To Alexander Ross, being approached by The Perkin-Elmer Corporation to create a painting of a space telescope presented a paradox. In his personal archives he wrote in the margin of one press release about this project, "A little out of my line but an exciting project." Ross was not given to hard-and-dry rules of painting, nor did he follow those rules in his presentation of his subjects.
Ross' career took off in the 1940s when he
gave Norman Rockwell a run for his money
as the cover illustrator for Good
Housekeeping magazine for twelve years.
With the advent of photography Ross saw
the proverbial writing on the wall and
developed a vocation as a fine-arts
painter, and had 17 one-man shows during
a single year in the late 70s. Focusing on
masterfully colorful dreamlike images of
flowers, ethereal people and otherworldly
animals, Ross painted subjects as he
imagined they would appear in Paradise.
So how, as an artist who romanticized all
of life, would he approach a mission
like this one?
"I've been up and down on this project
emotionally," said Ross, "I didn't want to paint
a bunch of hardware floating around in a blue
void. But I wondered how I could tell
hard-boiled scientists my version of it in a
romantic way."
The Hubble Space Telescope (HST) was the
first and flagship mission of NASA's Great
Observatories program. Designed to
complement the wavelength capabilities of
the other spacecraft in the, HST telescope
capable of performing observations in the
visible, near-ultraviolet, and near-infrared.
Placed into a low-earth orbit by the space shuttle, HST was designed to be modular so that
on subsequent shuttle missions it could be recovered, have faulty or obsolete parts replaced
with new and/or improved instruments, and be re-released. The mission was troubled soon
after launch by the discovery that the primary mirror was spherically aberrated. Steps were
taken to correct these problems, including replacement of the Wide Field and Planetary
Camera with a second-generation version
with built-in corrective optics (a giant
contact lens).
Ross' painting, In Search of Origin, is a
magnificent six-by-nine foot mural, replete
with brilliant colors and painterly Renoir-like
aspects. He depicts the scientific community
as one single man, surrounded by all the
trappings of telescope hardware. The man
is slightly transparent, with his feet
firmly planted on the earth and his head
in the stars. Like the man, the scope
hardware is translucent, and behind it is
the display of the universe ~ beautiful
gaseous nebula, an array of white fiery
stars, the whole mystery of outer space.
Ross' carefully thought out representation
of an emotionless piece of floating hardware
is masterly.
Said Ross about the piece: "Man has lifted
himself from the face of the earth and its
clouded pollution-laden atmosphere into
celestial space in his continuing quest
to solve the mystery of creation."
This article was previously published by
A Country Rag
