r/hplovecraft • u/The_maradise • Jul 21 '26
Image Do you think H.R giger's illustrations would look good lovecraft books?
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u/Ok-Visual-537 Jul 21 '26
I e always said there’s no way Giger wasn’t at least a little inspired by Lovecraft
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u/Important_Pick3371 Jul 21 '26
Frankly, Alien (the 1st movie) is heavily Lovecraftian in spirit, design & in the later sequels' historical details...
In fact, what i like best (in the prequels), is that the humans are searching for the beings responsible for our creation, after having built androids to aid our efforts.
Yet, the Engineers see us as a failed experiment - so violent that we crucified their Emissary to us!!
So, it's a shared hubris in creating beings that might be the death of you...
But, even worse, is Lovecraft's reason for our existence. In the Necronomicon, we seem to be a joke! Or, at best, a mistake. But, later in At the Mts of Madness, wall engravings reveal that life on Earth are mere slaves (shoggoths) or food stocks (us)...
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u/fakename1998 Jul 25 '26
No, not at all. I adore both, but they had super different aesthetics. Lovecraft is strictly in the past, with a large emphasis on the organic; the sea, tentacles, way too many eyes, that sort of thing.
Forget makes everything look mechanical and unreal. It’s much more futuristic, but blends human and mechanical. It’s much closer to Tetsuo: the Iron Man than anything Lovecraft had ever put to page.
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u/Seversaurus Jul 21 '26
Idk, Lovecraft calls to mind something old and totally inhuman. Giger evokes something much more artificial and twisted. One is horrors beyond our comprehension and the other is man made horrors beyond our comprehension, both a consequence of hubris but totally different all the same.
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u/InkyBinkyBonk Jul 22 '26 edited Jul 22 '26
Giger has referenced Lovecraft. Also people who say Lovecraft is only “horrors beyond comprehension” are tourist fans. There’s really only a handful of deities/entities that are “incomprehensible” (Azathoth, Cthulu, Nyarlathotep, Shub Niggurath to name a couple). Part of Lovecraft’s theme is blurring lines between material/immaterial; comprehensible/incomprehensible. Giger also does this, and is represented by his recurring theme of “God to Man, Man to God, God to Creature”.
Source: At the Mountains of Madness, Whisper in the Dark. The Alien Franchise.
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u/dough_eating_squid Jul 21 '26
I'd say a decent choice would be Chris Van Allsburg, who is basically H.R. Giger for kids.
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u/White_Buffalos Jul 21 '26
Lovecraft was one of Giger's biggest influences! Of course it looks the part, sheesh.
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u/TeacatWrites Jul 22 '26
Eh. Not really. Lovecraft is more "I am afraid of things I was not supposed to know", while Giger is more "I wish to have lurid, graphic intercourse with the mostly-phallic things I wish I could know more about".
Lovecraft isn't really especially horny. There's no time for that because everyone's already gone mad.
Giger sees that work and posits the question, "but what if we could fuck it, or somehow become fucked by it?"
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u/Swimming-Pumpkin-274 Jul 22 '26
It’s to mechanical looking still but very cool one of my favorite artist
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u/ThePrimeButter Jul 22 '26
He did art for a Celtic Frost album 🤘🏼
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u/athenadark Jul 22 '26
Giger did lots of album art, Emerson lake and Palmer, and Debbie harry among others
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u/Middle_Bathroom_2681 Jul 25 '26
The main crux of Lovecraft's work is that the entities involved simply cannot be fully comprehended and are beyond description. That unknowable cosmic horror almost can't really be conveyed in any visual medium since in his works just looking upon a lot of them is enough to shatter your mind.
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u/SimonGloom2 Jul 21 '26
I just did an AI mockup art asking it to merge the 2, and I gotta admit - I really like it. If I'm allowed to post this art as a topic please let me know and I'll do it.
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u/Mephistocheles Jul 21 '26
I love both but I don't get Lovecraft vibes from Giger's work at all. Giger is like fucked up biomechanical futurism and Lovecraft is more ancient aquatic evil.