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Space art is a general term for art emerging from knowledge and ideas associated with Outer Space , both as a source of inspiration and as a means for visualizing and promoting space travel. Whatever the stylistic path, the artist is generally attempting to communicate ideas somehow related to space, often including appreciation of the infinite variety and vastness which surrounds us. The image was released people claimed to see the face of Jesus Christ within it. Other similarly evocative Hubble photos exist, especially of Planetary Nebula . Perhaps such images provide modern audiences with fresh visions through which the religious awe invoked by the great murals in cathedrals of earlier centuries can be experienced anew. Small art objects were carried on Apollo missions such as gold emblems and a small ''. An able and observant artist can record aspects of the surroundings beyond the design limitations of any particular camera system. If and when artists finally get to live and play in Zero Gravity conditions as part of a hoped for migration of Humanity beyond Earth artistic expressions unknowable today will emerge. Although such dreams await substantial opportunity, early efforts by artists to have art pieces placed in space have already been accomplished with both paintings and sculpture. The first painting to be brought to Earth-orbit was a radiant study of the golden sunlight on a Soviet space station by Russian artist Andrei Sokolov, carried aboard the Soviet Mir Space Station in the mid 1980s. In 1984 Joseph McShane and in 1989 Lowery Burgess had their conceptual artworks flown aboard the Space Shuttle utilizing NASA's 'Get Away Special' program. The first sculpture specifically designed for a human habitat in orbit was Arthur Woods' '' Cosmic Dancer '' which was sent to the Mir station in 1993. In 1995, Ars ad Astra - the 1st Art Exhibition in Earth orbit consisting of 20 original artworks from 20 artists and an electronic archive also took place on the Mir as a part of ESA's EUROMIR'95 mission. Practitioners of the visual arts have for many decades explored space in their imaginations using traditional painting media and many are now using digital media toward similar ends. Science Fiction magazines and picture essay magazines were a major outlet for space art, often featuring planets, space ships and dramatic alien landscapes. Chesley Bonestell and R. A. Smith were the major artists actively involved in visualizing space exploration proposals with input from experts in the infant rocketry field anxious to spread their ideas to a wider audience. A strength of particularly Bonestell's work was the attempt to portray exotic worlds with their own alien beauty, often giving us a sense of destination as much as of the technological means of getting there. Space artists may work closely with space scientists and engineers to help them to visualize and develop their scientific and technological concepts making the dream of space exploration a reality. Other forms of pictorial space art bring the viewer to inner visions inspired directly or otherwise by the fruits of the expanding vision of Humanity. Some aspects of such art pay visual homage to outer space, popular ideas of life on other worlds including alien visitation visions, dream symbology, psychedelic imagery and other influences on contemporary Visionary Art . Astronomical Art , largely an outgrowth of the artistic standards of Bonestell, is an aspect of space art whose primary emphasis is in giving the viewer visual impressions of alien and exotic places in the Cosmos. As an Astronomical artist one should have a sense of why the lighting, sky color, even your chosen landscape surroundings appear as they do, and how a drastic change in a specific condition as on other worlds could alter the scene dramatically. One should have a reasonable 'grounding' in science, the nature of the sky and weather, and Geology for knowing the Earth as well as Astronomy for knowing the heavens. Such artists share with every other conceivable creative expression the vast arena containing what can be called Space Art. SPACE ART RELATED BOOKS ''Space Art'' Ron Miller Starlog Magazine ''Infinite Worlds'' Vincent Di Fate ''Eyewitness to Space, from the Art Program of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration'' (1963 to 1969).' Foreword by J. Carter Brown. Preface by Thomas O. Paine. New York: H.N. Abrams ''Fire and Ice A History Of Comets in Art'' Roberta J. M. Olsen Walker and Company New York ''Visions of Space'' David A. Hardy Paper Tiger 1989 ''Worlds Beyond: The Art of Chesley Bonestell'' Ron Miller & Frederick C. Durant, III ''In the Stream of Stars: The Soviet-American Space Art Book'' Sokolov, Miller, ,Myagkov, Hartmann, International Association for the Astronomical Arts ''Blueprint for Space'' Frederick I. Ordway, III & Randy Liebermann, eds ''Visions of Spaceflight Images from the Ordway collection'' Frederick I. Ordway III Four Walls Eight Windows, New York 2000 ''Celestial Visitations The Art of Gilbert Williams'' 1979 Pomegranite artbooks ''Cosmic Art'' Ramond & Lila Piper Hawthorne Books 1975 ''Universe'' Don Dixon Houghton Mifflin 1981
''Star Struck: One Thousand Years of the art of Science and Astronomy'' Ronald Brashear Daniel Lewis 2001 Univ. of Washington Press ''Futures: 50 Years in Space'' David A. Hardy & Patrick Moore AAPPL 2004 SPACE ARTISTS
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