The Beauty of Space Art: An Illustrated Journey Through the Cosmos

By Jon Ramer and Ron Miller

Long before humans wrote, we painted.

From mud and ash to acrylic and computers, artists across the centuries have found countless inventive ways to explore and express some of life’s biggest mysteries. Enter space art, a genre of artistic expression that strives to capture the wonders of our universe. This lavishly illustrated book chronicles the remarkable development of space art from a fledgling theme to a modern movement.

In Part I, we traverse the history of art and astronomy from ancient times, through the Industrial Revolution, and into the 20th-century Space Age. Part II delves into the diverse techniques and subgenres of space art, where you will learn about things like rocks and balls, hardware art, and cosmic expressionism. Along the way, we’ll stop at places where neither humans nor spacecraft can easily go, from the scorching surface of Venus and the radiation-soaked volcanoes of Io to the alien terrain of exoplanets and the depths of distant galaxies.

Featuring hundreds of original color images from space artists and astronomers alike, this book is a vivid visual story about the power of art, astronomy, and human curiosity. A heavily revised edition of the original Beauty of Space, it will entertain, educate, and inspire anybody who yearns to make sense of the strange and surreal sights in our universe. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Springer
• Release date: Dec 1, 2020
• ISBN: 9783030493592

Book preview

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021

J. Ramer, R. Miller (eds.)The Beauty of Space Arthttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-49359-2_2

2. Astronomical Art: From Ancient Times to the Industrial Revolution

Don Davis¹  

(1)

Palm Springs, CA, USA

Astronomical art has origins almost as old as art and human imagination. This chapter describes the ancient fascination with the night sky and how humans have documented that fascination over the eons.

Space art has roots deep in the history of art itself. A dark, starry sky has been a universally awe-inspiring sight to all peoples across the world in every era. History is filled with both written and visual stories in great variety of what people thought the stars really were. The randomness of the stars scattered across the sky simply begs for patterns to be drawn across them in the human mind.

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Fig. 2.2

Cylinder seal impression with Moon and stars. Neo Assyrian, about 800 BCE (Before Current Era). Courtesy Pergamon Museum, Berlin, Germany.

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Fig. 2.1

Milky Way Galaxy by Don Davis, FIAAA.