Space Art as a Modern Movement: From the Moon to Today

On March 13th, 1972, Chesley Bonestell sent a letter to the director of the NASA Art Program, James Dean, thanking him for his complimentary copy of the recently published NASA book, Eyewitness to Space. The book – a hefty volume filled with 258 paintings, drawings, and prints – was a survey of art work produced for the NASA Artists’ Cooperation Program between 1964 and 1969. Even though Bonestell never participated directly in the NASA Art Program, he was certainly recognized by its leading contributors as the “old master” of space painting. Bonestell’s “Surface of Mercury,” produced more than twenty years before its circulation in Eyewitness to Space, was positioned in the book as an epilogue to a historically significant collection of fine art.