HR Giger: Spectres of Ernst Fuchs's
"Triumph Of The Sphinx"
in Giger's National Park


 
leading from
and  



"National Park" from 1975.

Ernst Fuchs' "Triumph of the Sphinx" (1966)


a) American Football/Rugby ball holder and Wideskull with protective head gear
i) On 17th April 2015, I started to wonder about the nature of this painting looking at the central creature with it's face lost amongst the bumps of its warty skin above the shoulder of an arm stump with a fore armless prosthetic hand attached is carrying a ball for Rugby or American football and that the fact it was playing a ball game related to this strange eggshaped skull that might have been wearing protective gear for such a game.

ii) On November 4th 2015, as I sat on an aeroplane travelling to England, I suddenly realised that this strange deformed torso holding a American football/ Rugby ball was inspired the fading arm and the breast of the Sphinx in Fuchs's painting "Triumph of the Sphinx"  which I had come across recently
The sphinx's breast transforms into the football, and the fading arm inspires the thalydomide arm. The wings stemming from the back are also present but transformed into rib like structures and indeed there appeared to be very vague suggestions of an oval form to be transformed by Giger into a human head with the wing pipe beneath it transformed into a snake

Body from Triumph of the Sphinx and mutant sportsmen
 

skull with protective headgear and ear phones


very loose impression of an oval skulled face positioned
above the wings in Fuch's triumph of the Sphinx
and egg shaped skull in National Park.




rugby ball or American football carrier

b) Split skull with back extension 
A vague suggestion of a head with an elongated structure extending from the back becomes transformed into a skull like head with the upper part split open and an extension which I would liken to a depiction of a fallopian tube in the section Comparisons to the Human Uterus. 
However the skull face I think may have been inspired by one from a Dado painting from 1969 "Tribute to Cazotte,"

Suggestion of a head with form stretching from the back in
comparison to the skull in Giger's National Park
c) Face with crash helmet
A humanoid face with eyes hidden beneath a crash helmet and a pipe grows from his chin, possibly this is actually based on the heavy face of this sphinx in Fuch's picture 


Head in National Park and face from Triumph Of The Sphinx

No comments:

Post a Comment