April 2015

Leading from

updates 2015

Thursday 30th April 2015
1) Updated Alternate Fifield Mutant with information fro m "The Art of Film Magic, 20 Years of Weta". Unfortunately it doesn't give any feeling still that there was some deep dark concept behind it that one would expect within the Alien production that might unveil something new decades later.
2) Updated The Derelict's Interior slightly, basically making that jump there in the attempt to understand the derelict's interior that despite what it looked like in the Alien edition of Cinefantastique, with Giger thinking about the derelict and the silo's relationship and how it was like the spaceship landing on an ant hill and the ants have eaten their way through it eating their way through the ship and then in another thought, it's insects again but as with termites in the walls of a house, it was perhaps merely a way for him to explain what was going on and it could easily change just to fit what he was working on in the movie rather than anything particularly definite. Perhaps there is a cloud over the whole issue of really expecting Giger to have had a full explanation of what was going on because it was a case of making something out of ideas thrown together due to lack of time and budget rather than anything such as something as a sacred mystery, but seeing the way that ideas can occur and the need to explain things as seen in films, it takes on a life of its own but it was beyond Giger to have the full story. You can not really say why the alien nest had the same architecture as the derelict ship but that was Giger's style of art and if Giger hadn't been asked to design the derelict ship and its pilot by Ridley Scott and the producers, this question  about the relationship between the silo and the ship would never have been asked, and then you can not expect the fans of the film to not want to think about it and whatever else it could lead to. 

Sunday 26th April 2015
1) Added ' Did Francisco Goya's "Subir y bajar" inspire Salvador Dali's  "Soft Construction With Boiled Beans (Premonition of civil war) ?' and this in turn was Giger's introduction to the world of Salvador Dali's paintings.
2) Added Inspiration from Dali for Necronom V 


Wednesday 22nd April 2015
Added Giger's Landschaft XXXI (work 273)


Tuesday 21st April 2015
Added a page Aztec architecture influenced by alien Predators to offer comparison between Predator 2 ship interior patterns and Aztec sculptural patterns as realised by Paul Anderson when he made Alien vs Predator. To some extent it might all seem silly but still it was an idea that Paul Anderson was having.


Sunday 19th April 2015
1) I have taken down the pages showing separated stills from Charles Lippincott's Alien contact photosheets since he mentioned his concern about this happening.
2) Removed all of Alien contact sheets shared by Charles Lippincott. I hope that he manages to release a decent book full of these images.


Saturday 18th April 2015
1) Added exploration of HR Giger's painting Biomechanical Landscape (work 413) (1979)
2) Added two other images to Gigers Alien I Facehugger Version IV of what seem to be Giger's Alien Facehugger triptych which seems to have slight alterations made that haven't been pointed out by anyone before.

Friday 17th April 2015
1) Did some exploring of the Giger painting National Park from 1975. This was a painting that inspired Ridley Scott with ideas for a couple of storyboard images. However I can't claim to have found anything specific other thank just taken note of various details, and some time ago I had the realisation that the painting may have been inspired by the painter known as  Dado whose work Giger greatly admired


Wednesday 15th April 2015
1) Added a link page for articles dealing with Roger Dicken linked from the name page
2) Added images of Ridley Scott "ridleygramming" at Roger Dicken's house to Ridleygrams
3) Added other early Roger Dicken chestburster maquette images to After A New Chestburster Design

Saturday 11th April 2015
1) Updated Alien: Inspiration from Shivers with a quote from Collider and at present, it does seem like a confusing argument. If Dan O'Bannon had seen Shivers and found inspiration from it, there are other sources for inspiration.
2) Added Alien: Inspired by Philip José Farmer's "Strange Relations"?. looking at the idea for the purpose of the facehugger came this story.  (I included the subject a few years ago but it somehow got lost from the blog.)
 
Friday 10th April 2015
1) Created a page to link up everything to do with Bolaji Badejo 
2) Further editing of Bolaji Badejo from the Gold Coast
 

Thursday 9th April 2015
1) Updated Bolaji Badejo from the Gold Coast with information from Neon magazine that just gives a further picture of the moment when Ridley first met Bolaji from Gordon Carroll's point of view.
2) Added  Moebius' concept art for Nostromo crew's space suits and outfits
3) Re-Edited Jean Giraud/ Moebius

Wednesday 8th April 2015
Continuing to re-edit Giger's Passage Temple Entrance (1975)Biomechanisation of the Fisher Price Cot Activity Centre ?

