At the gates of delirium

The house is " relatively " normal, a " typical suburban townhouse 20 minutes away from downtown Las Vegas. Except for the gargoyle near the front door. Well, what do you expect from the house of a guy who is the publisher of H.R. Giger’s Necronomicon and books on other practitioners of fantastic art?

Let me rewind things a bit: I am in Las Vegas, Nevada for a totally unrelated assignment. I had a bit of downtime one Sunday morning so I took a cab to Galerie Morpheus along Reno Avenue. The gallery sells Giger artworks, furniture, lithographs, books and all things biomechanical, in-store as well as online (from Alien to Species and beyond). Morpheus is owned by James R. Cowan, Giger’s friend, representative and primary publisher in the US. The office was closed, a guy who looked like Ash from Alien told me. I got out of there faster than a bugged-out Sigourney Weaver. The next day I came back and the place was open. A guy named Richard let me in. I was looking at some prints of astounding airbrushed flesh and metal universes in Giger green when out came James R. Cowan himself, as if directed by the Fates (or by Cowan’s other friend, the brilliant director Guillermo del Toro). I told Cowan I love Giger’s dark apocalyptic vision, his compellingly weird anatomies, the general inscrutability of his art…

An aside: there simply is no way to put a finger on the mystery that is Giger. The great painter Ernst Fuchs once wrote, "The serpent’s seductive spirit talks to (Giger) from living machines… This archeology of now and tomorrow, which Giger uses to draw the layers of eternity, fascinates him to the point of hallucination." Giger’s art is nothing short of hallucinogenic.

If you think the stuff here is great, Cowan told me, wait till you see what I have in my house.

Thus, I find myself being ushered by Cowan into his humble abode after a short drive from the gallery. The guy wears a black Polo shirt and khaki slacks, that’s about as conventional as he’s going to get. But as far as Cowan’s preference for art goes — it’s simply not of this Earth.

Inside I spot a white Venetian mask. Cowan explains that doctors wore it to treat patients during the Black Plague. "Imagine if you had the disease and then your doctor comes out wearing that," he says with a laugh. There are paintings by fantastic artists Jacek Yerka, Beksinski and Judson Huss.

Jacek Yerka is a Polish painter. The painting of his that hangs in Cowan’s house was done specifically for the Morpheus owner. "Cowan City" reminds Cowan of Rene Magritte’s "Castle in the Pyrenees" with its tinges of twilight and other things ineffable.

According to Del Toro, Zdzislaw Beksinski, also a Polish artist, forewarns viewers about the fragility of the flesh. The Pan’s Labyrinth director once said, "Beksinski’s paintings manage to evoke at once the process of decay and the ongoing struggle for life, (and) hold within them a secret poetry, stained with blood and rust."

American artist Judson Huss, in a book published by Morpheus, offers an interesting account of how he contracted a staph infection as a young man and lived many months with fevers and boils, fatigue and loneliness, the symptoms of someone who has slid under the very gates of hell. That was when Huss painted his "Fire" series, which he appropriately burned once he got well. Brazil and Tideland director Terry Gilliam once said Huss is "a new Old Master… His canvases glow with ancient Northern European craftsmanship."

It is fascinating to learn about the " works of underrated masters like " Yorba, Beksinski and Huss, when " snobbish fine art magazines only crow about artists who mount vacuum cleaners or pieces of bitten bread in galleries and call them art. Or the works of enamel splashers, which Cowan says could be reproduced by astigmatic apes after a night of heavy drinking. Yorba, Beksinksi and Huss deserve more attention. He pleads the same case for Giger.

"It baffles me that Giger is not up there with other great contemporary artists. But he respects a lot of the artists that I don’t care for — like Andy Warhol or Jeff Koons," he says. "Time will take care of everything. H.R. Giger will have his just place in the world of art."

