Week 9: Space and Art

            The emptiness of outer space has always captured the imagination of humans, from early Greek astronomers who believed in the god Aether representing the heavenly air other gods breathed to the modern fascination with a manned mission to Mars. However, perhaps the greatest influence space has had on art and popular culture was the space race in the 1960’s.

Scientist working on Sputnik 1
Photo: Roskosmos

            The space race is known to have influenced many songwriters during the 60’s perhaps one of the most famous was David Bowie’s Space Oddity. The song was released on July 11^th, 1969, just days before Apollo 11 landing on the moon on July 20^th, 1969. Songs like Space Oddity reflected how much publicity and significance the space race had on the world at the time. The song was sung again, but this time from space, by astronaut David Hadfield on the International Space Station.

            The space race didn’t just influence the music world. New paintings drawing inspiration from outer space were also painting new pieces like Michelle Stuart’s Moon drawn in 1969 depicting the surface of the moon, but even now “artists are still sifting through the complicated artifacts of that period, where technology was surging through the Space Race and Cold War, offering both hope for world cooperation and anxiety about its divisions” (Meier, 2015). Many of these artworks portrayed either the actual findings from different space agencies or drew inspiration from the space race and showed the imaginations of the public and their fascination with space like Gyula Kosice’s sketch of a space station where he drew is impression of what an outer space habitat would look like.

            Movies during this time and those which came after were often influenced by the space race also. The not only did they portray the fear of aliens from outer space, like Ridley Scott’s 1979 movie Alien, but movies would “examine the American mindset during the Space Age, where the fear of both an unknown frontier and the paranoia of Communism would be prevalent nationwide” (Buckley, 2014).

Poster of Ridley Scott's 1979 Alien
Photo: IMDb

            The space race was perhaps one of the best examples of how advances in technology and the sciences are influence and are reflected in the art produced during that time. In fact, people are still being influenced today by the allure of outer space and other space projects like Elon Musk’s company SpaceX continue to fascinate people.

References

"Spacex". Spacex, 2017, http://www.spacex.com/. Accessed 3 June 2018.

Alien. 1979, https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0078748/mediaviewer/rm986060544. Accessed 3 June 2018.

Buckley, Sean. "The Impact Of The Space Age On Film". The Artifice, 2014, https://the-artifice.com/the-impact-of-the-space-age-on-film/. Accessed 3 June 2018.

Johnson, B.E. "The Technology Of Fire". Leonardo Space Art Project Articles, 1995, https://spaceart.org/leonardo/articles.html. Accessed 4 June 2018.

Meier, Allison. "How The Space Race Altered Art In The Americas". Hyperallergic, 2015, https://hyperallergic.com/210102/how-the-space-race-altered-art-in-the-americas/. Accessed 3 June 2018.

Rare Earth. Space Oddity. 2013, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KaOC9danxNo. Accessed 4 June 2018.

Roscosmos. Sputnik. Accessed 3 June 2018.

Vesna, Victoria. 8 Space Pt 3. 2013, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WOqt_C55Mk. Accessed 3 June 2018.