Out of This World: Space Art - Esther

I was never into Sci-Fi as such. All it ever seemed to do was to highlight human limitations in thought & imagination. In part I’m slightly too young (not something I get to say often) to have been naturally enthralled & fascinated by the concept of space & space travel. When I was born, people were almost on the Moon so by the time I was aware of these things, they were old news, normal, part of the furniture. 

This week, billionaires have developed their own space race. People are disgusted & rightly so, but we mustn’t forget the super-wealthy of our planet have never failed to appal us with their status symbols. Selfishly, unimaginatively building metaphorical or real pyramids to their own egos sickens us, but it can’t be a surprise. Having completely cut themselves off from the poor & suffering, they indulge in competition with each other in – to put it politely – “measuring” contests, believing it will grant them their immortality via the history books. Let them eat space dust.

Some time ago, I tried to write a blog about space art, or artistic interpretations of space. I’d done an entry about the Moon in art, but that seemed to be surprisingly open-ended, since we can see it just about every day & it finds its way into many aspects of modern culture, through poetry, song & film. As a subject, the Moon is more of an old friend. Space art seemed like it’d have to be more futuristic since there’s still so little (yet so much more) known about it & I have to say, it turned me off. I rummaged the internet for inspiration to no avail. I realise now I was looking through a very narrow lens. Instead of investigating all aspects of space art such as human endeavour & history, such as the imagination that does exist in order to consider what might be possible, I was looking for pictures of planets. This way mere prog-rock album covers lie.

Many of these images have taken the Earth’s-eye view of the cosmos. It’s what this week’s entry has made me think about most – it’s much easier to work from our own perspective than imagine another one. It’s what we all suspect about the Universe, isn’t it? It’s so vast our tiny little brains can’t completely comprehend it so we make our own limited sense of it all.   

Lynette Cook (USA, ?) Epsilon Eridani b & Moons (2005)

With all the capacity for photography (even in space) nowadays, we might be tempted to think there’s no room for imagination, however if scientists weren’t busy being creative & thinking things up for the first time, we’d likely still be frozen to death unless we could rub two sticks together. Cook’s visualisation here echoes a snowy landscape here on Earth, such as Joseph Farquharson might create, except she has to work with what her mind's eye dictates, rather than working from life. Other artists such as Lucien Rudaux & Chesley Bonestell in the 1930s & 40s before her had to work with even less known information. 

Wassily Kandinsky (Russia, 1866-1944) Several Circles (1926)

Kandinsky created some beautiful works with circles & whilst not necessarily the intention, this piece seems to evoke the planets. The night sky is suggested by the black background…but is it a night sky in space anyway? What is night in space? Surely not the same as ours. In any case, this is an abstract meditation on the calming nature of the circle, a shape which Kandinsky saw as very spiritual.

Joan Miró (Spain, 1893-1983) Constellation: Toward the Rainbow (1941)

Miró painted many versions of the constellations & here we can see some that do exist. Whilst fleeing the Nazis in France, Miró looked to the heavens for inspiration & transcendence from the horrors of wartime occupation.

Pablo Picasso (Spain, 1881-1973) Constellations (1924)

Even in art, I can’t seem to escape maths at the moment. There is symmetry, asymmetry, angle, line, measure & pattern. In this – one of many – constellation drawings Picasso made whilst observing the sky at night, we might see similarities to musical notes but they do conjure the traditional methods of recording celestial constellations.

Katie Paterson (Scotland, 1981-) Totality (2016)

The first time I recall seeing a mirror ball was seeing Peter Pan at the theatre. The moving lights the spinning ball created was almost magical in its simplicity whilst suggesting the existence of fairies flying about in the room with you. Only here, Katie Paterson goes a step further. As conceptual art installations go, this has a remarkably vivid sense of the magical & suggests the mysteries of the known & unknown universe even at a glance. Printed on the ball are ancient drawings & photographs of almost every solar eclipse ever recorded. Here magic & the cosmos are intertwined & now our world has a touch of star dust about it.

Giovanni di Paolo (Italy, c. 1403-1482) The Creation of the World & the Expulsion From Paradise (c. 1438-44)

This tempera & gold panel is remarkable in so many ways. The uniting of two key biblical events suggests God’s advance planning & all-knowing reputation. He knows these puny humans will mess it up, even as he creates the Universe but does it anyway. But then di Paolo includes that unusual depiction of the world, surrounded by the elements (water, fire, earth & air), surrounded by the cosmos, using concentric circles.  It elevates the work from some weird old painting (of which there are thousands) to an almost modern & conceptual piece. The fact that God himself is zooming in from top left to get it all done is almost incidental.

Giotto di Bondone (Italy, c. 1267-1337) The Adoration of the Magi (1301)

Even further back in time, we have this almost ordinary portrayal of the birth of Christ…except that Halley’s Comet is seen hurtling through the air above the stable. This is the sort of painting Monty Python has ruined.

Lieve Verschuier (Netherlands, 1627-1686) The Great Comet of 1680 Over Rotterdam (1680)

Not unnaturally, everyone in Rotterdam has come out to have a look at Comet Kirch which apparently appeared near the sun in December 1680. At the dawn of the Age of Enlightenment people were beginning to value scientific enquiry & Reason. This crowd is fascinated by what is happening rather than fleeing in fear or believing they need to worship the stars.

Georgia O’Keeffe (USA, 1887-1986) Evening Star No. III (1917) & Starlight Night (1963)

The vast skies depicted by O’Keeffe are given different treatments here, but nevertheless are controlled & ordered to make sense of them by the artist.

Henry Casselli (USA, 1946-) When Thoughts Turn Inwards (1981) & Norman Rockwell (USA, 1894-1978 ), Grissom & Young (1965)

In 1962, NASA began its Art Program to encapsulate the human element & projection of emotions linked with space travel & exploration in visual imagery. The NASA Art Program has commissioned some of the world’s most famous artists in this endeavour. These works depict two very different realities & moods in the incredible human pursuit of space investigation, voyaging & its preparation.

Peter Robinson (New Zealand/Kai Tahu, 1966-) Universe (2001)

Some artists go so far as to tackle the entirety of the Universe. The Māori culture describes Te Kore, “the great nothingness, the empty void.” In this creation story, everything begins as darkness & nothing more until the Universe expands to create the galaxies & activation of Life. Here, Robinson captures this moment in wonderful bulging globs of painted fibreglass in dimensions of 1350 x 1100 x 2000mm. Hey, the human mind has to start somewhere & it's all amazing.