Chesley Bonestell

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Chesley Bonestell (1 January 1888 – 11 June 1986) was a painter, designer and illustrator. His paintings were a major influence on science fiction art and illustration, and he helped inspire the American space program. He is known as the "Father of Modern Space Art".

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[edit] Biography

Bonestell was born in San Francisco, California. His first astronomical painting was done in 1905. After seeing Saturn through the 12-inch telescope at San Jose's Lick Observatory, he rushed home to paint what he'd seen. The painting was destroyed in the fire that followed the 1906 earthquake.

Bonestell studied architecture at Columbia University in New York City. Dropping out in his third year, he worked as a renderer and designer for several of the leading architectural firms of the time. While with William van Alen, he designed the art deco façade of the Chrysler Building as well as its distinctive gargoyles[citation needed]. During this same period, he designed the Plymouth Rock Memorial[citation needed], the U.S. Supreme Court Building[citation needed], the New York Central Building[citation needed], Manhattan office and apartment buildings and several state capitols[citation needed].

Returning to the West Coast, he prepared illustrations of the chief engineer's plans for the Golden Gate Bridge for the benefit of funders. When the Great Depression dried up architectural work in the United States, Bonestell went to England, where he rendered architectural subjects for the Illustrated London News. In the late 1930s he moved to Hollywood, where he worked (without screen credit) as a special effects artist, creating matte paintings for such films as The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939), Citizen Kane (1941), and The Magnificent Ambersons (1942).

[edit] Magazines

Bonestell then realized that he could combine what he had learned about camera angles, miniature modeling, and painting techniques with his lifelong interest in astronomy. The result was a series of paintings of Saturn as seen from several of its moons that was published in Life in 1944. Nothing like these had ever been seen before: they looked as though photographers had been sent into space. His painting of Saturn seen from the frosty moon Titan is perhaps the most famous astronomical landscape ever. It was constructed with a combination of clay models, photographic tricks, and various painting techniques. (It turns out that Titan has a thick haze such that such a view is probably not possible in reality.)

Bonestell followed up the sensation these paintings created by publishing more paintings in many leading national magazines. These and others were eventually collected in the best-selling book The Conquest of Space (1949), produced in collaboration with author Willy Ley. Bonestell's last work in Hollywood was contributing special effects art and technical advice to the seminal science fiction films produced by George Pál, including Destination Moon and The War of the Worlds. In the 1950s, Bonestell did cover paintings for science fiction magazines, including The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction and Galaxy Science Fiction, but he is probably best known as one of the earliest, and certainly leading exponents of astronomical or space art.

When Wernher von Braun organized a space flight symposium for Collier's, he invited Bonestell to illustrate his concepts for the future of spaceflight. For the first time, spaceflight was shown to be a matter of the near future. Von Braun and Bonestell showed that it could be accomplished with the technology then existing in the mid-1950s, and that the question was that of money and will. Coming as they did at the beginning of the Cold War and just before the sobering shock of the launch of Sputnik, the 1952-54 Collier's Magazine series titled Man Will Conquer Space Soon was instrumental in kick-starting America's space program.

In 1986, Bonestell died in Carmel, California, with an unfinished painting on his easel.

[edit] Legacy

During his lifetime, Bonestell was honored internationally for the contributions he made to the birth of modern astronautics, from a bronze medal awarded by the British Interplanetary Society to a place in the International Space Hall of Fame to an asteroid named for him. His paintings are prized by collectors and institutions such as the National Air and Space Museum and the National Collection of Fine Arts. One of his classic paintings, an ethereally beautiful image of Saturn seen from its giant moon Titan, has been called "the painting that launched a thousand careers." Wernher von Braun wrote that he had "learned to respect, nay fear, this wonderful artist's obsession with perfection. My file cabinet is filled with sketches of rocket ships I had prepared to help in his artwork—only to have them returned to me with…blistering criticism."

A crater on Mars and the asteroid 3129 Bonestell are named after him.

[edit] Books illustrated by Bonestell

  • Ley, Willy (1949), The Conquest of Space (Chesley Bonestell, Illustrator)
  • Across the Space Frontier (1952)
  • Constructing the moonships in the space station's orbit (endpapers)
  • The space station (p11)
  • Spaceships coming in for a landing on the moon (p63)
  • Landing on the moon (p67)
  • Unloading the cargo ship on the moon (p76-77)
  • Exploration convoy crossing lunar plain (p101)
  • Take-off from the moon (p115)
  • Heuer, Kenneth (1953), The End of the World (Chesley Bonestell, Illustrator) (Reprinted and revised in 1957 as The Next Fifty Billion Years: An Astronomer's Glimpse into the Future, Viking Press)
  • The World We Live In (1955)
  • The Exploration of Mars (1956)
  • Man and the Moon (1961)
  • Rocket to the Moon (1961)
  • The Solar System (1961)
  • Beyond the Solar System (1964)
  • Mars (1964)
  • Beyond Jupiter (1972)
  • The Golden Era of the Missions (1974)

[edit] Popular culture references

[edit] References

  • Miller, Ron and Frederick C. Durant III (1983), Worlds Beyond: The Art of Chesley Bonestell, Walsworth Pub Co ISBN-13: 978-0898651959
  • Miller, Ron and Frederick C. Durant III (2001), The Art of Chesley Bonestell (Forward by Melvin H. Schuetz), Paper Tiger ISBN-13: 978-1855858848
  • Schuetz, Melvin H. (1999), Chesley Bonestell Space Art Chronology, Universal Publishers ISBN-13: 978-1581128291
  • Schuetz, Melvin H. (2003), Supplement to A Chesley Bonestell Space Art Chronology ASIN: B0006S65MS

[edit] External links

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