H.R. Giger's Biomechanics

Rating:
Summary: Alien among us
Review: Hans Rudi Giger, a direct descendant of Hieronymus Bosch, H.P. Lovecraft and Salvador Dali, is a unique artist whose works depict cosmological visions and nightmarish dream-state revelations. As you leaf through the glorious illustrations in 'H.R. Giger's Biomechanics', you begin to realize that it takes a deviant personality to create deviant art of this caliber. The kind of paintings on display here are something nobody could conceive without total 24/7 commitment to unleashing the subconscious for all the world to see.

Nowadays of course, H. R. Giger's style (coined 'biomechanical') has become commonplace, trivialized; you can observe his influence in computer-game graphics, movies, literature, interior design, architecture... And isn't that the greatest compliment to his work, the horde of imitators living proof that Giger has tapped into something deep for which there was no adequate vocabulary before him. It probably resided there before the genus homo existed, somewhere in the spinal cord, in the first primate dreams.

What none of HRG's imitators have reached, is his unrivaled, casual mastery of the airbrush. For HRG often uses the surrealist method, whereby his paintings are not consciously planned but rather organically grown and given the freedom to invade the canvas - an inordinately challenging modus operandi considering Giger's weapon of choice. The works of the imitators betray their predesigned origin in wavering use of the airbrush, in naively copied Giger motifs. The sycophants have no mastery over the vocabulary, method, or the medium.

Presenting HRG's artworks in roughly chronological order, 'Biomechanics' charts the evolution of the biomechanical style from the first ink drawings from the 1960s to the acrylic paintings of the late 1980s. The master's 'commentary track' runs the length of the book, explaining the impetus behind major works, such as the 'N.Y. City' series and 'Erotomechanics'. You can practically feel HRG's exitement as he details the first experiments with the airbrush. The airbrush was originally a tool for photo retouching, which remained its primary use for decades, but in the hands of HRG it turned into a weapon capable of transmuting Freudian and Jungian theories on sexual perversions into photorealistic imagery.

Designs on 'Alien' and 'Poltergeist II' are examples of how effortlessly HRG crosses the boundary between 2D and 3D, painting and sculpture. They also reveal his background as a student of architecture and industrial design at the Zurich School of Applied Arts.

Well, either you 'get it' or you don't. There are people who instinctively recognize the worth in HRG's art. If you are the sort of person who requires a rational basis for purchasing 'Biomechanics', suffice it to say that the influence of these works is so widespread that failure to trace that influence back to the source reveals a profound ignorance on contemporary visual culture.

Rating:
Summary: Good introduction to his more complicated works
Review: This was the first book of his that I bought. It is very well done like all the rest. It is a good book to get your "feet wet" and to decide if you want to go any further into his work. I liked it very much, and recommend it as an introduction.