WEBVTT - H. R. Giger and the Biomechanical Soul 0:00:03.080 --> 0:00:05.920 Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff 0:00:05.920 --> 0:00:15.200 Works dot com. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow 0:00:15.240 --> 0:00:17.840 your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb, and my name 0:00:18.040 --> 0:00:23.319 is Christian Sager. Robert, When did you first encounter the 0:00:23.360 --> 0:00:27.000 work of hr Geeker? He must have been adolescent younger, 0:00:27.360 --> 0:00:30.120 Oh man, it would have been when I saw the 0:00:30.200 --> 0:00:33.199 Alien movies, or at least began to pick up on 0:00:33.240 --> 0:00:36.600 their existence. Uh. And I don't remember in what order 0:00:36.640 --> 0:00:38.200 I saw them. I think I might have actually seen 0:00:38.240 --> 0:00:42.880 Aliens first, like on TV, yeah, before moving into almost positive. 0:00:42.960 --> 0:00:46.000 That was the same experience I had, was I saw 0:00:46.120 --> 0:00:50.960 Aliens before I saw Alien, but probably saw both before 0:00:51.000 --> 0:00:53.880 I was like, I don't know, twelve or thirteen years old, 0:00:54.280 --> 0:00:57.680 but like, uh, I also always thought of him as 0:00:57.720 --> 0:00:59.360 that guy like you would go to the mall and 0:00:59.400 --> 0:01:02.520 there would be like precursors to hot topic where like 0:01:03.280 --> 0:01:05.640 they would have like t shirts or posters and stuff 0:01:05.680 --> 0:01:08.440 with hr geegers art on them, And that was just 0:01:08.480 --> 0:01:11.240 something I always thought of, like kind of industrial kids 0:01:11.760 --> 0:01:14.479 loved that stuff. They would be like these big hr 0:01:14.560 --> 0:01:18.520 Geeger kind of tapestries that you could get for your 0:01:18.600 --> 0:01:20.800 room or something like that. The other big memory I 0:01:20.840 --> 0:01:23.880 have of of learning about Giger is that I would 0:01:23.880 --> 0:01:26.040 go to bookstores a lot, especially with my dad, and 0:01:26.319 --> 0:01:28.000 he would he would go to the history section and 0:01:28.040 --> 0:01:30.960 look around, and I'd really get into looking at horror 0:01:31.040 --> 0:01:33.760 books and sci fi and fantasy. And then I would 0:01:33.760 --> 0:01:37.320 also check out the the art and photography section, and 0:01:37.360 --> 0:01:40.120 there was all sorts of weird and interesting things to 0:01:40.200 --> 0:01:43.880 discover their, including Geeger. You'd beend up picking up, you know, 0:01:43.959 --> 0:01:45.720 a copy I don't remember if they had a copy 0:01:45.760 --> 0:01:48.600 of I feel like a Barnes and Noble and Huntsville, 0:01:48.640 --> 0:01:52.120 Alabama had a copy of Necronomicon, which was is one 0:01:52.160 --> 0:01:53.920 of his books that was just filled with all of 0:01:53.920 --> 0:01:57.200 these these designs that would lead to aliens, but they're 0:01:58.480 --> 0:02:01.880 so surreal, they're and uh and and engage all of 0:02:01.920 --> 0:02:06.160 this uh this, these these obscene and uh and beautiful 0:02:06.600 --> 0:02:10.280 and alien themes in them. Um And as a as 0:02:10.320 --> 0:02:11.640 a young kid, you're looking at it and you just 0:02:11.680 --> 0:02:14.280 don't even know what to think about it. No, absolutely, 0:02:14.400 --> 0:02:18.360 I was looking over the notes before we came in here, 0:02:18.440 --> 0:02:21.920 and I realized that when I first saw his artwork, 0:02:22.480 --> 0:02:24.240 it made me feel like it was something I wasn't 0:02:24.240 --> 0:02:26.480 supposed to be looking at it made me feel shameful 0:02:27.000 --> 0:02:29.120 because I was a kid and it was probably that 0:02:29.160 --> 0:02:31.400 point in my life where it was like like if 0:02:31.440 --> 0:02:34.240 you saw like another person naked, you were like, oh, 0:02:34.320 --> 0:02:38.120 I'm terrible, I'm a bad person, you know, like uh, 0:02:38.160 --> 0:02:42.560 And Geeger's art felt like that somehow, maybe that's uniquely American. 