DISTANT FUTURE MONTH #5: Necronomicon, by H.R. Giger (1977)

Type of Media: Art Book

H.R. Giger should not have the kind of celebrity and fame that he has. I’m not saying that because I think he’s a bad artist (on the contrary, I think he’s a visionary), but it baffles me that art this dark and cold has so much appeal. Maybe it’s because, as the designer of the Xenomorph from the horror film Alien, he had a relatively mainstream ambassador for his work. Alien got people used to the smooth, pipe-covered, distorted figures that populate Giger’s paintings, so when they picked up his art book Necronomicon they weren’t quite shocked enough to immediately look away in revulsion.

Necronomicon is probably the best showcase for Giger’s work. A foot-and-a-half tall, coffee table-sized book with fold-out pages and comments from the artist himself, it’s the best way to get a sense of his art without going to a gallery show. Inside you’ll find glimpses into a pretty horrific future. There are landscapes of ruptured skin, baby-like gremlins packed together in machinery, and surreal images of what look like disembodied sex organs. However, the real stars of this book are what Giger called his “biomechanoids”.

Biomechanoids are fusions of humans (mostly women) and machines, but that description doesn’t give you the whole picture because it leaves out the frequent themes of sex, decay, death, and occultism that pervade Giger’s work. The cyborgs of Giger’s pictures are in a sort of technological decadence, writhing and copulating with prominent lips, breasts, and butts surrounded by creeping gadgetry as they decompose. In contrast to the mechanical elements, the human parts of the subjects are reduced to isolated pieces of flesh. Rendered in greyscale, these are images that possess a level of dehumanization that is sometimes distressing to look at.

This is compounded by the fact that Giger paintings often have a very shallow depth, giving them a feeling of abstractness. The figures are clearly rendered, but you can’t imagine them in any sort of real, three-dimensional space. It’s like you’re looking at a metal wall that has absorbed a person and is in the process of integrating them. Giger made sculptures and furniture as well as paintings, but I find them less affecting than his paintings because seeing his designs in the real world robs them of some of their mystery. 

If you’re a fan of Alien or creepy, industrial art, H.R. Giger’s Necronomicon is an easy purchase. Likewise, if you’re a fan of horror and sci-fi video games, you may want to check out Necronomicon because Giger’s art was a huge influence on the enemy designs of games like Resident Evil, Contra, and Gradius. Also, if you’re in Giger’s home country of Switzerland, there are two H.R. Giger-themed bars designed by the man himself that you can visit, one in Chur and another in Gruyeres.