Space art
Chesley Bonestell, R. A. Smith, Lucien Rudaux, David A. Hardy, and Ludek Pesek were some of the artists actively involved in visualizing topics such as space exploration and colonization in the early days of the genre.
It encompasses various themes, including the space environment as a new frontier for humanity, depictions of alien worlds, representations of extreme phenomena like black holes, and artistic concepts inspired by astronomy.
Contemporary artists continue to contribute to the visualization of ideas within the space community, such as depicting theoretical capabilities for interstellar travel and illustrating hypothetical deep-space phenomena.
Finding its roots in genres such as the Hudson River School or Luminism, most astronomical artists use traditional painting methods or digital equivalents in a way that brings the viewer to the frontiers of human knowledge gathered in the exploration of space.
Such works usually portray things in the visual language of realism extrapolated to exotic environments, whose details reflect ongoing knowledge and educated guesswork.
Early efforts by artists to have art pieces placed in space have already been accomplished with painting, holography, micro-gravity mobiles, floating literary works, and sculpture.
The 'Land Grant to Ḫunnubat-Nanaya Kudurru,' a Babylonian limestone artifact from the 12th century BC, features early representations of Venus, the lunar crescent, and the solar disk.
In 1877, Paul Dominique Philippoteaux and engraver Laplante illustrated Jules Verne's story Off on a Comet, including an imaginative view looking up at the rings of Saturn from the planet itself.
In 1918, Howard Russell Butler deliberately made use of the dynamic range of human vision in painting a total eclipse based on direct observation.
[14][15] In 1944, Chesley Bonestell's paintings of Saturn seen from its different moons appeared in Life magazine, introducing astronomical art to a wide American audience.
[16] An art conservation experiment from Vertical Horizons,[17] founded by Howard Wishnow and Ellery Kurtz, was flown aboard the Space Shuttle Columbia STS-61-C on January 12, 1986.
Visual observations have been recorded in drawings and commentary by earlier cosmonauts and astronauts of difficult-to-photograph phenomena such as the airglow, twilight colors, and outer details of the solar corona.
In 1998, Frank Pietronigro flew Research Project Number 33: Investigating the Creative Process in a Micro-gravity Environment, where he created 'drift paintings' and danced in microgravity space.
In 2006, the artist returned to micro-gravity flight to create three new works, one in collaboration with Lowry Burgess; Moments in the Infinite Absolute, Flags in Space!, and a new form of microgravity mobile.
The Slovenian theater director Dragan Živadinov staged a performance called Noordung Zero Gravity Biomechanical during a parabolic flight organized through the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center facility in Star City in 1999.
[24][25][26][27] Artists who participated in these flights and visits to Russia and ESA have included the Otolith Group, shortlisted in 2011 for the Turner Prize, Stefan Gec, Ansuman Biswas and Jem Finer, Kitsou Dubois, Yuri Leiderman, and Marcel·li Antunez Roca.
Richard Garriott visited the International Space Station, via the Soyuz TMA-13 on October 12, 2008, where he displayed an art exhibition, Celestial Matters, during his 12 days in orbit.
The participating artists include Tania Candiani, Ale de la Puente, Ivan Puig, Arcángelo Constantini, Fabiola Torres-Alzaga, Gilberto Esparza, Juan Jose Diaz Infante, Nahum, and Marcela Armas.
The artist proposed and accomplished artworks in a variety of different mediums, including carved stone sculptures by Erin Genia, liquid pigment experiments by Andrea Ling and Levi Cai, sculptures made of transgender hormone replacement medicines by Adriana Knouf, and living organisms, like marine diatoms of the genus Phaeodactylum Tricornutum, by Luis Guzmán.