0:02:42.639 --> 0:02:45.800 I wonder if, like the Swiss culture that he came 0:02:45.840 --> 0:02:50.960 from had that same kind of puritanical uptightness about nudity. Well, 0:02:51.000 --> 0:02:53.280 I think based on some of the material we looked 0:02:53.280 --> 0:02:55.680 at here for this episode, that that you saw a 0:02:55.720 --> 0:02:58.480 split there and there were those that they were certainly 0:02:58.520 --> 0:03:02.160 more you know, buttoned down, and then those who understand 0:03:02.200 --> 0:03:05.360 what he was going for. But I also remember in 0:03:05.520 --> 0:03:08.440 college getting on the Internet for the first time and 0:03:08.480 --> 0:03:11.399 discovering a lot of these these especially fantasy and sci 0:03:11.440 --> 0:03:14.959 fi artists, and Giger really stands out from a lot 0:03:14.960 --> 0:03:16.520 of them because a lot of the stuff I was 0:03:16.800 --> 0:03:22.440 getting into it was still basically you know, like beautiful princess, 0:03:22.480 --> 0:03:27.320 beautiful wizard, beautiful barbarian people and then monsters. But but 0:03:27.440 --> 0:03:33.239 Geger's stuff was the beauty and the monstrosity all smeared together. Um, 0:03:33.280 --> 0:03:35.640 it was challenging. You know, there were there were certain 0:03:35.680 --> 0:03:38.760 images that were that were less challenging than others. But 0:03:39.080 --> 0:03:43.080 because there's certainly deep gieger out there, there's certain works 0:03:43.080 --> 0:03:45.480 that you really have to to puzzle over to figure 0:03:45.520 --> 0:03:48.720 out how you feel about them. Um. But yeah, I 0:03:48.760 --> 0:03:51.040 always felt like his work was was certainly more more 0:03:51.120 --> 0:03:55.800 challenging and maybe maybe in a sense more you know, artistically, um, 0:03:56.080 --> 0:03:58.440 relevant than a lot of the stuff that it's often 0:03:58.440 --> 0:04:00.960 grouped with. It's funny you use that term challenging because 0:04:01.000 --> 0:04:04.480 I think, like I obviously was aware of aliens and 0:04:04.600 --> 0:04:07.520 alien but I don't think I knew that he was 0:04:07.560 --> 0:04:11.200 a person who did these things until like the Dead 0:04:11.280 --> 0:04:15.320 Kennedy's used his artwork for their album Franken Christ and 0:04:15.360 --> 0:04:18.200 that was like a big incident where I mean, this 0:04:18.279 --> 0:04:21.320 is the like late eighties early nineties in general, but 0:04:21.400 --> 0:04:25.200 just Jello Biafra constantly getting into trouble and like going 0:04:25.240 --> 0:04:26.720 in and I think that he had to go to 0:04:26.800 --> 0:04:31.479 trial over the artwork. Because essentially, this is probably a 0:04:31.560 --> 0:04:33.479 good point for us to say, like this might not 0:04:33.560 --> 0:04:36.080 be the safest of episodes to listen to with your kids, 0:04:36.560 --> 0:04:41.480 but this artwork is just a series of of orifices 0:04:41.680 --> 0:04:45.719 and phalluses like filling one another, right, and then there's 0:04:45.760 --> 0:04:47.359 a lot of that in his work, but this is 0:04:47.400 --> 0:04:50.960 an example where it's far more explicit. And I think, uh, 0:04:51.000 --> 0:04:53.480 I think the afra of originally brought it up almost 0:04:53.480 --> 0:04:55.440 as a joke, like, well, this should be our album cover, 0:04:55.560 --> 0:04:58.520 and then the joke kind of spiraled out of control. Yeah, 0:04:58.560 --> 0:05:02.200 and then uh we So we're gonna get to the 0:05:02.240 --> 0:05:05.080 point pretty soon here on who hr Gieger is and everything. 