The Windowlickers I, II & III

leading from

Development of Giger's art.

 

a) Windowlickers I, II & III (lithographs 1999)
Giger created the Windowlickers series of drawings in 1999 according to the Giger 2001 diary by Taschen. Drawings from this year have 999 merged with 666 as if they are loops with two hooks. The first one shows the terrible mask with penises coming down the side and flowers around the upper part of the head. The second shows heads with the same face hanging in the air with beards of long whispy hairs. One platted the other sticking out in the form of spikes.  As if they were shrunken heads. The third in a series is a toilet bowl with perhaps flowers around the seat

When I first picked up the HR Giger diary by Taschen in 2001, and noticed the Windowlickers drawings by Giger, I assumed it was a homage since he might have been so inspired by what he saw in a photo or the video and still do today, whatever the truth might be.

The Windowlickers I (1999) (source https://plus.google.com)

The Windowlickers II (1999) (source https://plus.google.com/)

The Windowlickers III (1999) (source https://plus.google.com)

b) Windowlickers video for Aphex Twin with special thanks to Tom Woodruff and Alec Gillis
The video for Aphex Twin's Windowlickers is often said to have been made in 1998 but it's definitely known to have been released in March 1999. There is one character who is the most ugliest of the women who are all ugly with caricature masks of Richard D James. This one has flowers in her hair and side plats suspended in the air. The masks were sculpted and designed by Paul Catling and Jordu Schell worked on masks and hair as well. Tom Woodruff and Alec Gillis are thanked in the final credits.

c) Giger involved in Windowlickers rumour hits the media
Since then it has come into people's beliefs that H R Giger created the concept the design of this one mask which I might assume was based a concept by Chris Cunningham's. It has got to the point where the Guardian newspaper believes this and even Creativereview.co.uk have jumped onto the idea of Giger's involvement as well. However Giger has not talked about any involvement in Chris Cunningham's videos and the nearest thing he had said of any acknowledgement Cunningham's work was when he admitted in 2000 in an interview for Esoterra magazine #9 to being a fan of the "Come To Daddy" video by Chris Cunningham for Aphex Twin and we have the Windowlickers drawing too. Chris Cunningham who has been a sculptor for the Alien costume for ADI in the Alien 3 production and concept designer for Alien Resurrection has not talked in interviews about working with HR Giger at all let alone asking him for a concept drawing. Perhaps Giger , if he were involved, would have taken the project a little bit more seriously than just the evidence that we've seen, and would have offered side views etc and have some concern about what was to be made of his design considering that what amounted to generally being the ADI team were involved. It might be a issue over a single mask briefly used in a single pop video but as a fan of Chris Cunningham's music videos and a fan of the work of HR Giger this matter is of importance to me. Before I believe that Giger was involved in the actual video's concept design rather than an appreciator of the imagery afterwards, I want some hard information, none reveals itself

Source Quote

1. R.F. Paul:  What about electronic music?
   
   Giger: No, not too much. I like Aphex Twin though. Come to daddy is very good. Very amusing. (Esoterra #9)
2. A still from the video for the 2005 song Windowlicker by Aphex Twin. Original conceptual art by HR Giger. (http://www.theguardian.com)
3. The two women, among others, accompany James in his limousine while their faces morph into James' own likeness, and are later joined by a woman with a horrifically ugly, buck-toothed, deformed face, which is a likeness of a sketch by Swiss artist H. R. Giger titled "The Windowlickers". (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windowlicker)
4. He would work on other projects ("Poltergeist II: The Other Side," "Species," as well as uncredited stint on the video for Aphex Twin's "Windowlicker") but it's "Alien" (and the franchise) that he'll be remembered by film fans for. (http://blogs.indiewire.com/theplaylist/rip-h-r-giger-1940-2014-watch-2-hour-20-minute-documentary-on-the-making-of-alien-20140513)
5. Until towards the end of the song when the booming bass part comes in and there is a heavily deformed, buck toothed Richard James’ face based on HR Giger’s sketch “The Windowlickers” (http://www.director-file.com/cunningham/aphex-twin/)
6. In 1999 a sketch by Giger also made its way into one of the most infamous music videos of all time – Chris Cunningham's unsettling ten-minute epic for Aphex Twin track, Windowlicker. Called The Windowlickers, Giger's original grinning face became one of the Aphex Twin 'masks' adopted towards the end of Cunningham's film; the most bizarre of them (if that's possible) and the only one that differs from the legion of Richard James faces. (The masks in the film were designed and sculpted by Paul Catling.) (http://www.creativereview.co.uk/cr-blog/2014/may/hr-giger)