Carson, Cathryn L. (Advisor)
Rosson, Lois (Author)
This dissertation examines how the practice of astronomical illustration changed and expanded over the course of the twentieth century Space Age. In the United States, the post-war period transformed outer space into a geopolitically significant environment, reorienting the authoritative picturing of space from a practice housed primarily within European astronomical observatories to one with commercial viability in American science and popular culture. In the absence of cameras capable of rendering the space environment, individual illustrators filled in pictorial gaps by hand. Between the years of 1944 and 1987, illustrators developed an aesthetic of neutrality that visually signaled the scientific accuracy of their work. This aesthetic privileged a style of representation that mirrored the technical impartiality of cameras, collapsing distinctions between “most realistic” looking with “most photographic.” The visual clarity of photographic resolution became the standard for the most successful illustrations, even though most subjects depicted required a degree of artistic license to be made visible at all. This dissertation examines the visual techniques developed to reproduce photographic-looking illustrations of unphotographable places. The status of these images as utilitarian was negotiated via a complex web of group consensus and proximity to places like NASA, educational programming at planetariums, and public television. Examining midcentury astronomical illustration as a cultural product instead of neutral technical output offers a new entry point into the visual culture of the Space Age in the United States. This study underscores the way in which socially constructed expectations about the space environment were coded into objective-looking images.
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Book
Fairman, Elisabeth R.;
Art, Yale Center for British;
(2014)
Of Green Leaf, Bird, and Flower: Artists' Books and the Natural World
(/isis/citation/CBB001500458/)
Book
Jorink, Eric;
Ramakers, Bart;
(2011)
Art and Science in the Early Modern Netherlands
(/isis/citation/CBB001201611/)
Book
Remmert, Volker R.;
(2011)
Picturing the Scientific Revolution
(/isis/citation/CBB001221404/)
Chapter
Vermij, Rienk;
(2011)
The Light of Nature and the Allegorisation of Science on Dutch Frontispieces around 1700
(/isis/citation/CBB001201619/)
Chapter
Margócsy, Dániel;
(2011)
The Camel's Head: Representing Unseen Animals in Sixteenth-Century Europe
(/isis/citation/CBB001201614/)
Article
Tongiorgi Tomasi, Lucia;
(2007)
La conquista del visibile: Rimeditando Panofsky, rileggendo Galilei
(/isis/citation/CBB000931274/)
Book
Carolyn Landon;
(2015)
Banksia Lady: Celia Rosser, Botanical Artist
(/isis/citation/CBB529830442/)
Book
Olsen, Penny;
(2008)
A Brush with Birds: Australian Bird Art from the National Library of Australia
(/isis/citation/CBB001033757/)
Book
Baulu, Jean;
Dance, Peter;
(2005)
Singes et grands singes: la découverte des primates par les naturalistes et leur représentation dans la gravure et le dessin au cours des cinq derniers siècles
(/isis/citation/CBB000774122/)
Article
Kelly Krause;
(2016)
A Framework for Visual Communication at Nature
(/isis/citation/CBB025509663/)
Book
Samuel, Nina;
(2012)
The Islands of Benoît Mandelbrot: Fractals and the Materiality of Thinking
(/isis/citation/CBB001210288/)
Thesis
Teslow, Tracy Lang;
(2002)
Representing Race to the Public: Physical Anthropology in Interwar American Natural History Museums
(/isis/citation/CBB001562222/)
Book
Jacobs, Robert A.;
(2010)
Filling the Hole in the Nuclear Future: Art and Popular Culture Respond to the Bomb
(/isis/citation/CBB001221277/)
Article
Paul, Gregory S.;
(2005)
The Art of Charles R. Knight
(/isis/citation/CBB000780047/)
Book
Marco Castellari;
(2014)
Formula e metafora: figure di scienziati nelle letterature e culture contemporanee
(/isis/citation/CBB976488878/)
Book
Antoine Traisnel;
(2020)
Capture: American Pursuits and the Making of a New Animal Condition
(/isis/citation/CBB660480379/)
Book
Rodolfo Coccioni;
(2019)
Leonardo da Vinci. Rocce, fossili e altre simili cose
(/isis/citation/CBB007137511/)
Article
F. Giallombardo;
T. R. van Andel;
(2019)
Paolo Boccone and the visual communication of pre-Linnean botany. A comparison between his Leiden herbarium, Paris autoprint and published Icones (1674)
(/isis/citation/CBB372429723/)
Book
Barbara Tramelli;
(2016)
Giovanni Paolo Lomazzos Trattato dell'Arte della Pittura: Color, Perspective and Anatomy
(/isis/citation/CBB872091841/)
Book
Dr Roger Lederer;
(2019)
Birds: Ornithology and the Great Bird Artists
(/isis/citation/CBB095367682/)
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