Fetish Art

It was the late '70s and Alien just came out. The conceptual artist H. R. Giger did most of the organic and wet design and, in the seductive way in which art eats itself, I was drawn to his urgent paintings and to Brain Salad Surgery to Necronomicon, his coffee-table book.

(That I should have a coffee table that had such attention-getting art in full view.)

As a teen who should not have had access to such imagery it fueled my imagination beyond what my hormones could handle. The objectification - as well as the alienating - aspect of his female figures underlined a dread and disgust that was as attractive as it was messy.  Oils, fluids, bones where flesh should be, metallic clits and phalluses ("phalli"?) that were urgent, potent, painful-looking and fucking hot.

These images and the unspoken - unspeakable! - power of his imagination are still with me.  News of his passing made me remember my uncharted teenage libido.

This is fetish art, hiding behind horror and SF, made mainstream by the film and progressive rock album covers. Giger was not interested in faces, he was interested in texture. That his paintings were in sepia or black and white to hide the realism only made me look closer and longer.