Saturday 4th April 2015
1) Updated  J G Ballard on Alien with information about how he was writing the novel Hello America at the time of the production of Alien
2) Added possible inspiration behind Giger's Passage Temple Entrance (1975)Biomechanisation of theFisher Price Cot Activity Centre ?

Friday 3rd April 2015
Added interpretation of Giger's Mordor iv work 280, (1975)

Thursday 2nd April 2015
1) Added more to  Alien: Sigourney Weaver cast as Ripley with details from the Alien Saga documentary.
2) Added details to Alien:Bolaji Badejo from Gold Coast from the Alien Saga documentary
3) Added details to Alien: Designing the derelict ship exterior from a 1979 Alien featurette on the Alien Saga DVD.
  

Wednesday 1st April 2015
1) Added more to Sigourney Weaver cast as Ripley with details from Danny Peary interview with her in Omni: Screen flights/ Screen Fantasies and Photoplay
2)  Added information from Danny Peary interview with Sigourney Weaver in Omni: Screen flights/ Screen Fantasies about how Sigourney Weaver would liked to have played Lambert to Veronica Cartwright cast as Lambert

Alien: Inspiration for Space Jockey platform from Giger's Necronomicon

leading from

The Derelict

and

HR Giger's Witches Dance (work 341) (1977)

 

 

Giger's Witches Dance (work 341) (1977)

 

 

Two dancing witches either side of a urinal on a circular platform, they travel around with wheels connected to the ankles of each one's visible leg that enables them to travel around the circular ribbed grooves of the platform. 

Both the witches have fan like biomechanic head dresses. 

After years of looking at the painting, on April 28th 2015, it occurrs to me that we have the ingredients to come  together to form the space jockey platform, with the circular base and the fan like structures merging together

(Image source: http://imgkid.com/)

circular platform with vertical structure, detail from HR Giger's Witches Dance (work 341)

biomechanoid fan structure ( detail from Witches Dance (work 341))

biomechanoid fan structure ( detail from Witches Dance (work 341))

Inspiration from Dali for Necronom V

leading from 
Salvador Dali's "Soft construction with boiled beans (premonition of civil war)"
and  
The origins of Necronom V
and
 Giger on Dali

Salvador Dali's "soft construction with boiled beans (premonition of civil war)" (1936)

a) Giger's introduction to Dali was through seeing a postcard of "soft construction with boiled beans (premonition of civil war)" when he was fourteen years of age. (See: Giger on Dali)

compare

b) It shows something near enough the lower part of a human body  stretched across the lower half of the painting incorporating human buttocks and an upper leg, ending in a hand and sprouting an arm raised upwards that ends in a hand holding the elongated breast of a crone like character who has no lower body but perhaps an leg like limb in place of an arm that stands upon the buttock part of the main body part at the lower half of the picture. 

This painting so I have discovered appears to have been inspired by the work of Goya. (See: Goya's "Subir y bajar" inspired Salvador Dali's "Soft construction with boiled beans (premonition of civil war) ?")

 Giger's Necronom V

c) Giger came to create Necronom V in 1976. We see upper part of the picture a semi humanoid figure with perhaps no proper lower body, although it may be argued that it has become a tusk like shape penetrating the upper torso of the main figure. 

Along the bottom of the the painting, we see pipe like trunk of a structure with a semi humanoid head at the end of the raised tip and this is being ridden by the human figure in the centre as if it were a bike. 

It appeared as if he were incorporating elements from the Pakal Votan Tomb Lid into the picture as well as perhaps slight elements from the Henu Barque into the upper figure as well in that it has a horned skull like head along an upper body slightly suggestive of a boat shape that would lead to the development of the space jockey that took a more direct connection with the Henu Barque

HR Giger's Necronom V (work 304) (1976)

leading from:

H R Giger's Art
and

Giger and the Necronom series
and
Paintings that inspired design of Alien  
and
Alien : Evolution of the Space Jockey via Giger's Necronom V 
and
20th century works inspired by the Henu Barque? 

 Giger's Necronom V (work 304) (150x100 cm) (1976) (acrylic on paper)

a) My explorations so far have brought me to see a variety of complexities involved in the creation of this painting.