A lot of museums still haven’t recognized the importance of fantastic art such as Giger’s; it’s an institutional bias. Cowan explains, "They invest in a lot of abstract or minimalist art. But I think the public responds more to fantastic or surreal art. It is the most creative, most stimulating art out there. The artists we’ve worked with not only have great imaginations and great ideas, they also have amazing techniques. It took years of struggle for Giger to develop his airbrush style." It didn’t come from nowhere. Or from another planet.

One of Cowan’s favorites quotes is from surrealist Rene Magritte, who once said, "The purpose of art is mystery." With Hieronymous Bosch paintings, you wonder what those strange beasts are. With the "Mona Lisa," you wonder what she’s smiling so slyly about. With Giger, you wonder what those strange landscapes are — and, more pressingly, from what planet. "When you look at a lot of the kitsch art that is promoted today in the big museums, there is no mystery there whatsoever. It becomes mere décor."

I remember another of Cowan’s favorite quotes: Albert Einstein once observed, "The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious."

Cowan was first drawn to the mysterious mindscapes of Salvador Dali, Bosch, Fuchs, Max Ernst and Pieter Brueghel. When he became a fan of Giger, started collecting his posters and wondered why his books aren’t available in the US, he called up Giger’s manager in Switzerland and asked how he could help.

"He told me, ‘Why don’t you publish his books in the US?’ So, I put together a hundred thousand dollars from my credit cards, and started with the Giger’s Alien book. And it took off from there," Cowan enthuses.

Now Galerie Morpheus ships thousands of Giger items, everything from calendars to cold-cast sculptures to guitars, all over the world. He says, "The H.R. Giger calendar is our top-seller, next is the big Necronomicon book which costs around $70. We run out of that book every year, and every year we reprint it."



An essential book for Giger fans, Necronomicon was " inspired by madman Abdhul al Azred’s " Necronomicon, which deals with "masks or names " of death." Al Azred worshipped the dark gods Cthulu and Yoxodo, performed black magic, and lived in Belet el Jin, known as the forbidden city of the devil. In 738 AD, he died a horrible death. Witness reported that Al Azred was "torn to pieces by invisible claws."

Cowan’s house is full of Giger artworks — cold-casts of "Birth Machine Baby," "The Spell I," "Torso," "Hieroglyphics," "Tourist VIII" and a couple of original paintings, as well as Giger’s elegant Harkonen chairs (more like thrones from outer space to me — and I want one).

"You know, my favorites are the one with his girlfriend Li as subject, they’re magical and beautiful. People think Giger’s art is dark and disturbing, but after you’ve lived with it for a while you’ll discover the beauty."

People don’t know a lot of stuff about the artist. Cowan says, "I remember my first meeting with Giger. He was in Los Angeles to pick up his first Oscar for Alien. And I was very nervous then. We have become great friends ever since. He’s still really a big kid who’s into toy trains and jazz."

Funny how the Alien film crewmembers thought Giger to be a Nosferatu of sorts when he first came to the London studio where Ridley Scott was calling the shots for the first and best movie in the Alien saga. Initially they saw Giger as someone who’d turn instantly to dust once exposed to sunlight.

Cowan concludes, "Alien is so iconic. You have to go back to Dr. Caligari to find something so dramatically different, strange and captivating. People get scared of Giger because they think the art is the person. Giger is a real gentleman. It’s the same thing with Stephen King — nice person, writes scary things. Giger has a lot of dark imagery, and people think he’s into Satanism. Not true at all. Letting the dark stuff out is just something cathartic for Giger."

Still, when you look at H.R Giger’s art, you’d think the images are really from another world. Like interplanetary postcards.

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Postscript: Cowan generously gave me books on Huss, Beksinski and Yorba, as well as Giger’s Retrospective, the very book I went to Galerie Morpheus for. Cowan also gave me a two-and-half-inch, intricately detailed zinc cast of "Birth Machine Baby," which I promptly turned into a ring.

Finally, I have wrapped H.R. Giger around my finger.

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>For more information on Giger and Galerie Morpheus, visit MorpheusGallery.com or Giger.com. For comments, suggestions, curses and invocations, e-mail iganja_ys@yahoo.com.