Intemperance and perversion were the order of the day

From the ever-fabulous Dangerous Minds:

Swiss surrealist artist H.R Giger has died. Giger is famous as the designer of the eponymous creature and bizarre sets for the film Alien, and for a lifetime’s worth of beautiful and disturbing organic/machine hybrid body-horror paintings (he called them “biomechanoids”). He also became a part of the music world when his works were used as album covers for the likes Emerson Lake and Palmer, Magma, Celtic Frost and Danzig, among many others. Notoriously his Penis Landscape was included as a poster in Dead Kennedys’ Frankenchrist LP, setting in motion an avalanche of censorship and legal difficulties which derailed the band.

Here’s a 1981 British television interview with Giger and Blondie singer Debbie Harry. The occasion for the seemingly odd pairing is Giger’s portrait of Harry for her début solo LP, KooKoo.

H.R. Giger's surreal designs influenced many outside the cimema and music, such as the avant garde fashionista Alistair McQueen, who produced shoes based upon his designs for Alien.



He also has a museum, and, more importantly, a bar dedicated to him in his native Swiss region of Gruyère:



I would love to drink there.

"My planet was ruled by evil, a place where black magic was practised, aggressions were let loose, and intemperance and perversion were the order of the day. Just the place for me, in fact."



RIP Hans Rudolf "Ruedi" Giger (5th February 1940 – 12th May 2014)