0:05:05.120 --> 0:05:07.040 But one of the things that we researched for this 0:05:07.080 --> 0:05:11.400 episode was this documentary that came out recently called Dark Star. 0:05:11.480 --> 0:05:14.120 It's on Netflix right now. It's all about him sort 0:05:14.160 --> 0:05:18.040 of in the waning years of his life and his wife. 0:05:18.120 --> 0:05:20.160 I want to say, there's a point where she's talking 0:05:20.160 --> 0:05:23.600 about the frankln Christ album cover and she said that 0:05:23.600 --> 0:05:26.680 that her impression was that the people who wanted a 0:05:26.760 --> 0:05:29.200 band thought it was a photo. They didn't realize it 0:05:29.240 --> 0:05:32.160 was a painting. And she was like, how would you 0:05:32.240 --> 0:05:35.520 possibly arrange all of these people's bodies to be able 0:05:35.560 --> 0:05:37.760 to pull this off? Like, if you've seen this, this thing, 0:05:37.839 --> 0:05:40.520 it would just be it would be impossible. It would 0:05:40.520 --> 0:05:44.960 be like the weirdest game of twister you've ever played. Yes, 0:05:45.360 --> 0:05:48.279 oh yeah, and we should probably before we before we 0:05:48.320 --> 0:05:50.839 get into it too, we should also say both Robert 0:05:50.839 --> 0:05:55.640 and I are fans of Super Egos version comedy version 0:05:55.640 --> 0:05:57.800 of hr Gieger, which is done by Matt Gorley, so 0:05:57.839 --> 0:06:00.880 we may occasionally uh slip been to that. If you 0:06:01.080 --> 0:06:03.320 like Geiger and you've never heard of it, I totally 0:06:03.400 --> 0:06:05.920 recommend it. Super Egoes a comedy podcast a couple of 0:06:05.960 --> 0:06:07.880 years old now, but that was like one of their 0:06:07.920 --> 0:06:10.920 running bits was Matt Gorley doing hr Geeger as if 0:06:10.920 --> 0:06:15.320 he had to interact with with very mundanely events like 0:06:15.320 --> 0:06:17.840 like what's it like if he goes through McDonald's drive through, 0:06:18.040 --> 0:06:20.200 or what's it like when he has to sign paperwork 0:06:20.240 --> 0:06:21.919 for his kid to go on a field trip. And 0:06:21.960 --> 0:06:24.920 will include some links to the videos related to this 0:06:25.200 --> 0:06:27.200 on the landing page for this episode is Stuff to 0:06:27.200 --> 0:06:30.120 Blow your Mind dot com. So obviously we're talking about 0:06:30.240 --> 0:06:32.680 hr Geiger today, but but I just want to reiterate 0:06:32.760 --> 0:06:36.080 why we're talking about Geeker, and I basically comes down 0:06:36.120 --> 0:06:38.920 to this, we've pretty much all seen alien or aliens, 0:06:39.000 --> 0:06:42.320 or we've seen the imagery from it. Uh, we're at 0:06:42.400 --> 0:06:45.960 least all familiar surface level with Geeger's work, and it's 0:06:46.000 --> 0:06:49.280 so popular, and it's been so popular in mainstream for 0:06:49.320 --> 0:06:52.839 so long, and I say mainstream and just mainstream awareness. Now, 0:06:52.920 --> 0:06:56.560 obviously there are different levels of appreciation for Geeger, but 0:06:57.520 --> 0:06:59.560 I think it's easy in the midst of all of 0:06:59.560 --> 0:07:05.560 this um, this mainstream presence, to forget to lose track 0:07:05.560 --> 0:07:08.360 of or even not appreciate like what the man was about, 0:07:08.440 --> 0:07:11.120 what his work was about, and what sort of of 0:07:11.280 --> 0:07:15.160 legacy it has, especially as we as we move on 0:07:15.240 --> 0:07:17.240 through the twenty first century and look back at the 0:07:17.280 --> 0:07:20.800 twentieth century, look at this this century. Uh, the Gieger 0:07:20.880 --> 0:07:24.600 and his work emerged from. Yeah, this is gonna sound pretentious, 0:07:24.800 --> 0:07:28.760 but I going over these notes and reading up on 0:07:28.920 --> 0:07:33.520 the real deep psychological look at his work and what 0:07:33.560 --> 0:07:35.200 it means and what it kind of brings out in 0:07:35.240 --> 0:07:40.280 people who come to it. I can't imagine another artist 0:07:40.400 --> 0:07:43.720 right now who is as transgressive as Gieger was, but 0:07:43.840 --> 0:07:49.040 was simultaneously evoking the themes of the of the modern age, 0:07:49.440 --> 0:07:52.480 you know, like he was really capturing themes of the moment, 0:07:52.840 --> 0:07:54.920 but at the same time presenting them in such a 0:07:54.960 --> 0:07:57.560 way that they seemed like, like I said, things you 0:07:57.600 --> 0:08:01.080 shouldn't be looking at um. I know, I'd love to 0:08:01.080 --> 0:08:03.080 hear from the audience if there's somebody out there that 0:08:03.160 --> 0:08:05.640 I'm just unaware of. It's like this outsider artist that's 0:08:05.680 --> 0:08:09.080 totally doing that. But