Death of an artist

Swiss artist H.R. Giger has died.  He was only 74.

Giger was best known for his work on the 1979 film Alien, which his creature and set design helped elevate far beyond the regular run of SF and horror films.  But his output of painting and sculpture was vast and diverse, and took surrealism to a whole new level.

If there was a common theme, it was the mixing of organic and mechanical imagery ("biomechanoid"), and his work often included bizarre sexual and reproductive references.

His vision was unsettling, but it was truly his own.  Few artists can claim a body of work so unique and distinctive.  Never timid or constrained by convention, never sinking to the bland allegory preferred by politicized art nor the empty randomness of the purely abstract, he was shining steel rising above a sea of mush.