Giger's Landscape (work 404) (1978) references Tomita's "Snowflakes are dancing" record album cover (1974)

leading from

a) 12th May 2016 Revelation,
Looking through the Tomita albums for ones that would make a significant basis for a Giger image, "Snowflakes are dancing" was not easy to make any connections with anything at first.

I did take a look at Giger's work 404 and denied a possible connection and then the following day realised that the two had to be connected and then I saw more in the picture.


UK album cover with art by David B. Hecht
b) Rainbow transformation
In 1978, Giger took the image from the cover of the 1974 record album "Snowflakes are dancing" by Isao Tomita and transformed it into a biomechanoid head amidst a froth.

The rainbow becomes transformed into three elephant like trunks extending from the head in the manner of a vortex or a triskellion.

Ice patterns almost form fir trees like shapes in the background and perhaps transformed into the cones at the end of the tentacles

(Listen to "Snowflakes are dancing" by Isao Tomita on Youtube)

Landscape (Work 404)  30x30cm, 1978, Medium Unknown
c) A Passing fish
The fish passing by the face becomes transformed into the part of the face cut away.

The position of the eye is retained but the eye itself is changed, the position of the ear has been retained by altered. The front of the hairline has been transferred over as a crack above the eye.

The moustache has been transformed into an area of strange growth.

The shadow at the bottom of the jaw has become a cutaway area in an area with protruding fang like mandibles overlapping the lower trunk like form

German cover for Snowflakes Are Dancing 1974
d) 11th August 2016: Glass head
Taking a look at the Plasma Music version of Snowflakes Are Dancing also from 1974, it's come to my attention that somehow this glass head was somehow involved in the painting.

What Giger would have thought about were the three coiled wires leading into the head, and the wires inside the head would have become a starting point to make a triskellion.

Loosely the circular area around the mouth has been carried over into Giger's painting, with light reflecting off the nose and above and below the mouth transformed in Giger's painting into the light on the mandibles and other indescribably mouth parts.

Perhaps the circular area around the mouth has been used again and moved upwards so that it becomes transformed into a single eye area with the light on the nose being expanded to make it a complete single eye merging with the distorted forms that make up the statue's right eye.


e) 30th April 2017: Radio Times' Billy Smarts Children's Circus cartoon
 
 

Radio Times' Billy Smarts Children's Circus cartoon for May 1st 1978 .
and Giger's Landscape (work 404) (1978)
 



Looking around at the Radio Times Collectors on Facebook for more material that Giger might well have used.

I take a look at the Radio Times' Billy Smarts Children's Circus cartoon for May 1st 1978.

This would have been the time when Giger was working on Alien, and the form of the elephant seems like an inviting starting point for one of Giger's paintings and I find myself connecting it with Giger's Landscape (work 404) from 1978.

The trunk would be the area around the eye so the eye itself would be in the space surrounded by the end of the elephant's trunk.

The round body becomes the shape of the head in the landscape.

The curve of the belly becomes the upper part of the lower of the three trunk like forms, while the back legs become the starting point of the trunk.

The elephant ear is transformed into a human ear.

Perhaps the space between the front and back legs becomes the space between the mandibles at the bottom of the face.

The tail of the elephant becomes the left brow of the face.

There are no traces left of the lights above or the Morris dancers below.
 
 
 
Radio Times' Billy Smarts Children's Circus illustration .
for May 1st 1978.

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