Gieger maybe it's just because it's 0:08:09.080 --> 0:08:12.040 our generation to Giger really captured that for me. Yeah, 0:08:12.160 --> 0:08:14.920 I like that you mentioned outsider artist because something that 0:08:14.920 --> 0:08:17.680 that definitely came up in the research and comes up 0:08:17.680 --> 0:08:21.960 and watching that documentary Dark Star, is that Geeger is 0:08:22.000 --> 0:08:23.680 kind of in a class all his own because he 0:08:23.760 --> 0:08:27.280 started off, you know, is you know, very much like 0:08:27.640 --> 0:08:31.240 a localized artist, and then he starts getting some success 0:08:31.240 --> 0:08:33.880 shipping posters off to New York, kind of having some 0:08:33.920 --> 0:08:36.880 success as a poster artist, but still he's he's very 0:08:36.960 --> 0:08:39.480 much small time and then he just skyrockets to the 0:08:39.520 --> 0:08:43.760 top via his involvement in an alien and so he 0:08:43.840 --> 0:08:45.959 never is So he was he kind of was a 0:08:46.160 --> 0:08:48.280 was an outsider to the entire arts scene for a 0:08:48.400 --> 0:08:50.560 very long time really until the last few decades of 0:08:50.600 --> 0:08:53.920 his life, because he had kind of skipped over it, 0:08:54.160 --> 0:08:56.120 you know, like like a like a rock skimming across 0:08:56.160 --> 0:08:59.559 the water. So he was he was not quite an 0:08:59.720 --> 0:09:04.520 artist startists, and he was mainstream but also very challenging 0:09:04.559 --> 0:09:07.760 and difficult for a lot of people. He also had certain, 0:09:07.960 --> 0:09:11.280 uh you know, outsider artists sensibilities, especially in the documentary 0:09:11.320 --> 0:09:14.040 when you see his backyard, you know, it reminds you 0:09:14.080 --> 0:09:16.480 of some of these you know, classic examples of say 0:09:16.559 --> 0:09:20.360 Southern outsider artists who are just creating stuff because they 0:09:20.400 --> 0:09:23.760 have to and uh and and there maybe not as 0:09:23.800 --> 0:09:27.120 interested in how it matches up to uh, you know, 0:09:27.200 --> 0:09:29.760 artistic sensibilities at all. This is going to be the 0:09:29.800 --> 0:09:31.720 second time in like two weeks that I've mentioned this 0:09:31.760 --> 0:09:34.240 podcast on the show, but it reminded me of S Town. 0:09:34.840 --> 0:09:38.400 So without spoiling S Town, the main sort of focus 0:09:38.559 --> 0:09:41.520 the protagonist, I guess the character piece that s Town 0:09:41.600 --> 0:09:44.840 the podcast is is an artist in a way who 0:09:44.880 --> 0:09:47.840 lives kind of in the middle of nowhere and constructs 0:09:47.840 --> 0:09:50.400 these crazy things in his basement and in his backyard, 0:09:50.520 --> 0:09:53.880 very similar to geeger Um. And there's there's a there's 0:09:53.920 --> 0:09:56.599 a question in s Town of whether or not the 0:09:56.840 --> 0:09:59.920 like chemicals that he was exposed to over the time 0:10:00.040 --> 0:10:02.840 that he was working on his projects may have affected 0:10:02.880 --> 0:10:05.800 his mental health. And it was something I absolutely thought 0:10:05.880 --> 0:10:09.400 of about Gee, girls, we're watching this and then did 0:10:09.480 --> 0:10:11.200 you put it in the notes or did somebody else 0:10:11.240 --> 0:10:14.120 mention it to us that there's some thought that because 0:10:14.160 --> 0:10:17.960 he spent so much time and enclosed spaces doing airbrushing, 0:10:18.400 --> 0:10:21.040 that he might have inhaled a lot of chemicals. I 0:10:21.080 --> 0:10:24.680 have heard that, but I couldn't find any official source 0:10:24.800 --> 0:10:28.360 that that back that up. So yeah, but he did. 0:10:28.440 --> 0:10:33.560 He lived in this wonderland. Uh. And it's if you 0:10:33.559 --> 0:10:36.240 haven't seen dark starts fascinating. Let's let's just put it 0:10:36.280 --> 0:10:39.079 that way. But this episode is really gonna be us. 0:10:39.440 --> 0:10:41.440 We're gonna if you've never heard of geeger before, We're 0:10:41.480 --> 0:10:43.640 gonna spend a little bit of time just walking you 0:10:43.640 --> 