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

Editors

2nd ed. 2021

Cover image credit: Cosmic Conception - Immaculate Star by Michael Turne

Editors

ISBN 978-3-030-49358-5 e-ISBN 978-3-030-49359-2

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-49359-2

Second edition of the original work published by the IAAA with the title "Beauty of Space, 2012"

Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2012, 2021

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Foreword

Fig. 1

Photograph of mural at the Astronaut Hall of Fame painted by Alan Bean, photo by Jon Ramer

Most of the art that we see around us, and hangs in the worlds great museums, are what we would see if we lived at the time of the artist on Earth. A record from the distant past to the present, we can see what animals and humans looked like, and what they were doing centuries ago, decades before, and yesterday.

For example, all of us seem to enjoy seeing what life was like in France as painted by Impressionist artists the likes of Claude Monet, August Renoir, Edgar Degas, Alfred Sisley and others at turn of the 20th century. I love that period of time.

Others are entertained by seeing what it was like at the time of the opening of the American West, painted so brilliantly by Fredrick Remington and Charles Russell, among others. I know I do.

The artists work you will see in this amazing and tradition-breaking book are all about our future. What our descendants will see, as the centuries unfold and they travel the vast distances to distant worlds, we can view right now through the eyes and imagination of the Artist.

These paintings are not just a simple flight of fancy, but are based on thorough scientific research and study. The artists visualize the world that probably exists, not that might exist. These are worlds our childrens, childrens, childrens, children will explore someday in future generations.

I am one of twelve lucky human beings to have ever experienced the breathtaking awe of stepping onto the shores of an alien world. That world was hauntingly familiar because of art that I had seen over the years created by some of the great artists in this magnificent book. I am forever in their debt for making me feel more comfortable in a dangerous and distant world.

The twelve of us that moved about on the Moons surreal terrain acknowledge a spiritual beauty in the mysterious rocks and craters . We had been sent to this cratered rocky and dusty world and left our footprints where there is no wind, nor rain to erase them. They will remain as they were when we first made them for the next thirty million Earth years.

I went as an Astronaut, but with the heart of an Explorer and the eyes of an Artist. The most incredible adventure of our generation left us somewhat transformed when we returned home.

I now paint pictures of what we humans did, and will do, when we first encounter worlds other than our own. When we go to the distant worlds depicted in this wondrous book, these same activities will be repeated because they are the best way discovered so far that allow us to understand how these new worlds were formed, and if they can be of value to the people on Earth.

I include artifacts from my spacesuit, still retaining magical sprinklings of dust from the Ocean of Storms, and from the spaceship that carried me there. I have embedded these sacred objects in my paintings. It is my dream that these first paintings of another world created by an artist who has actually been there, will document experiences that can be forever shared by humanity.

I hope this book, The Beauty of Space Art, will enlighten the general public of the islands beyond our atmosphere and gravity, and will create an intense desire to go there.

As centuries unfold, we will surely visit other planetary neighbors around our beautiful star, the Sun. We will then travel out to nearby stars, a few of the hundreds of billions of worlds within our Milky Way Galaxy .

We artists bring dreams to life; and weve only begun to dream.