I thought about how you could have different levels of bodies and body parts making up a structure as in Salvador Dali's "Soft construction with boiled beans (Premonition of civil war)" (1936), and how various shapes and forms could echo Mark Rothko's Gethsemane, how the rider dominating the painting appears inspired by the human figure from the Pakal Votan tomb lid, but also she is a vehicle as well being ridden upon by a smaller character.

Various shapes and details appear to echo Pink Panther comic book illustrations and it might appear as if Giger had been looking  at decorative items as from Easter Island as well. Perhaps he thought about turning a somelier knife into a mysterious alien body.

There might be an echo of the Micronaut Microtron character with the little character on the upper left in Necronom V riding the large female as if it were the little Micronaut time traveller who rides on Mictron's head that's transformed into a seat, and so Microtron's phallic drill becomes the horn like breast forms of the large Necronom female.

The idea perhaps is that these entities on the page merge together to becomes a mysterious vehicle of sorts a post apocalyptic family camper perhaps as it evolves hundreds or thousands of years into the future cruising through limitless stargates.

So in a lot of these paintings it's a case of see what relates to what in the various images and merging them, perhaps picking out the most interesting features from the different images etc



b) See :References Salvador Dali's "Soft construction with boiled beans (Premonition of civil war)" (1936)?

c) See: References Mark Rothko's Gethsemane (1944)?

 d) See: References Bélial, Emperor of the Flies (1948) by Wifredo Lam?

 

 

e) See: References the  Lord Pakal/"Pakal Votan" tomb lid?

f) See: Upper figure references Maoi Kava-Kava ancestral figure?

g) See:  Upper figure's boat shaped body references Easter Island Rei Miro sculpture

h) See: Space Jockey's lower limb references Sommelier knife bodies

i) See: References Mobile homes and Fisher Price Family Camper

j) See: References Microtron (Micronaut toy)

k) See:  References the cover of The Pink Panther #33 comic book

 

 

 

 

 

l) See: References photo of Gunilla Bergstrom at Eiffel Tower, Paris (1976) by Helmut Newton? 

 

 

m) See: References alias Big Timer in The Inspector #8 (March 1976)

n) See: Referenced in early ridleygram of the sideview of the Spacejockey (1978) by Ridley Scott for Alien

Goya illustrations inspired Salvador Dali's "Soft construction with boiled beans (premonition of civil war) " ?

Leading from

Salvador Dali's 

"Soft construction with boiled beans

 (premonition of civil war) 

Salvador Dali's "soft construction with boiled beans (premonition of civil war)" (1936)

a) First revelation at the Courtauld Gallery

On the 25th of April, 2015, went to the Goya's "the Witches and Old Women Album" at the Courtauld gallery in London, and suddenly noticed the drawing  "Subir y bajar" inspired Dali's "soft construction with boiled beans (premonition of civil war)". I thought that perhaps there were some other details in that certain album that inspired this painting of Dali's.

compare the two!

b) To Rise And Fall (Subir y bajar.)

"Plate 56 of the 'Caprichos' prints, 1797-98 from the first edition (trial proof), 1799. Etching and burnished aquatint. Two figures tumble from a great height while another is hoisted up by a huge, laughing satyr, a symbol of lust. The triumphant , grinning figure may be a reference to Manuel Godoy, the Queen's lover, whose meteoric rise to power was followed by an abrupt fall from grace in 1798, when Goya was working on the 'Caprichose etchings." (Information on wall at the Goya's "the Witches and Old Women Album" at the Courtauld gallery in London)
 

To Rise and Fall/ "Subir y bajar"

c) Mapping the transformation

i) The satyr's lit knee lends itself as a starting point for the buttocks in Dali's painting, before being transformed by elements from other works by Goya as explored below. It holds onto the legs of the woman standing above and inspires the way the hand holds the woman's breast, and perhaps the satyr's head transformeds into the large grotesque hand.  Before the satyr, someone has his legs and rear in the air which becomes a starting point for where Dali places the large hand in the lower left of the painting The tuft of hair held by the woman's hand on the left inspire the splayed out toes on the end of the foot standing on the buttocks

ii) The upper part of the lower leg standing upon the buttocks seems inspired by the form of the Satyr's foot held in the air in "Subir y bajar" as seen further above while in that picture the arm of the inverted person floating into the distance becomes the lower part of that leg, and it also might have inspired the stretched foot standing upon the buttocks, just as the position of the satyr's foot reversed may have inspired the extended oddity of the foot supporting the buttocks beneath.