0:10:46.480 through like who this guy was, how his life played out, 0:10:46.760 --> 0:10:50.360 and then we're gonna do a dive into the sort 0:10:50.400 --> 0:10:54.720 of psychological academic look at his work and how it 0:10:54.760 --> 0:10:57.840 represents the human experience. Before we move on, I'm gonna 0:10:57.880 --> 0:11:00.839 read a quick quote from Timothy Leary from his intro 0:11:00.960 --> 0:11:03.560 to Geegers Alien, which is a book of of his 0:11:03.720 --> 0:11:06.560 artwork that he created his commission to create for for Alien, 0:11:06.600 --> 0:11:09.760 as well as his thoughts on the filmmaking process Leary says, 0:11:10.360 --> 0:11:13.760 and here's my best Leary voice. In doing this, Visionaries 0:11:13.840 --> 0:11:19.240 like Geeger overstand too much. They overlook, they oversee, they overstate, 0:11:19.440 --> 0:11:23.960 they overthrill, They physically frightened dutiful hive members and often 0:11:24.000 --> 0:11:28.400 become nauseous or screamingly panicked by this simple exposure to 0:11:28.480 --> 0:11:32.560 the tissue fact and cellular fabric of life. Giger, we 0:11:32.640 --> 0:11:35.320 bless you for taking us back down to meet and 0:11:35.400 --> 0:11:40.080 coil and intertwine with our old Darwinian relatives. That was 0:11:40.120 --> 0:11:42.760 pretty good. It sounded a little bit like Carl Sagan 0:11:42.800 --> 0:11:45.400 to me though, too. Yeah, which is another is a 0:11:45.400 --> 0:11:48.360 little more akermity. Okay, if you if you try and 0:11:48.360 --> 0:11:50.240 do a Kermit the Frog, do a bad Kermit the 0:11:50.240 --> 0:11:57.439 Frog voice, you may Yeah. So this is another thing 0:11:57.480 --> 0:11:59.400 that that came to mind as we were doing the 0:11:59.440 --> 0:12:02.680 research for this. Is again like all of these sort 0:12:02.720 --> 0:12:06.720 of outsider thinkers and artists that you and I grew 0:12:06.840 --> 0:12:11.520 up with the influence, the people who influenced us, they're 0:12:11.559 --> 0:12:16.600 all gone now. Geeger's dead, Leary's dead. Yeah. Like when 0:12:16.600 --> 0:12:18.480 I was thinking about all the people who worked on 0:12:18.520 --> 0:12:23.959 Alien behind the scenes, Mobius Um, Dan O'Bannon, just the 0:12:24.280 --> 0:12:27.200 people who really like came to it and like imagined 0:12:27.360 --> 0:12:33.439 that movie into existence through sheer willpower of decisions by committee. 0:12:33.800 --> 0:12:37.440 You know, like they're almost all gone except for Ridley Scott, 0:12:37.520 --> 0:12:39.720 and you know he's still going strong. Well yeah, I 0:12:39.720 --> 0:12:41.840 mean one of the reasons we're doing this episode is 0:12:41.880 --> 0:12:44.080 Alien Day is the week that we're releasing it, and 0:12:44.120 --> 0:12:46.400 then like two weeks after that Alien Covenant is going 0:12:46.440 --> 0:12:49.560 to come out directed by Ridley Scott. He's still cranking 0:12:49.559 --> 0:12:53.600 out these xenomorph movies and we're still watching them. Uh yeah, 0:12:53.640 --> 0:12:57.760 it's it's it's interesting. And I again, like I kind 0:12:57.760 --> 0:12:59.160 of stepped back and I wonder, and I go, like, 0:12:59.200 --> 0:13:02.959 who are the people today who are really like the 0:13:02.960 --> 0:13:09.360 the really gonzo weird thinkers that are influencing kids out there? Well, 0:13:09.559 --> 0:13:11.960 for those of you listening, uh, maybe some of you 0:13:12.040 --> 0:13:13.800 are not as similiar with Gegeger's work. And I'm just 0:13:13.800 --> 0:13:16.400 gonna attempt to briefly describe his work to sum it 0:13:16.480 --> 0:13:20.040 up in one quick statement. An entire man's life work here, 0:13:20.760 --> 0:13:24.120 but essentially most of his work was it boiled down 0:13:24.120 --> 0:13:29.160 to surrey surrealistic bio mechanical realms in which humanoid entities 0:13:29.200 --> 0:13:32.600 shift in and out of an alien landscape, a place 0:13:32.640 --> 0:13:37.000 of cold flesh where birth, sex and death intermingle and 0:13:37.080 --> 0:13:40.319 are at once one and his most famous works