing. (He helped design not just the infamous “xenomorph,” but also the “facehugger,” the “chestburster,” the derelict spacecraft, and the infamous “Space Jockey” remnant.) Here’s the thing: The Fox suits were right. The alien was too disturbing. It was the kind of thing that might have sprung from the mind of a tormented Swiss surrealist racked with night terrors. It was not the kind of thing you were supposed to find in a Hollywood studio blockbuster. It crossed a line. It was transgressive. And it immediately entered our nightmares, where it continues to kick around.

Giger had been brought onto the Alien project by writer Dan O’Bannon, with whom he’d worked on Alejandro Jodorowsky’s aborted film adaptation of Dune. The terrific recent documentary, Jodorowsky’s Dune, details the heroic efforts to get that film made, and it also unveils the various sci-fi movies made since the 1970s that “borrowed” elements and designs from Jodorowsky’s lost project. But an addendum could be made to its thesis, which is that a lot of those same films (and others) were likely influenced by the look of Alien. We talk often of how Star Wars and Jaws changed the movie landscape forever, but I think Alien should properly be included among those films as well.

And Giger’s creations are among the chief reasons why. (You can even see it in how the Star Wars films themselves went, in Return of the Jedi, towards the grotesquely elaborate, many-fanged designs of the Sarlacc and the Rancor.) After Alien, the more nightmarish, the more beyond-the-bounds disturbing creature and set design could be, the better. That’s because Giger’s biomechanical designs  – fusing the organic and the metallic, the constructed and the evolved – clawed away at our subconscious fear of things whose origins we can’t quite pinpoint, which don’t seem like they could have been created by mere mortals. It was the perfect imagery for an era that saw the dominance of horror and sci-fi, and the rise of celebrity designers and effects artists who visualized the unknowable.

Related Stories

44 Things You Probably Don’t Know About the Alien Films

Of course, Giger had been creating such designs long before Alien – the Xenomorph is actually closely based on his print “Necronom IV” – and he would do so for years afterwards as well. He gained legions of fans, and his brand of imagery became a kind of pop-cultural cliché. There was a Giger Room at the Limelight club. There were Giger-branded guitars. Every heavy-metal band seemed to be “inspired” by him.

Still, the work remains pure. Look at Giger’s images in books like Necronomicon or in New York City, and you’ll sense a quietness at their heart that’s still deeply unsettling. They’re like transmissions from a world that’s left humans behind. I think it’s one of the reasons why, after all the album covers and signature bars and tattoos, Giger’s name has remained evocative, exciting. His images are both thoroughly other and yet, strangely familiar. Familiar not because we’ve seen them all over the place for the past several decades (though we have), but because even now, there’s something uncanny about them — like something we must have seen in a dream once as a child but tried desperately to forget. Even now, the work terrifies.

View
1 / 8 Photos
Photo: ©20thCentFox/Courtesy Everett Collection
1 / 8

Tags:

  • obits
  • r.i.p.
  • h.r. giger
  • alien
  • jodoroswky's dune
  • More

More Galleries

emmys 2020 Sept. 20, 2020
See Every ‘Red Carpet’ Look From the 2020 Emmys  At home and all dolled up. 
By Rebecca Alter
art June 29, 2020
See Peter Hujar’s Portraits of a Long-Ago Queer Downtown  Including a kittenish Fran Lebowitz. 
By Trupti Rami
psa Apr. 17, 2020
A Times Square Tribute to All of Us  Two dozen artists say thank-you. 
By Michael Kaler
shakespeare in the park Apr. 17, 2020
Shakespeare in the Park Canceled as Public Theater Furloughs Staff  Richard II and As You Like It were planned for this summer. 
By Jackson McHenry
oscars 2020 Feb. 9, 2020
See Every Red-Carpet Look From the 2020 Oscars  Greta Gerwig, Janelle Monáe, Cynthia Erivo, and more are gracing the red carpet of the 92nd Academy Awards. 
By Rebecca Alter
gallery Feb. 6, 2020
30,000 Ways to See New York  Drawings from the final year of Jason Polan’s “Every Person in New York” project. 
By Jason Polan
gallery Jan. 31, 2020
The Faces of Sundance 2020  Vulture welcomed Tessa Thompson, Mila Kunis, Glenn Close, Ethan Hawke and more to our photo studio. 
By Vulture Editors
grammys 2020 Jan. 26, 2020
See Every Red-Carpet Look from the 2020 Grammys  Lizzo, Ariana Grande, Lil Nas X, and more. 
By Rebecca Alter
golden globes 2020 Jan. 5, 2020
See Every Red-Carpet Look from the 2020 Golden Globes  Greta Gerwig, Kirsten Dunst, Billy Porter, and more. 
By Rebecca Alter
vulture festival 2019 Nov. 12, 2019
The Faces of Vulture Festival LA 2019  We welcomed Rita Moreno, Elisabeth Moss, cast reunions of Party Down and Community, and more to our photo studio. 
By Vulture Editors
emmys 2019 Sept. 22, 2019
Emmys 2019: See Every Red-Carpet Look  Laverne Cox, Jameela Jamil, Indya Moore, and more. 
By Vulture Editors
vmas 2019 Aug. 26, 2019
See Every Red-Carpet Look From the 2019 VMAs  Lizzo, Taylor Swift, Megan Thee Stallion, and more stars strut down the carpet at the MTV Video Music Awards. 
By Vulture Editors
gallery June 25, 2019
The Look Book Goes to a Little Tina Turner Audition  Dozens of 8-to-12-year-old actresses lined up for the opportunity to play a young incarnation of the star in Broadway’s Tina: The Tina Turner Musical. 
By Katy Schneider and Jane Drinkard
obituaries June 17, 2019
Socialite, Artist, and Style Icon Gloria Vanderbilt Has Died at 95  Her son, Anderson Cooper, delivered an obituary on CNN this morning. 
By Sarah Spellings
gallery June 17, 2019
See Photos of Natasha Lyonne, Busy Philipps, and More in the Vulture Emmy Studio  For your consideration. 
By Vulture Editors
gallery June 10, 2019
See the Faces of the 2019 Tony Winners  Bryan Cranston, Rosemary Harris, and more. 
By Vulture Editors
gallery May 15, 2019
A Trove of ‘Lost’ New York City Crime Scene Photos, Unearthed After 82 Years  Seventy-three prints from legendary photographer Weegee were stashed in a kitchen cupboard and unseen until now. 
By Christopher Bonanos
gallery May 6, 2019
The Faces of 2019 Tribeca Film Festival  Jennifer Lawrence, Zac Efron, Ethan Hawke, and more. 
By Vulture Editors
gallery May 3, 2019
See the Faces of the 2019 Tony Nominees  Laurie Metcalf, Jeremy Pope, Jeff Daniels, and more. 
By Jackson McHenry
oscars 2019 Feb. 25, 2019
See Every Red-Carpet Look From the 2019 Oscars  Lady Gaga, Glenn Close, Regina King, Constance Wu, and more stars strutted down the carpet at the 91st Academy Awards. 
By Vulture Editors
More Galleries
  • TV
  • Movies
  • Comedy
  • Music
  • What To Stream
  • Newsletters
  • About Us
  • Contact
  • Media Kit
  • We’re Hiring
  • Press
  • Trademark
  • Privacy
  • Terms
  • Ad Choices
  • Do Not Sell My Info
vulture is a Vox Media Network. © 2021 Vox Media, LLC. All rights reserved.