Gaby Falk

This book, sort of a biography / scrapbook / overview of HR Giger's life and work, is very much Giger himself: fascinating, offputting, gorgeous, disgusting, bizarre, boring, and intriguing.

It captures all phases of his art and he provides most of the copy...and ultimately proves that he's an artist and not an author.

I came across Giger like, I suspect, many did when the first ALIEN movie was released, and suddenly the world knew of this strange genius that finally gave us an alien that show more actually looked like a freaking alien, instead someone tinted a different colour and some rubber glued to their face.

I fell in love with that phase of his artistry, and collected a lot of books that highlighted it. From this collection, I saw the various other phases, some of which I enjoyed, much of which I didn't.

Bottom line, if you want to learn about HR Giger, this is the book to provide that. show less

Darkly beautiful reflections of a very dark mind.

I had no idea until now that this was the mastermind behind the morbid, fascinating creature of the Alien franchise, but some of his other work makes that look like child's play, and learning about the man behind the art was almost more intriguing than viewing the art itself. Giger's anecdotes illustrate how so much of his work was inspired by the same obsessions and fears that began in his early life - women, weapons, worm-like creatures, show more death, and ghosts. Much of his work pays homage to the dark sides of these subjects not only with their color scheme (various black and gray tones which, for some reason, remind me of early X-ray crystallography images), but also in their oddly structured nature and an abundance of phallic and sexual symbolism.

I may not be a diehard fan like the writer of the foreword - Giger's work doesn't exactly send me into poetic rhapsodies - but I love the "biomechanical" aesthetic for which his art is famous. At the end of the day our bodies are, in a sense, highly evolved machines with a precisely regulated array of functions to keep us alive. To visualize our internal machinery using gears and springs and the like - while simultaneously illustrating the flip side of our existence, our darkest desires and fears, takes a very unique mind with a penchant for the ominous. And I love how, with the then highly-disdained airbrush, Giger managed to produce works of such realism that he was even questioned at one point whether they weren't actual photos.

My 2 favorite works from his collection are Li I and Li II, particularly memorable because of Li Tobler's tragic fate and how they almost seem like posthumous homages to her struggles. The paintings where her face makes an appearance seem to have a surreal aspect to them simply because of that presence. But I guess that's the essence of the word "surreal" - it wouldn't exist without the "real." And whether I like all his art or not, I can definitely say that H.R. Giger was a master of the surreal, as well as the shocking and provocative. I'd recommend his art to anyone who likes horror and is up for some interesting dreams (and/or nightmares). show less

I love Taschen's Basic Art series.

Giger is an absolutely fascinating overview of the artist's life and work by the artist himself. Copious illustrations and examples of Giger's work accompany the text. Giger talks about his childhood obsessions (suspender fasteners among them), the work he did for Alien and Jodorowsky's unrealized Dune, his love life, his work with airbrush, the Dead Kennedys getting in legal trouble because they included "Landscape XX" (the so-called "Penis Landscape") in show more one of their records, and more. An intriguing, engaging, fascinating book by and about a very unique artist. It also includes a profoundly trippy foreword by Timothy Leary. show less

A few pages of biographical material in German and English prefaces about thirty postcards reproducing his recognizable art, some of which are very explicit. This is a Book Supplement to ARh+.

Merged review:

A few pages of biographical material in German and English prefaces about thirty postcards reproducing his recognizable art, some of which are very explicit. This is a Book Supplement to ARh+.