CHENNAI: We’ve all been over the moon lately. The success of our space mission Chandrayaan 3, has brought the glitter of the moon to our smiles. Newspapers are drowning in proclamations of contributions to the launch with even the snack supplier to the ISRO headquarters advertising his significance in the feat. We are indeed a nation of beaming Indians today!
Art is the antithesis of science, it has been stated. While science is research and fact-driven, art thrives in an abstract world. It would then surprise you to know that a genre called space art that uses the universe and space to convey ideas, clearly defies such beliefs.
Several artists down the centuries have been obsessed with science and their works have paved the way for a greater understanding of our world. German artist Albrecht Durer’s 1515 World Map is considered to be the first known printed map that shows the world to be a sphere. Artistic depictions of the nativity scene abound in art history, but the one by Giotto di Bondone in 1301 includes a comet which is believed to be the appearance of Halley’s Comet in the same year.
The 1986 space probe was even named Giotto after the artist! Donato Creti painted a series of astronomical observations and gifted them to the Pope to convince him of the need for an astronomical observatory, which eventually succeeded in persuading the Vatican to do so. American artist Chesley Bonestell has been referred to as the Father of Modern Space Art, with his paintings even inspiring the American space programme.
Making his first painting in 1905 after viewing Saturn through the telescope, he went on to dedicate a lifetime to rendering Saturn in ways that had never been attempted before. Though his first painting was destroyed in a fire, his later ones fill the halls of prestigious institutions like the National Air and Space Museum. In recognition of his artistic contributions to astronomy, an asteroid and a crater on Mars have been named after him.
And here’s more; a Russian artist actually created a painting in space! Alexei Leonov drew an orbital sunrise while onboard a spacecraft in 1965. How he managed to float and paint is beyond discussion. In 1986, as an art conservation experiment, four oil paintings were sent along in the space shuttle Columbia to orbit the Earth. A small sculpture of an olive branch was left behind on the moon by Neil Armstrong as a symbol of peace.
And hold your breath — an art exhibition was held in 1995 in Earth’s orbit! After sending the Cosmic Dancer sculpture to the Russian Mir station as an investigation into weightlessness, artist Arthur Woods followed it up by sending 20 paintings by 20 artists too. International space stations have witnessed various art projects and organisations like the International Association of Astronomical Artists have been faithfully creating space art to bring about an awareness of the cosmos. Art has never been bound by limitations and has helped visually record what cameras failed to do. It has truly taught us to aim for the stars and to settle for nothing lesser than the sky!