UKH

Here are some online versions of Astronaut Alan Bean's paintings (the originals are going at about half a million dollars each!).

http://www.alanbean.com/gallery2.cfm?id=1999-A-New-Frontier

"Over the years, my art has evolved into a mixture of painting and sculpture, textured with my lunar tools, sprinkled with bits of our Apollo 12 spacecraft and a touch of moondust from the Ocean of Storms."

I recommend reading Moondust, by Andrew Smith, if you haven't already read it - there's a chapter on Alan Bean. He's my favourite moon-landing astronaut, not least because the experience touched him so profoundly that pretty much all he's done since is to keep exploring it through painting.

(There's also a great anecdote elsewhere in the book about Neil Armstrong asking Buzz Aldrin to take his picture - you know, pretty big moment and all that, might want a photo for his mum's mantelpiece - and Aldrin saying he was 'busy'. Harsh!)

I liked the bit - possibly from Bean's landing - where one of them basically says "golly gosh we were 4 feet away from having our lunar lander tumble into that massive chasm"

Thanks - I will look out for that!

Not heard that one but read recently that as Armstrong landed so softly, the lunar lander's legs failed to crumple as planned meaning a bigger 'leap' to the surface for the astronauts. On jumping off the Ladder, Aldrin's wee bag came loose and he promptly urinated into one of his boots!

  Apparently he was carrying the camera intended to take the first colour film on the moon. But he accidentally pointed it at the sun thus wrecking it and the chance to to make a colour film. Hence the obsession with capturing the colour though his paintings.

One for fans of John Peel era indie and the artistic efforts of astronauts: a slide show of Alan Bean's paintings, set to the tribute song to him by Hefner:

youtube.com/watch?v=ipEduVIn_JY&

Transcript of the Bean/Conrad/Mitchell mission. 
https://www.jsc.nasa.gov/history/mission_trans/AS12_LM.PDF

I had to look up "copacetic"!  

The transcript that I posted seems to describe some camera FUBAR. 

I'll second Clare's comment on Moon Dust, a book that she loaned me years ago. It's brilliant, and oddly makes a good companion piece to "A Voyage for Madmen", Peter Nichols' book about the infamous 1968 round the world solo yacht race. 

p139 onward on the transcript shows the camera screw-up, it is hilarious, including "smack it with a hammer to try to fix it" 

Half a million? Hmm

Might make good Sci - Fi book covers...maybe

not just Apparently at all.  It was a huge huge disappointment t the time  - I tuned in like loads of other space crazed youngsters  (it must have been half term) to watch and heard the BBC panel explaining why we wouldn't be seeing any more pictures from Apollo 12

Back when i had a gallery i used to deal with the company that sold his limited edition prints, I bought two of this one http://www.aviationarthangar.com/inbebyalbea.html  . One i sold in the gallery and the other i kept for my self but then sold it on some years later for £500.00 when i was short of cash, I now wish i hadn't.

Just on a tangent to that - do you know that Darren Hayman is about to tour for the 20th anniversary of BGH?  It's only a solo set - I don't think he'll ever reform Hefner - but I'm very pleased to have got tickets regardless!  All the London shows are predictably sold out but I think the others still have availability...

Out of interest, why do you think the paintings don't qualify as proper art? I love the colours and textures but wonder if some of the compositions are a bit clunky perhaps? Do you think the prices are inflated because of the historical relevance of the work as opposed to their artistic merit?

I'd love to see an original up close, it's hard to judge from an online photo.

Wow, what a thread ! Thanks for kicking it off.

It was just a small step for [a] man.

Pete Conrad: "Whoopie! Man, that may have been a small one for Neil, but that's a long one for me. "

Oo-er missus

BTY it was a TV camera that was damaged, not film.  Hence the lack of live mission coverage.  Really fine colour picturesalready  came back in the film vault of Apollo 11.  They caused an absolute sensation in the new Sunday colour supplements as people had only seen the ghostly TV pictures from the surface up till then.

I didn't say they weren't 'proper' art , whatever that is, but they border on the kitsch in my opinion. 

This guy goes to the moon and back, lovingly recreates his memories for your delectation using bits of spaceship and dust from an alien world, artfully rendering them with exquisite colours and textures. He dies.

Your critique is “…they border on the kitsch in my opinion”

I’m really keen to know which artists you rate!

Cheers.

An alien world? Where?

He can use anything h want bit I still find them kitsch!  That's art and art appreciation for you! 

Fair enough. I was just thinking that the amount of work he put into the paintings dwarfs what you often see as lauded as high art (Tracy Emin's bed?)

I meant alien as in foreign/separate not the little green man variety.

I wish I'd seen Emin's bed - I've been told that it was unique and very powerful .

I'm ot being fair on Bean's works though since  haven't seen them in the flesh. 

“We knew how many things had to go right “

A quote from Alan Bean that perfectly sums up the bravery of the Apollo astronauts.

Indeed. And yet you read some of those mission transcripts and it all sounds a lot less precise than you might have originally imagined (eg trying to fix the camera by hitting it with a hammer)

The courage must have been innate (and that is part of how they got through the selection process)

Tom Wolfe in The Right Stuff makes the good point that by the time John Glenn made his legendary flight, all the astronauts were pretty much the most prepared people ever sent on a “hazardous” mission such that, aside from the courage required to get over the fact that lots of things could kill you, the actual mission was so tightly scripted that it was almost a token gesture. You could compare it to how Amundsen had no issue with the South Pole as he was so expert with dogs and sleds and similar terrain, that it was almost literally a walk in the park for him....whereas Scott was way outside any comfort zone

Last month in Viz

https://www.flickr.com/photos/blue-straggler/42533419891/in/photostream

3 Astronauts returned from the ISS today, check out the blackened re-entry capsule - looks so primitive! http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-44349517 .  Every aspect of space travel must take so much bravery I can't think of a parallel. Yes, bravery is everywhere, especially amongst the climbing community, but in terms of length of time you must be under stress and the many things that could go wrong it seems to be a unique endeavour to me.

saw a charred one in Shildon last year (Tim Peake's craft?).   Amazing.  Really liked the VR ISS departure and re-entry too.