OUTER SPACE PAINTINGS

We have wondered about outer space since we discovered planets, but the question of what does outer space look like had to wait until the 19^th century works of Jules Verne described them in prose and a little later until Melies dreamed up his fantastic backdrops for some of the very first motion pictures around 1900.  The moon is the first and best subject for outer space paintings, at least the ones that we have as a cultural input.  The moon has a face and whether or not the markings were subjective or not doesn’t matter, as artists portraying the moon were more interesting in capturing its gentle glow than in scientific accuracy.  The sun’s brightness is taken for granted as the sun is the illumination for our days and it almost seems an intelligent presence, full and steady in its light, day after day.  But the moon is filled with mystery, shrinking or growing in proscribed manner each night until it disappears completely.  The moon has a secret life, as do the planets as they wander through our night skies.

Chesley Bonestell is the artist who sparked a nation’s interest in outer space with his meticulously detailed paintings of planets, so rendered that you could swear you were actually standing on a moon of Saturn, gazing in awe at the rings of its beautiful mother planet.  For an inspiration of the untrod field of outer space paintings, Bonestell used his own astronomical sightings from telescopes, rushing home to do his art while his impressions were still fresh.  But for the scenes on planets that no one could possibly see in the mid-20^th century, he had only his imagination, laced with scientific theories of the time.  More and more, his techniques of painting which sprang from the disciplines of architecture, commercial drawing, and the magic of Hollywood special effects led him to be defined as the foremost astronomical painter.

An outer space artist needs a background in Earth’s topography and weather as well as the very latest input from astronomer’s research in order to develop a vision for a painting.  In this way, the outer space artist restores a bit of glory to the profession of artist, for when photography became prevalent in the mid-19^th century, the artist as illustrator lost some luster.  The artist’s engravings and photogravure efforts gave ground to the photographer’s science and ability to capture the intimate details of a scene.  But for the imaginative portrayals of planets other than our own, the outer space artist has no peer.  Working from spectrographic records and theoretical papers, this sort of artist arranges his canvas to grasp from his imagination the planetscapes of worlds not our own.

If your interests lie in the recent past via our ventures into space, you will enjoy a piece of outer space art hanging in your home, invoking thoughts of heroism and the realization that astronauts and cosmonauts have truly gone where no one has gone before.  An abstract painting of an aurora borealis as seen from reentry of a space vehicle, for instance, could not help but inspire you to get through your day with your own sort of heroics.  If your interests lie in speculative fiction and our future in space, then an outer space painting in the style of those pioneering outer space artists will spark your imagination each and every time you look at it.