Birth Machine

The appearance of Hans Rudy Giger in the light was not easy. Most likely, during childbirth the child was stuck, so the obstetrician had to pull it out using forceps. A friend of the artist, psychologist Stanislav Grof, argued that it is in this circumstance that the reason for the nightmares of the artist turned into the plots of his paintings lies. According to Grof's theory, every person before birth, during and in the first few days after birth passes through the states that form the features of the psyche. And these states are both positive and negative.

If you apply this theory to the pictures of Giger, it becomes evident that during the birth of the artist, he experienced many unpleasant moments. Many of his works depict a tight closed space, sometimes similar to the mother's womb, which causes attacks of claustrophobia and suffocation. Virtually none of the paintings of Hans Rudy have a sense of spaciousness. In addition, a separate place in the work of Giger is occupied by infants. Throughout his life he painted them again and again: ugly, semi-mechanical creatures that do not evoke any pleasant feelings (1, 2).

"Birth Machine" - one of the early works of Giger. Here he fully reveals a painful topic for himself. Eerie children, similar to aliens, are not just closely seated in awkward poses in a pistol clip in anticipation of a "shot." The future of each of them is already predetermined: in their hands - miniature copies of the same pistol with the same clips of children. This image, most likely, so influenced Giger, that he used it more than once. In 1999, he created the sculpture "Birth Machine" (an exact copy of this picture), which now adorns the entrance to the Museum of Gigera (1, 2).

Author: Evgenia Sidelnikova