ART PLUS SCIENCE:
       FORMULA FOR NEW WORLDS 

 (Reprinted from the Sunday 
  Telegraph 26 June 1994)

When the new genre of space art 
came of age in the 1940's,people saw
marvellous new views of distant
 worlds and suns that no telescope could
see, and of spaceships that 
no engineer knew how to build.

Some of the most eye-catching of those
published by the late Chesley
Bonestell in LIFE magazine, were
views of Saturn from it's moons -
Titan and Mimas. Unfortunately, a LIFE
caption writer had said of Bonestell's
tiny human figures in the moonscapes that
they were only "to give scale".

Resentment of this caption still lingers
in Arthur C Clarke."To give scale indeed!"
he protested. "Didn't this person have
the imagination to realise that some day
men would actually BE out there,looking
up at the ringed glory of the most
spectacular of all the planets?"

Today,space art has matured that much
astronomy would be unintelligible without
it. "Artists are absolutely indispensable
because they make complicated ideas clear
to the general public" said Leif
Robinson, editor of SKY AND TELESCOPE
magazine.

"A writer must be absolutely precise -
just as a photograph is precise -but
an artist has an inate licence to imagine.
Provided he sticks closely as possible
to what is known, he can use his 
imagination to describe what it would
be like to be there."

"Many objects and phenomena in the
universe, such as black holes, gamma
ray bursters and gravitational lensing
are invisible. Except for the exterior
conditions they create, no telescope
can tell us what they are like. Only
the space artist can bring us the
images that mean something, wether
it ultimately proves to be right or wrong"

The astronomer, Peter Leonard,of the
University of Maryland at College Park,
resembles many of his colleagues in
being a space artist who does not paint.
"When I have a theory about something that
 is happening in the universe, I have to
 form a picture of it in my mind.Only
 then does it become clear to me.
 Many astronomers begin their lectures-
 even to learned audiences with a slide
 of an artist's vision of what they
 are about to discuss"

Space artists are emphatically not the
same kind of people as fantasy or science
fiction illustrators. As David Hardy,a
leading British space artist puts it 
"A sound knowledge of astrophysics,
 geology,technology and mathematics
 is a prerequisite - otherwise the
 artist crosses the border into fantasy.
 The scenes created must be as believable
 as any terrestrial subject"

Some space artists use brushes while
others, like Americas Dana Berry and
Britain's Julian Baum prefer the growing
power of computers with graphics software.
Leif Robinson likes the traditional
methods "I believe the artist's individuality
comes out better if he uses brushes.
Something subtle is lost if he uses
electronics" But Alan Gilliland,graphics
editor of the Daily Telegraph said:
"This is going to become less and less
 true in the future as graphics software
 becomes more sophisticated.There have
 been vast changes for the better in the
 past 10 years"

Space art follows the tradition of
Frederick Church and his realistic fellow
painters in the 19th century who travelled
to remote places such as the Himalayas and
the polar regions to depict accurately
ice cliffs,volcanoes, chasms and lofty
mountain ranges.

The work of the space painter, however can
be much riskier than that of the travelling
artist, since space probes are likely to
discover their mistakes. Posterity then
laughs at them, a fate that befell Lucien
Rudaux after his 1937 painting depicting
Venus covered with lush jungle.The Mariner
probe of 1962 found that the average
temperature on Venus was 900F, too hot
for jungles or indeed life of any kind.

Adrian Berry.