Aviation and Space Art in the 20th Century

 

Artists have depicted human flight for centuries, long before a hot-air balloon would carry a human passenger in 1783 or the Wright brothers would successfully fly their airplane in 1903. At the end of the 15^th century, Leonardo da Vinci, the Renaissance artist, inventor, and inspired genius, created detailed sketches of a flying machine with wings like a bat. And illustrators created woodcuts and drawings of the early balloon flights. However, aviation and space travel would not be a significant presence in art until the 20^th century.

 

The popular press of the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries drove the demand for aviation art. Images of airships and airplanes sold books and magazines. Stories of World War I dogfights, which were more exciting when illustrated, increased aviation art's popularity even more. Photography began to compete with illustration for a place in the press after 1888 and the invention of roll film by George Eastman but could not compete when it came to pure beauty. Unlike early 20^th-century photography, illustrations were done in color. Artists could paint imaginary situations, depict scenes that would be difficult or dangerous to photograph, embellish a situation, change the landscape, or add dramatic lighting.

 

Artists became an invaluable part of the domestic war effort during World War II. Photography documented the war, but it was artists who rallied people through patriotic magazine covers, ads, and posters. "For All the Brave," a poster for U.S. War Bonds, focused on a pilot's determined face as he races to his fighter. The Army Air Service had its own line of rousing recruitment posters. "Keep Em Flying," painted in 1942 by Dan V. Smith, featured a formation of bombers set against pastel clouds and a rippling U.S. flag. Warm, muted colors (the dark brown of a well-worn leather fighter jacket, the deep red on the U.S. flag) emphasized the seriousness of the subject matter, but dynamic lines and shapes (the strong wings of a fighter jet against roiling clouds) also made this art exciting and attractive.

 

While some artists were supporting the war effort from the sidelines, others were witnesses to the horrors of war, and their art reflects this experience. On April 27, 1937, during the Spanish Civil War, Nazi German bombers and air fighters reduced the Spanish town of Guernica to rubble, killing or wounding more than 1,600 civilians, at the request of General Francisco Franco, the leader of a fascist coup that had plunged Spain into civil war. Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), Spain's most prominent artist, captured the violence and carnage in a mural simply entitled "Guernica." Although the painting makes no direct reference to the bombing, the fractured bodies and screaming faces, painted almost entirely in black, white, and gray in the angular "Cubist" style that Picasso made famous, clearly expresses the fear and pain of the event and makes a strong anti-war statement. Henry Moore (1898-1986) sketched his fellow Londoners taking refuge in underground train stations during the German air bombing raids of 1940. These haunting pictures, rendered mostly in browns and white, depict people huddled together in a jumble of bodies. The sketches were so popular with the British audience that the British government hired him to be an official war artist in 1940.

 

Despite the changes that aviation has gone through in the intervening decades, World War II airplanes and combat continue to be the mainstay of aviation art. Today's aviation art even tends to follow the look created by World War II artists. Keith Ferris creates an almost romantic feel for his paintings by setting his airplanes against pastel skies and large banks of clouds that come straight out of war-era posters. In his mural of Boeing B-17 bombers ("Fortresses Under Fire"), located at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., dozens of white contrails ripple across a soft blue sky while pale rays of sunshine glint off the metal. Keith Woodcock favors subdued colors and golden-hued sunsets reminiscent of the color pallets popular during the 1940s. Stan Stokes prefers bolder colors, but like aviation artists since the 1940s, composes his paintings on the diagonal, creating dynamic movement by pointing the airplane's cross shape, wings running perpendicular to the body, toward one of the canvas' corners.

 

Paintings of modern aircraft even follow old-fashioned style conventions. In Woodcock's "Woodland Predator," a Harrier hovers above the ground in a mist-shrouded forest. Ferris' Boeing E-6 jet ("The Vital Link") stealthily blends with the clouds, its wings echoing the rectangular shape of the canvas. In these artists' hands, flight technology is poetry in motion and the lethal shape of a fighter becomes beautiful.

 

While some artists have depicted aeronautic fact, a growing group of artists have been depicting our aerospace future. The science fiction magazines, like Amazing Stories and Air Wonder Stories, that emerged before World War II were cheaply produced but attracted talented artists and developed an audience for space-based art. Up until the 1950s, this space art usually looked like aviation art, with rocket ships resembling the V-2 rockets manufactured by the Germans from 1944 to 1945, long and tapered, with a pointed noise and small stability fins, racing diagonally across the picture. Battles between warring spacecraft looked suspiciously like dogfights between fighter planes, only with aliens substituting for enemy pilots.

 

Space art finally found its own look in the 1950s as the space race between the United States and the Soviet Union was heating up and science fiction began shifting to science fact. Chesley Bonestell (1888-1986) created a series for Collier's called "The Conquest of Space" that broke away from the romantic look of previous space and aviation art. In "Assembling the Space Glider" (1956), a chevron-shaped glider is partially silhouetted against the blue of Earth while pressure-suited crews work around it. The painting is dark, composed almost entirely of black and various shades of blue, and occupied by crisp shapes either echoing or contrasting with the curved outline of Earth in the background. "Saturn Seen From Titan" (1949), perhaps his most famous painting, depicts the glowing outline of Saturn overtop dark, craggy rock formations. Bonestell's art had a startling realism never before seen in the genre, making it easy for the viewer to believe that this was a glimpse of humanity's future in space.