are 0:13:40.360 --> 0:13:44.560 an airbrush, but he later abandonedness for pastels and inc Yeah. 0:13:44.679 --> 0:13:47.880 I he worked in so many different kinds of media, 0:13:48.080 --> 0:13:50.439 used the sculptor as well, but I think of him 0:13:50.440 --> 0:13:53.760 mainly as a painter. And one of the astonishing things 0:13:53.800 --> 0:13:56.600 I learned about him from watching this Dark Dark Star 0:13:56.800 --> 0:14:00.240 documentary was that he didn't do any underdrawings. He just 0:14:00.280 --> 0:14:02.960 sit down at the canvas with an airbrush and go. 0:14:03.640 --> 0:14:06.160 And some people might go, well, yeah, I mean, look 0:14:06.160 --> 0:14:08.880 at his stuff. It's so abstract and surreal. Of course 0:14:08.960 --> 0:14:11.040 that he could get away with that, but like, there 0:14:11.160 --> 0:14:15.320 is an anatomical precision to his work. Even if he's 0:14:15.440 --> 0:14:18.760 exaggerating like how long an arm should be, or like 0:14:19.080 --> 0:14:22.560 the way teeth are formed in a mouth, he's thinking 0:14:22.720 --> 0:14:27.080 about actual anatomy and then exaggerating it, and it's it, 0:14:27.400 --> 0:14:31.320 and he's doing all of this improvisationally. It's it's fascinating 0:14:31.360 --> 0:14:34.480 to think about that, just as like a process. Uh. 0:14:34.520 --> 0:14:39.240 And then outside of you know, the obvious sex, death details, 0:14:39.600 --> 0:14:43.400 Geeker as a painter had this amazing ability to translate 0:14:43.520 --> 0:14:46.880 texture in whatever medium he was working in, and that 0:14:46.960 --> 0:14:49.960 really impresses me to like imagine what it would be 0:14:50.040 --> 0:14:53.080 like to reach into one of his paintings and touch 0:14:53.560 --> 0:14:56.240 one of the monstrosities. What would what would it be 0:14:56.280 --> 0:14:59.920 like to pet the head of a xenomorph? I would 0:15:00.000 --> 0:15:02.360 a wet, cold, and ribbed That's what That's the general 0:15:02.440 --> 0:15:06.440 idea I get from most Like, I can't I can't 0:15:06.480 --> 0:15:09.800 decide if the texture would be like hard or brittle 0:15:10.120 --> 0:15:12.800 or gooey or you know, it's just it's all those 0:15:12.880 --> 0:15:16.320 things simultaneously. And you're getting that from I mean that's 0:15:16.320 --> 0:15:19.840 a three dimensional you know, image captured on film, but 0:15:20.000 --> 0:15:22.320 from his two dimensional images you're getting the same thing. 0:15:22.360 --> 0:15:24.360 I mean, he really one of the things that I 0:15:24.440 --> 0:15:27.400 think is great about his work is he really captured 0:15:28.560 --> 0:15:32.320 reflection of light. Most of everybody knows his artwork is 0:15:32.400 --> 0:15:33.960 just being like, oh, it's just a lot of dark 0:15:34.120 --> 0:15:37.320 things and a lot of like phallus is you know, uh, 0:15:37.760 --> 0:15:41.640 going into things, but all of that darkness like captured 0:15:41.720 --> 0:15:45.400 these like you know, unseen beams of light on his 0:15:45.560 --> 0:15:48.640 canvas and then reflected them back. Yeah, and I feel 0:15:48.640 --> 0:15:50.760 like these are these are details that, for a lot 0:15:50.800 --> 0:15:52.960 of us are kind of lost on us when we look, 0:15:53.040 --> 0:15:56.280 especially we don't have an artistic background. You just kind 0:15:56.320 --> 0:15:58.800 of become lost in what he has created and not 0:15:58.960 --> 0:16:01.960 so much the mastery involved in bringing it to life. 0:16:02.400 --> 0:16:04.600 In that documentary, there's scenes where you you get to 0:16:04.640 --> 0:16:07.400 see him more or less starting from scratch, using the 0:16:07.440 --> 0:16:10.840 airbrush to create something, and it's it's amazing just how 0:16:12.240 --> 0:16:14.320 you don't think of an air brush as a precision instrument, 0:16:14.560 --> 0:16:16.840 not at all, and like this, this is what I 0:16:16.960 --> 0:16:18.560 think of when I think of the airbrush. When you 0:16:18.640 --> 0:16:20.680 go to the beach and you get those like custom 0:16:20.720 --> 0:16:24.760 made