HR Giger's The Spell III (work 320) (1976)

leading from
James Cameron's alien queen 
and
H R Giger's Art
and
Giger's Spell i, ii,  iii & iv 

a) HR Giger's The Spell 3, 
b) its connection with the Heike Crab,
c) as a homage to Takeda Shingen's head dress helmet
d) echoes of Giger's Stillbirth Machine

Giger's The Spell III (work 320) (1976) as found in Giger's Necronomicon
 
 
 
The Spell III as seen in Dark Star: HR Giger's World documentary

 
 
 
a) The Spell III
 
In 1976, HR Gger painting The Spell III as part of a series of 4 paintings that formed an environment where strange female figures painted in the picture could be found involved in a strange sacrificial ritual and crucificixion while a Baphomet could be see observing the act from the other side, all suspended in the upper reaches of building like a cathedral with frame work grown from bone like material

Giger posing before his painting The Spell
Giger working on the eye from The Spell (Giger's Necronomicon, p76)


Giger working on the eye from possibly The Spell III (Giger's Necronomicon, p76)

Giger finishing The Spell III (Giger's Necronomicon, p76)

b) Heike Crab face?

The first thing that I noticed in this painting The Spell by HR Giger is the central grotesque demonic face above the skull face beneath it that carries a blade in its teeth. On the 30th July 2014 I thought about how it reminded me of one of the Heike crabs of Japanese face like structure on the top of it's shell similar to that of an angry samurai, imagined to be the souls of Japanese Samurai doomed to crawl across the surface in the form of crabs for allowing their clan to be destroyed in the 1185 naval Battle of Dan-no-ura. Seeing the multilimbs of the entity inspire me to wonder if the eight limbs and two horns are in some way the ten limbs of the Heike crab.



Heike Crab (sampaxton.wordpress.com/

(source: http://hyperkitchen.blogspot.co.uk/2011/01/samurai-of-sea.html)
 
c) Homage to Takeda Shingen's head dress helmet?
 
The next thing to notice about the design is that the angry face indeed has horns sticking out of its head and through looking up the images of Japanese helmets. I noticed that on the front of the top of the helmet of the giant Samurai warrior in the movie Brazil, there was an angry face with horns and I searched further to see if it was possibly based on something real history. I also wondered about these tails of feathers like tentacles flowing down the side of this thing making me wonder if it was some sort of elaborate head dress.

I came by one helmet with strange animal like face with large horns, and it was a representation of the head dress helmet used by the sixteenth century warlord Takeda Shingen. The protecting wings on the side of the helmet have been transformed into semi-bird bird like creatures, and the eyes of the upper face have been transformed into the heads of bird, and these birds are perched on the arm of this creature.

helmet of giant Samurai with angry horned face on the top front of helmet

detail from The Spell 3 and Takeda Shingen headdress helmet


Headdress and helmet from modern reproduction
of Takeda Shingen's armour
(source: http://en.wikipedia.org )


Mid 19th Century drawing of Takeda Shingen
the 16th Century warlord (source: http://en.wikipedia.org/)

d) Echoes of Stillbirth Machine
 
The position of the creature's glass transparent shell on its head along with the division between the horns suggests that the general shape of Giger's composition Stillbirth Machine that we can find was inspired by an Ernst Fuchs composition

Stillbirth machine I (work 313)
(1976) by HR Giger

Stillbirth Machine and The Spell III, side by side comparisons

 
 
 

Helmut Newton:Photo of Gunilla Bergstrom at Eiffel Tower, Paris (1976) by Helmut Newton

leading from  

 

a) Photo of Gunilla Bergstrom at Eiffel Tower, Paris (1976) by Helmut Newton

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

HR Giger: Necronom V (150x100 cm) (1976) (acrylic on paper) by HR Giger references photo of Gunilla Bergstrom at Eiffel Tower, Paris (1976) by Helmut Newton?

 
 
 
leading from
and
 
a) Necronom V (150x100 cm) (1976) (acrylic on paper) by HR Giger
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
b) photo of Gunilla Bergstrom at Eiffel Tower, Paris (1976) by Helmut Newton
 
 

 
c) The hair hanging down in the left side of the woman's face becomes the tendril at the back of the head. The top of her head becomes the creature's face. The top of the building becomes the upper part of the ribbed body. A structure on the roof on the right with an aerial becomes the limb joint at the end of the entities ribbed body

 

 
 
 
 
d) Left side of hair and tendril
 

 
 


e) The left side of the open cupped bra becomes the pipe hanging down off the shoulder

 
 
 
 
f) So it would be as if the breast on the right with open cup bra becomes the tusk breasts

 
 
 
 
 
g) Collar and biomechanoid head
 


h) Pockets and legs


 

i) Space with building in the background and head of victim

Chris Foss: Cover for Isaac Asimov's The Bicentennial Man" (Published 1978) by Chris Foss references Interior, Nice (1976) by Helmut Newton?


 
leading from
and
 
 
 
 
a) Cover for Isaac Asimov's The Bicentennial Man" (Published 1978) by Chris Foss
 

 
 
 
b) Interior, Nice (1976 (Published in Sleepless Nights, 1978)) by Helmut Newton.
 

