Space Is the Place
 |
| Chesley Bonestell, Saturn Seen from Titan, 2940. Adler Planetarium, Chicago |
The drawings of Chesley Bonestell (1888–1986) helped sell the Chrysler Building and the Golden Gate Bridge to the American public. Bonestell was also a Hollywood matte artist, painting backdrops for The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Citizen Kane, and The Magnificent Ambersons. All of this has been eclipsed by Bonestell's later career as a space artist, a creator of otherworldly landscapes for NASA and popular magazines.
Several Bonestell paintings from Chicago's Adler Planetarium are being lent to Wende Museum for its upcoming show "Competing Cosmologies: Interpreting the Sky" (Nov. 7, 2026–Oct. 17, 2027). Curated by Joes Segal, Emma Diffley, and Lois Rosson, it will bring together scientific and artistic visions of the cosmos from the early 20th century, Cold War, and today.
Comments
The Allen version of SATURN AS SEEN FROM TITAN, lot 211, executed circa 1952 -- years after the original 1944 version -- to my mind, is the far more beautiful of the two. It was presented as a gift to his only child, presumably as a wedding gift.
Oil on board, 47.9 x 60.3 cm.
Lot 211
CHESLEY BONESTELL (1888-1986)
SATURN AS SEEN FROM TITAN
Estimate: USD 30,000 - 50,000
Price realised: USD 302,400
Excerpted from the catalogue essay:
"The planets of our Solar System had never been accurately depicted from their satellites, through a definite visual angle. Always before it had been an 'artist's conception' ... As my knowledge of the technical side of the motion picture industry broadened I realized I could apply camera angles as used in the motion picture studio to illustrate 'travel' from satellite to satellite, showing Saturn exactly as it would look, and at the same time I could add interest by showing the inner satellites or outer ones on the far side of Saturn, as well as the planet itself in different places."
—Chesley Bonestell
The Lucas Museum will at least have the technical side covered, while museums like the Broad, Hammer or too much of LACMA have the quality of collections of "altogether in the eye of the beholder" or natural-history-type tchotchkes.
When so-so contemporary art (at least as I rate it) goes for millions, that has the quality of collectors being too much like buyers of ridiculously overpriced apartments in super-thin and tall towers built south of Central Park. This era feels like a Ponzi scheme merged with the Emperor's New Clothes.
And when the collection of LACMA already isn't major league enough, it adds insult to injury by allowing galleries to look like the museum doesn't have enough objects to fill them with.
Katy Barkan, Artforum:
Zumthor’s choice of concrete…carries, on the one hand, implications of the city’s endless asphalt: the pretense of utility, traces of labor, the infrastructural authority of the Army Corps of Engineers. On the other, its smoothness and seamlessness generate an aura of spiritual transcendence, something not unaffiliated with the Angeleno ethos.
Conversing with fellow architects about the building, I’ve noticed a tendency to focus on the imperfections in the concrete; it’s easy to presume that the Swiss architect was disappointed with the lack of refinement in LA’s concrete craft tradition. I prefer to imagine that Zumthor might find pleasure in seeing his building rub up against the conditions of the city, in seeing his authorship integrated into its fabric.
After a short while spent wandering the museum, it can become difficult to tell the difference between inside and outside, entering a room and exiting one… The question of what even constitutes a gallery, and by extension a museum, comes to animate the overall design. Is a corridor a gallery? Is the scrolling cityscape just beyond Zumthor’s windowed perimeter part of the collection?
If the galleries blur the boundary between art and architecture, their painted walls push this conceit to its limit. Saturated in velvety blues, reds, and blacks, Zumthor’s surfaces all but vibrate… This works well for tapestries, quilts, stone reliefs, frottage—media whose own materiality is assertive enough to compete with Zumthor’s surfaces… But flatter work, especially photography and illusionistic painting, struggles to hold its position against the building’s insistent materiality.
Overwhelmed by the drama of the walls they hang on, artworks with worlds inside of them become difficult to enter, as our gaze is returned again and again to the world without. Zumthor forces the viewer’s attention, optically and conceptually, back to the realm of the building and its place in the city. We are asked constantly to dilate and contract—to adjust from contemplative darkness to the California sun, from specific detail to overarching conceit, from stillness to activity.
Certainly, by lifting part of the museum off the ground, invoking the freeway and framing the long stretch of Wilshire, Zumthor has constructed a worthy metonym for LA. Will this give rise to a public space equal to such a heavy lift? The last-minute addition of a fence around the complex doesn’t bode well. [End quote]
Not sure why the writer implied the gate was "last minute." I believe renderings of the project always showed fences on the north and south sides of Wilshire. LACMA has long had a steel gate in front of its landscaped areas, which would have been really bad if the barricade were chained link instead of upright thin green bars.
> museums
In turn, why aren't you commenting about the work by Bonestell? I did. Other than a dumb one-liner from Ted G, no one reacted to that or, for that matter, Ted G's original post too.
And how come not more people write about anything under most of this blog's entries?
> obsession
So how come my post inspired you to write something, but the subject of this particular blog entry didn't?
And I admit the Geffen Galleries are an ongoing topic of interest to me. They symbolize the over 60-year history of originally the only art museum in LA - certainly a free-standing one - and categorizing the Huntington as not in LA.
Oh, dear. This one invented the rabbit hole.
> the rabbit hole.
Damn, Ted G. You're about as interesting as talking to a blank gray concrete wall. By the way, how are the rubes in NYC?