Get to Know Swiss Modern Art

Evelina Rioukhina and Lyubov Chumakova, UNECE

Château de Gruyère is a favourite weekend destination. It is undoubtedly one of the most visited places in Switzerland by those who live and work in Geneva. People go there to admire the Medieval Château, and also to taste the reputable and very specific, for this region, fondue prepared with the world-famous Gruyère cheese. We were surprised to discover that very few of our colleagues have visited the Museum of Giger (in the Château). Do not miss it next time you visit Château de Gruyère. Or go there just for this Museum – you will be greatly impressed. And this is the best way to get to know Swiss modern art.

Those who have repeatedly watched movies from the series of The Alien may never have thought of who designed the heroes and decorations. We suggest you draw the curtains and to learn more about an artist who made a vast contribution into the films. Hans-Ruedi Giger is well-known not only in Switzerland but also around the world. He was born in Chur in 1940. His whole experience became a source of inspiration. He did not initially develop his unique form of visionary art within a consciously acknowledged esoteric tradition. Rather, Giger’s art-form images often take shape in ethereal misty-grey light, leading the viewer into nightmarish caverns or into magical spaces from which there is no tangible means of escape. In recent years Giger has become very much an intuitive magician – his art providing a haunting testimony to the potent energies which stir deep down within the wellspring of the psyche.

As a child Giger built skeletons of card- board, wire and plaster and had an “overwhelming disgust of worms and snakes – a loathing which still manifests itself in his paintings today. Also, while training at the Zurich School of Applied Arts, he became fascinated by images of torture and horror – a fascination stimulated by being shown photographs of the hideous murder of the Emperor of China in 1904, and also by learning of the legends associated with Vlad the Impaler – the historical figure on which the Dracula tales were founded. Giger later became intrigued by the fantasy writings of H.P.Lovercraft, especially his Cthulhu mythos and Necronomicon. Part of the appeal, as he has himself acknowledged, was that the Necronomicon purported to be …“a book of magic which would bring dreadful misfortune to mankind should it fall into the wrong hands”. In includes the legend of the great gods with almost unpronounceable names, such as Cthulhu and You-Sothoth, “who slumber in the depths of the earth and oceans and who will arise at a certain time – when the starts are right – to seize world domination”. Giger’s friend and mentor Sergius Golowin later suggested Giger’s Necronomicon as a title for the first major book on the artist’s visionary art-works – a remarkable collection of esoteric images first published in Basle in 1977 and later released in an English edition.

Many of Giger’s most distinctive paint- ings are based substantially on the beautiful actress Li Tobler, whom Giger met in 1966, when she was 18 years old. Giger recalls that Li “had enormous vitality and a great appetite for life”. She also wanted her life to be “short but intense”. Li Tobler is a prototype for the many tortured but ethereal women in Giger’s paintings who peer forth from the torment of snakes, needles and stifling prison-vaults fashioned from bones. Giger painted Li’s body several times with an airbrush and there are a number of photographs of her posing naked – like a woman of mystery struggling to emerge from a nightmare that has possessed her soul. Regrettable, the life of Li Tobler came to a sudden and tragic end. Drawn increasingly into an intense schedule of theatrical performances around the country and also plunged into emotional turmoil, Li shot herself with a revolver on White Monday 1975. From Giger more recent work it is clear that he was (and perhaps is) still haunted by Li Tobler: the simultaneous agony and job of living with her had helped establish a dynamic of fear and transcendence in the paintings, and this was an ongoing legacy of their relationship.

Now Giger lives in an atmosphere that simultaneously evoked a sense of magic and paranoia. Upstairs, he has his studio. At one end it is total chaos – a little splattered paint, brushes and discarded works of art. Here he experiments with airbrush techniques, spraying patterns through metal grids and exploring different textures of light and shade. The main downstairs room in his two-storey terraced house is dominated by remarkable paintings, which feature Medusa-like women with ghostly-pale skin, snakes in their hair and strange shapes and forms writhing around their bodies. Claws, needles, machine-guns and barbs have also become a central aspect in Giger’s visual iconography. In the centre of the long table which occupies his living room is an engraved pentagram, and also a set of candlesticks whole flames cast an eerie light on the paintings nearby. A tall row of shelves in one corner of the room reveals a row of skulls and authentic shrunken heads from a cannibalistic tribe. It is here that Giger has places his Oscar for “Best Achievement for Visual Effects”, won in 1980 for his contribution to the film The Alien – a tribute to his bizarre imagination.

His exhibitions were shown the world over, original prints issued as portfolio books provoke discussions. What is true is that feeling somehow strange after the exhibition, nobody remains indifferent. Some – admire, some – reject. Definitely, all are geatly impressed.

You can enter his universe in his own museum in Château de Gruyère, you can get to know how he lives, how he works. You can visit The Alien room and see his paintings. Do not dismiss them, whether you admire them or not. This is the best celebrity in arts in the country where you live and work. Try to think, try to understand. Or at least, get to know Swiss modern art.