 

Other artists followed in Bonestell's footsteps, like Robert McCall, who first came to public attention with his illustrations for "America's Giant Jump into Space," featured in Life in 1964. McCall's heroic murals are on permanent display at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, the National Air and Space Museum, Disney's Epcot Center in Orlando, Florida, and the Pentagon. His painting "Orion Leaving Space Station," showing a space vehicle darting from the lit bay of a wheel-shaped space station, was used for the "2001: A Space Odyssey" movie poster.

 

Today's space art takes inspiration from photographs returned from Galileo and other planetary missions. Bonestell rendered space in flat blacks and pale colors, reflecting images taken from the optical astronomy of his day. "Exploring Mars" shows a small team conducting work on a yellowish, smooth Martian terrain. The Sojourner Rover, activated in 1997, has since proven that Mars really is the red planet through photos of taken from its rocky surface. The Hubble Space Telescope (HST), deployed in 1990, has given us colorful photos that both drop's on and defy our past understanding of celestial objects. Although HST's photographs are false tinted, with colors used to distinguish different gases and chemicals, they reveal that the space between stars and planets is not empty. Artists, like Pat Rawlings, Bob Eggleton, and Lynette Cook, have embraced this information, creating canvases that burst with color, dynamic shapes, and action.

 

Space art has become a mature art form, with its own unique look and audience. It even boasts an insider. Alan Bean, the pilot of the Apollo 12 Lunar Module and the fourth man to walk on the Moon, depicts the beauty and excitement of space travel from the point of view of someone who has been there.

 

Understanding the emotional power of space art, the NASA Art Program commissions artists like Bean to document the history of the space program, both crewed and uncrewed missions of the past, present, and future. The collection of more than 800 works, which also includes artists not usually associated with space, like Andy Warhol (1928-1987) and Jamie Wyeth, can be viewed at NASA centers, museums, and galleries around the United States. Furthermore, the Program has donated more than 2,000 works to the National Air and Space Museum.

 

Another tool of the modern era, the Internet, has permanently changed space and aviation art. Both have spent decades as specialty art forms whose main audiences have been reached through books and periodicals. Most fans could never own a frameable version of their favorite picture. Now Internet-based galleries have provided a new market for talented artists, both professional and hobbyists, while giving fans access to originals and high-quality reproductions. Aviation and space art are now getting the exposure they deserve and increased recognition as true and beautiful art forms.

 

-Anne Simmons

 

References and Further Reading:

Ballantine, Ian (ed.). The Aviation Art of Keith Ferris, New York: Peacock Press/Bantam Books, 1978.

Di Fate, Vincent. Infinite Worlds: The Fantastic Visions of Science Fiction Art. New York: Penguin Putnam, Inc., 1997.

Levenson, Jay A. (ed.). Circa 1492: Art in the Age of Exploration. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1991.

Miller, Ron, and Durant III, Frederick C. The Art of Chesley Bonestell. New York: Sterling Publishing Company, 2001.

Murray, G.E. Patrick. Bomber Missions: Aviation Art of World War II. New York: Friedman/Fairfax Publishing, 2001.

Sharpe, Mike, Laming, Tim, and Sharpe, Michael. Aviation Art. Berkeley, Cal.: Thunder Bay Press, 1998.

 

Aviation Art

Air Art Northwest http://www.airartnw.com/

Keith Ferris, aviation artist. http://www.keithferrisart.com/

Keith Woodcock, aviation artist. http://www.satiche.org.uk/kw/woodcock.htm

ND4 Aeronautical Art (the art of Peter Fromme-Douglas). http://www.fromme-douglas.com/nd4/

Sport Flyer's Internet Resources: Aviation Photos/Images/Art. http://sportflyer.com/images.htm

The Stokes Collection, artwork of Stan Stokes. http://www.stokescollection.com/

 

Art Reflections of World War II

"Guernica: Testimony of War." (Treasures of the World). http://www.pbs.org/treasuresoftheworld/a_nav/guernica_nav/main_guerfrm.html.

"Henry Moore, Crisis and Aftermath: The 1940s and 1950s." (National Gallery of Art, USA). http://www.nga.gov/exhibitions/moore1940.htm.

 

Space and Astronomical Art

ars astronautica - Space Art Web Project. http://www.spaceart.net/

Bonestell Space Art. http://www.bonestell.org/Page_1x.html

International Association of Astronomical Artists. http://www.iaaa.org/

NASA Arts Gallery. http://www.nasa.gov/gallery/arts/index.html

Novaspace Galleries http://www.novaspace.com/

Space Art Home Page http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/er/seh/spaceart.html

Space Art on the Web. http://www.spaceart.org/

 

Educational Organization	Standard Designation (where applicable)	Content of Standard
International Technology Education Association	Standard 4	Students will develop an understanding of the cultural, social, economic, and political effects of technology.
International Technology Education Association	Standard 6	Students will develop an understanding of the role of society in the development and use of technology.