 

 
d) The standing woman's head, neck, shoulder and arm becomes the giant robot's right arm, with her hair becoming its claw

 

e) In relation to the standing woman becoming the upper right arm, the woman bending over becomes the upper torso



f) The girl as she bends over the table also becomes reversed horizontally to become the robots lower torso

 
 
 
g) Reversed horizontally, the table legs become the division between the legs.
 
The woman's arm becomes the upper part of the strap going down the centre of the body

 

 

 

Face on Mars

leading from
Mysteries of Mars

a) Isamu Noguchis's sand model for  Sculpture to be Seen From Mars (1947)

"The photograph of Sculpture to Be Seen from Mars (1947) shows the model for an unexecuted land work designed to serve as a cenotaph for humanity. It demonstrates Noguchi’s long-standing interest in leveraging the exploration of outer space to expand his perspective. He was particularly drawn to the paradox that while we associate space with a science-fiction future, nearly everything in outer space is billions of years old and made of rock." (http://americanart.si.edu/exhibitions/online/noguchi/outer-space/)

Isamu Noguchis's sand model for  
Sculpture to be Seen From Mars(1947)
Source:  http://www.core77.com



http://alienexplorations.blogspot.co.uk/1978/05/jack-kirby-and-face-on-mars.html



d) July 25th 1976, Viking 1 takes a photo of the Face on Mars.
Later that year, the Face on Mars feature is discovered by Vincent DiPietro and Gregory Molenaar

Viking photograph of the 'Face on Mars' taken in 1976


e)  In the January 1977 edition of "Official UFO Special: Ancient Astronauts", the Face On Mars from the well known Viking image turned up in H Smukler's "Dramatic Photos of Mars: the Home of the Gods"



f) The British newspaper The People, on June 8th 1980 ran an article about the face on Mars comparing it to the Egyptian sphinx. Perhaps other newspapers and magazines have too.




g.i) The English language publication Soviet Life magazine published their August 1984 edition looking at discussion about Mars




g.ii) "Are there pyramids on Mars? Perhaps a sphinx too? Vladimir Avinsky's latest hypothesis says they're up there".






g.iii) In this article the Face on Mars has been referred to as "The Sphinx"




h) During 1985 , in January, Hoagland and Sagan discuss Mars anomalies at National Academy of Sciences meeting in Washington. Sagan offers to review any material on the subject and anticipates ex­changing papers in the literature.

Series of newspaper articles come out critical of the Indepen­dent Mars Investigation during the spring.

University of Cali­fornia withdraws sponsorship of Mars Investigation Group.

On June 2, Sagan publishes article entitled: "The Man in the Moon" in Parade Magazine. Article includes a colorized ver­sion of Viking frame 70A13 in which the crucial shadows are . obscured by the added color. Sagan is highly critical of Face and investigators-none of which are mentioned by name.

Interviews with Sagan and others at "Steps to Mars" confer­ence held mid July in Washington indicate growing resistance to Mars anomalies in the planetary community.

(information for 1985 events come from The Martian Enigmas: A Closer Look: The Face, Pyramids, and Other Unusual Objects on Mars Second Edition here comes from https://www.amazon.com/dp/1556432429/ref=rdr_ext_tmb)




i) Richard C Hoagland had been talking about the Face on Mars in an interview conducted somewhere towards the end of 1985,  for a book called "Planetary Mysteries" (published 1 Mar 1986) (https://books.google.co.uk) edited by Richard Grossinger and a shortened form of the interview was published in the July 1986 of The Sun Magazine  (https://www.thesunmagazine.org/issues/128/the-face-on-mars)







j) Richard C. Hoagland became a proponent of the idea of the "Face on Mars" actually being a face, and released a book in 1987,  "The Monuments of Mars: A City on the Edge of Forever"

See: http://www.enterprisemission.com/

 

k) Martian Sphinx mentioned in Weekly World News
Weekly World News, 27th September 1988 has an article about the Face on Mars where it mentions that Swiss Astronomer Dr Ludin Pasche said "It's obvious that the face on the film is a representation of a Martian Sphinx". (well, it's the fact that "Martian Sphinx" was mentioned in a publication here that counts, Whether or not the person was real who was presented as saying it, I don't know)

 (See: https://books.google.co.uk)





l) See: Total Recall (1990): Face on Mars represented in the script




m) Face on Mars from Brian De Palma's Mission to Mars (2000)






n) See:  Moebius' homage to the face on Mars in "Arzak L'Arpenteur" (2010)

http://alienexplorations.blogspot.co.uk/2010/05/moebius-homage-to-face-on-mars.html





o) Skull face from Grant Morrisons's 'The Nameless'. (2016)