T shirts, Like that's what I think of as 0:16:24.840 --> 0:16:27.640 air brush art. And then you look at what Gieger 0:16:27.720 --> 0:16:30.120 did with an air brush and it's just this amazingly 0:16:30.240 --> 0:16:34.120 precise detail for a tool that's really I mean, it's 0:16:34.160 --> 0:16:37.880 just spitting ink out and paint, you know. Okay, why 0:16:37.880 --> 0:16:41.400 don't we get into just sort of how this guy 0:16:41.640 --> 0:16:45.760 was made, like like like how he was born into 0:16:45.800 --> 0:16:52.920 the world, how the world gave us hr Geeker. All right, 0:16:52.920 --> 0:16:57.760 we're back, So hands Rudolph Geeger a ka hands Rudy 0:16:57.920 --> 0:17:01.000 to his friends. Um let's talking about Yeah, where he 0:17:01.120 --> 0:17:04.280 came from and uh and how he became the the 0:17:04.560 --> 0:17:08.320 the the icon. So he was born on February five 0:17:08.480 --> 0:17:13.119 in nineteen forty in Sure, Switzerland. I'm not sure if 0:17:13.160 --> 0:17:17.280 that's the right pronunciation. His full name is Hans Rudy Geeger. 0:17:17.680 --> 0:17:20.639 The joke in those super Ego videos is that his 0:17:20.920 --> 0:17:24.359 his real name is hey, really Geeger. But but it 0:17:24.480 --> 0:17:28.440 was Hans Rudy, and everybody in in his life, you know, 0:17:28.560 --> 0:17:30.520 close by, they just referred to him as Hans Rudy 0:17:30.560 --> 0:17:32.960 all the time. Nobody called him Gieger like we do 0:17:33.160 --> 0:17:35.680 here in the West. We're just like Gieger. That's the 0:17:35.720 --> 0:17:39.120 only way we can describe this guy. Um. Yeah, he's 0:17:39.160 --> 0:17:42.399 just this fascinating character. Yeah. So he he had a 0:17:42.640 --> 0:17:46.240 loving mother who was very close with the all her life. 0:17:47.119 --> 0:17:49.600 His father was by all counts a bit distant. He 0:17:49.720 --> 0:17:53.119 was a pharmacist and according to a standards Lav Groff, 0:17:53.720 --> 0:17:56.680 a psychiatrist and gear author who will get into later, 0:17:57.240 --> 0:18:00.840 Geger's father was was strict a little distant. Uh but 0:18:00.960 --> 0:18:04.200 he but he only ever struck Geeger once. This crazy, 0:18:04.400 --> 0:18:07.960 this story is crazy. Yeah. So I don't want to 0:18:08.440 --> 0:18:11.320 to go into it in too much of detail, but essentially, uh, 0:18:11.520 --> 0:18:14.440 Hans Rudy, the young Hans Rudy was was stealing power 0:18:14.520 --> 0:18:18.800 cables from a street construction project and he was trying 0:18:18.880 --> 0:18:21.359 to to burn the cables down in the cellar of 0:18:21.440 --> 0:18:24.960 his parents house to get to get lead for making bullets. 0:18:25.560 --> 0:18:28.040 And then the smoke ended up a rising up and 0:18:28.160 --> 0:18:31.159 it polluted and destroyed most of his uh a lot 0:18:31.200 --> 0:18:33.399 of the stuff in his farm in the pharmacy. Everything 0:18:33.520 --> 0:18:35.560 was black and sticky and oily, and they had to 0:18:35.600 --> 0:18:37.879 spend a fair amount of money getting everything cleaned up. 0:18:38.240 --> 0:18:41.440 And so um, that was It was a very tense moment, 0:18:41.880 --> 0:18:44.959 but it just Dad was pretty upset about that one. Yeah. Uh. 0:18:45.320 --> 0:18:47.800 And then tell the story about him with the skull. 0:18:48.160 --> 0:18:50.960 Oh yeah, so a little little kid with a skull. Yeah, 0:18:51.040 --> 0:18:53.359 his father gave him a human skull when he was 0:18:53.440 --> 0:18:54.960 a small boy. And I guess you know, this is 0:18:55.080 --> 0:18:58.959 kind of the pharmacist uh reference coming into play here. 0:18:59.440 --> 0:19:02.080 So he gr has said in interviews that he was 0:19:02.240 --> 0:19:04.120 he was kind of terrified by this because here's death 0:19:04.200 --> 0:19:06.399 in your hands. So he tied a string to it 0:19:06.440 --> 0:19:08.240 and he would drag it through the streets like it 0:19:08.400 --> 0:19:11.200 was you know, some sort of a toy boat or something. 