satyr's foot with inverted man
in the distance from To Rise and Fall/ "Subir y bajar"

leg detail from
Salvador Dali's "soft construction with 
boiled beans (premonition of civil war)"

d) Quéjate al tiempo

Another drawing that that I noticed on that day at the Courtauld Gallery from the collection that possibly entered into the painting was  Quéjate al tiempo (Accuse the Time) that I think informed Dali with ideas for the upper body and head of this character. This illustration was started in 1802 and finished a decade later.  However her arm on the left becomes transformed into an elongated breast being held by a hand, perhaps partially inspired by her own hand positioned there merged with the Satyr's hand holding a leg in "Subir y bajar" and the general form of its head,. The form of the dress spread out up to the hand also inspires the form of the arm reaching out to squeeze the breast. The arm on the right becomes transformed into the upper part of a bent leg. Her head is similar enough to be the source of the one in the painting and where the hand is held behind the head becomes the hair hanging from the back of the head in Dali's painting.
 

compare the details!

Quéjate al tiempo (Accuse the Time)

e) Goya's "Todos caerán"(All Will Fall) inspired the buttocks?

i) On the 12th of October 2015, Christian De Boeck shared an album with some Goya etchings on his Facebook page from the Gallica Facebook page and I made another connection. Compare the buttocks from Soft Constructon With Boiled Beans ( Premonition of a Civil War) painting with the plucked harpy in the lower right from Goya's 1799 etching "Todos caerán"("All Will Fall "), another from the Los Caprichos series, no.19.  

ii) Notice the position of the humerus part of the wing in Goya's etching and the line of the fracture along the upper right of the buttocks. The position of the fracture also loosely ties in with the place of the shadow on the knee if the satyr in "Subir y bajar" which also ties in with the ideas behind the buttocks formation.

Goya's All Will Fall from the Los Caprichos

f) Goya's "Unos á otros" also inspire the shape of the buttocks in Dali's painting

i.) On the 13th of October 2015, I realised that Goya's "Unos á otros" from the Los Caprichos series (No.77) shows people playing toreador, the part of the image showing the boy holding the padded shape representing the bull in a reversed form lends its shape to the harpy transformed into buttocks and so the head of the harpy becomes a featureless boiled bean like lump, the boy's arm, legs and behind become transformed into the foot and ankle supporting the buttocks. 

ii.) One might take note of the spears in Goya's image and perhaps think that Dali took some interest, and so the leg standing upon the buttocks in his painting is partially as thin as a stick. and one might also merge this with the tree trunk from "All will fall".  Also it merges with what was discovered about the satyr's raised foot with inverted man in the distance as seen in the picture To Rise and Fall/ "Subir y bajar".

 Goya's  "Unos á otros" from the Los Caprichos series (No.77)

g) See the Caprichos Prints as displayed on Wikipedia

Alien: 1979

leading from

Alien

(still collating)

January

Mediascene (Jan/Feb 1979, Issue # 35)



May

 

 

Sunday 13th May 1979 

 

Alien premieres in Monte Carlo

1. HR Giger: 13 May 1979, Monte Carlo, first showing The cocoon scene wasn't used here, since it would have interrupted the steadily mounting tension in the film, (Giger's Alien, p51)
   

Friday 25th May  

 

See: Alien premieres at the Egyptian Theatre

 

June

Monday 11th June
Daily Mirror have an article about Alien and HR Giger (Alien Day One/How a monster called 'Thingy' is taking over the world!)

Tuesday 12th June 
Daily Mirror has an article about Sigourney Weaver ("Beauties of the Beast")

Wednesday 13th June 
Daily Mirror has another article about Alien ("Face To Face With The Alien")


July 

Fantastic Films #8,
Future Life #11, July 1979

August

September

Fantastic Films #10
Starlog #26 (Ridley Scott - Directing 'Alien' Though an Artist's Eyes / H.R. Giger - Behind the Alien Formsby David Houston)

Tuesday 4th September.
The Alien edition of TimeOut 7th to 13th September comes out.

Thursday, 6th September
Alien premiers in Leicester Square, London, UK


October

Fantastic Films #11,
Famous Monsters #158: Special 1980 annual


Monday, 1st October

Illustrated news publish a review on Alien


November

Questar #5,
Fantastic Films #12