It was artists who first envisioned and produced photographic technologies. It was artists who first foresaw a world in which individuals might fly. And it will be artists who continue to shatter the perceived limitations to our own intellectual frameworks.
Artists’ Futuristic Visions Helped Make the Moon Landing Possible
Henri de Montaut, an illustration from the novel From the Earth to the Moon by Jules Verne, 1868. Via Wikimedia Commons.
Henri de Montaut, an illustration from the novel From the Earth to the Moon by Jules Verne, 1868. Via Wikimedia Commons.
In the midst of the space race, Hereward Lester Cooke, the former co-director of the NASA Art Program, observed, “Space travel started in the imagination of the artist.”
If the 50th anniversary of the first Moon landing is an opportunity to celebrate a remarkable technological achievement, it’s also a good time to reflect on the creative vision that made it possible.
Long before Neil Armstrong set foot on the Moon, artists and writers were crafting visions of extraterrestrial exploration that would make space flight possible.
Cultivating possibility
For centuries, the dream of human travel into the cosmos has fired imaginations.
Ancient mythologies teemed with deities who suffused the skies, glimmered from stars and rode the Sun and Moon. Pythagoras, Philolaus, and Plutarch each contemplated the Moon as a world of its own. Leonardo da Vinci famously imagined flying machines that would take their occupants skyward. Authors such as Cyrano de Bergerac—who’s credited with being the first to imagine a rocket being used for space travel—fed a growing appetite for stories of celestial exploration.
In 1865, the French writer Jules Verne published his novel, From the Earth to the Moon, followed five years later by its sequel, Round the Moon.
Verne’s tale provides an uncannily prescient account of the development of space travel: Three astronauts blast off from Florida in a small aluminum capsule, fired from the end of an enormous cast iron gun. After orbiting the Moon and making observations with a pair of opera glasses, the three men return to Earth, splashing into the ocean as heroes.
Almost a century later, RKO Pictures would release a film inspired by Verne’s adventure story, while a comic book version of the tale went through multiple printings between 1953 and 1971.
In the 1950s, the painter Chesley Bonestell further stoked the imagination of future space-farers with his visions of space stations, published in Collier’s. Walt Disney would follow with three made-for-TV movies that illustrated the ways people might one day be able to fly into space and land on the Moon.
After touch down, artists inspired anew
Robert Rauschenberg
White Walk (Stoned Moon), 1970
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA)
Robert Rauschenberg
Retroactive I, 1963
Robert Rauschenberg Foundation
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In 1969, Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins would realize the vision that Verne and others had instilled in the mind’s eye of millions.
This accomplishment would, in turn, inspire artists anew.
“Nothing will already be the same,” reads the text along the right edge of Robert Rauschenberg’s collage Stoned Moon Drawing. Published in the December 1969 issue of Studio International, Rauschenberg’s work combined images of the Apollo 11 moonwalk, Cape Canaveral, and the Gemini print shop. Rauschenberg wanted to draw attention to the deep collaboration required in the worlds of art and science, whether it was for print-making or lunar landings.
Andy Warhol
Moonwalk 405, 1987
OSME Fine Art
In the 1970s, the color field painter Alma Thomas explored what she described as “the vastness and incomprehensibility of space” in abstract paintings like Blast Off, Launch Pad, and New Galaxy.
“When I paint space, I am with the astronauts,” she said.
The artist Red Grooms, who attended the Apollo 15 launch, turned to official NASA photographs to create a gigantic sculptural installation of astronauts David Scott and James Irwin exploring the lunar surface with cameras and a lunar rover.
“I wanted,” he explained, “to do the sort of thing the [NASA] people were doing—build something incomprehensible then try to get it off the ground.”
National Moon Day – Contemporary art works inspired by the moon
As we celebrate humankind’s first landing on the moon this National Moon Day, here are some pieces of contemporary art that appreciate the celestial being in its full glory.
1. Private Moon by Leonid Tishkov-
The Private Moon is a photographic journey of a man who met the Moon and decided to take her wherever he goes. The installation and visual poetry series started by Leonid Tishkov in 2003, in collaboration with photographer Boris Bendikov, emerged first in Moscow and has traveled to countries like France, Japan, Italy, Kazakhstan, and even The Arctic. The fairytale-like story shows the man treating the personified crescent moon like his better half and taking care of her in every corner of the world.
2. Museum of the Moon by Luke Jerram
This colossal illustration of the moon by Luke Jerram brings new musical compositions and narratives as it travels around the world putting up shows across China, India, Australia, France, and the UK. With every new location, the piece unveils fresh cultural attributes of the heavenly body based on the mythologies of that region.
3.Conditions Apply 2 by Jitish Kallat
Created in 2010, as a subsequent piece to Conditions Apply, this Jitish Kallat artwork explores the idea of scarcity in basic resources through this morphosis between the moon and roti, an Indian staple food. It represents the entire lunar cycle with full and half-eaten rotis, producing a discussion about middle-class sustenance through food.
4. Moon Games by Laurent Lavender
A creative play on the art of juxtaposition, this photo collection by Laurent Lavender makes people feel closer to the moon. The series shows human subjects interacting with the moon with different props, transforming the moon into a balloon, a scoop of ice cream, and a painting. The series has been turned into a calendar and a French poetry book.