0:19:12.000 --> 0:19:14.480 And then he built a ghost train in his backyard 0:19:14.600 --> 0:19:17.200 to scare into the light neighborhood kids. And then he 0:19:17.200 --> 0:19:20.920 would he would later build another ghost train in his 0:19:21.000 --> 0:19:23.560 backyard as a as an old man. Yeah, and and 0:19:23.800 --> 0:19:27.119 so all of these seemed to be attempts of a 0:19:27.320 --> 0:19:30.560 child to conquer his fear of death or things that 0:19:30.720 --> 0:19:36.840 scared him, like like tunnels or asphyxiating enclosures, things like that. Yeah, Um, 0:19:37.080 --> 0:19:39.840 something I didn't know about him about his childhood. As 0:19:39.920 --> 0:19:42.760 a kid, his uncle Otto taught him how to make 0:19:42.840 --> 0:19:47.639 homemade weapons through lead casting and working with wood and 0:19:47.760 --> 0:19:51.200 other metals. And there was also an antique dealer that 0:19:51.280 --> 0:19:53.840 lived in this same town, and that guy taught him 0:19:53.880 --> 0:19:57.960 how to handle these weapons and also provided him with 0:19:58.080 --> 0:20:01.200 like a bunch of weapons for his personal collection. This 0:20:01.560 --> 0:20:06.399 little kid is handmaking like blades and knives and stuff like. 0:20:07.200 --> 0:20:10.800 Of course, he like becomes this guy who goes on 0:20:10.960 --> 0:20:15.520 to design you know, Zeno morph It's pretty fascinating. But 0:20:15.600 --> 0:20:18.879 then he goes on to get an education. Yeah. So 0:20:19.280 --> 0:20:22.880 his father, his mother was just you know, completely supportive 0:20:22.920 --> 0:20:25.000 of everything he did his whole life. They are these 0:20:25.040 --> 0:20:28.600 wonderful pictures of of him a younger geeger and his 0:20:28.800 --> 0:20:32.000 his his elderly mother and she's she's wearing black as well, 0:20:32.160 --> 0:20:34.879 attending a showing of his work, and so she just 0:20:35.200 --> 0:20:37.760 you know, kind of embraced it no matter, you know, 0:20:37.880 --> 0:20:41.320 how weird. Uh the work actually was, would be pretty 0:20:41.320 --> 0:20:43.879 great if she like put corpse paint on and his 0:20:44.200 --> 0:20:47.280 his bar. Uh. But but his father, you know, a 0:20:47.320 --> 0:20:49.879 getting far more sensible, and he said, all right, you 0:20:49.920 --> 0:20:53.200 need to study industrial design and architecture, and so he 0:20:53.320 --> 0:20:56.120 did at the School for Applied Arts and Zurich. Yeah, 0:20:56.160 --> 0:20:58.800 and he also attended military college to learn to be 0:20:58.920 --> 0:21:02.200 a mortar gunner. So this guy has like, uh, this 0:21:02.400 --> 0:21:05.320 trace background in his younger years of like really dealing 0:21:05.359 --> 0:21:07.359 with weaponry. And my understanding was like once he went 0:21:07.400 --> 0:21:11.640 to that military college, like his fascination with guns completely disappeared. Um. 0:21:12.280 --> 0:21:15.880 This is the school though, where he first started doing 0:21:16.080 --> 0:21:20.600 his ink drawings that later became uh titled Adam Kinder. 0:21:20.720 --> 0:21:22.480 A lot of people have seen these and maybe didn't 0:21:22.520 --> 0:21:24.600 know this was the name. Or Atomic Children is how 0:21:24.640 --> 0:21:28.119 it translates into English. And they represented his ideas about 0:21:28.200 --> 0:21:30.920 nuclear war and the mutating effects that it would have 0:21:31.119 --> 0:21:35.240 on humanity. Before he graduated. He also became super interested 0:21:35.280 --> 0:21:37.399 in Freud, which we're gonna talk about a lot. Uh. 0:21:37.440 --> 0:21:39.960 And he started keeping a dream journal that he used 0:21:40.000 --> 0:21:42.159 as a resource for years to come. He would just 0:21:42.320 --> 0:21:46.320 mind this for ideas for all of his creations. So 0:21:46.400 --> 0:21:49.000 he graduates from school, he goes on to work for 0:21:49.080 --> 0:21:55.239 Andreas Kristen, designing office furniture for the Knoll International Company. Uh. 0:21:55.320 --> 0:21:57.600 And he during this time he had his first solo 0:21:57.680 --> 0:22:00.320 gallery exhib exhibition. This was like a year or after 0:22:00.359 --> 0:22:03.440