NASA's first (and maybe last) artist-in-residence

I recently wrote about our first "space artist", and so I was really excited to come across this NY Times article about Laurie Anderson's stint as NASA's first artist-in-residence...



Your new one-woman show, ''The End of the Moon,'' is based on your stint as an artist in residence at NASA. Why would a performance artist known for her iconoclasm want to visit mission control in Houston?

As sad as I am about being in the United States these days, NASA is genuinely exciting. I keep thinking what it would be like to be a kid in this country. I think it would be really depressing, except for NASA.

Did you want to be an astronaut when you were growing up?

No. Although I could definitely imagine myself floating in space, I didn't want to become an astronaut. Driving those golf carts around on the moon seems a little geeky. Also, astronauts are constantly busy, and I didn't want to have that much to do.

Most other people see astronauts as figures of smoldering romance who rank right up there with cowboys and other American pioneers. Did you get to spend any time with astronauts?

I met many astronauts, and they seemed so out of place. They were given jobs around mission control, but they were living to be in space, and all their conversations were about the next time maybe they were going to go.

Since you don't identify with astronauts, what moved you to spend a year at NASA?

I like the scale of space. I like thinking about human beings and what worms we are. We are really worms and specks. I find a certain comfort in that.

You were NASA's first artist in residence and perhaps its last.

I think there is a lot of animosity between Congress and NASA right now. I heard that someone in Congress was looking through the budget, and the artist-in-residence program got scratched out.

An Historical First

The 81-year-old artist Artis Lane made history several months ago when a sculpture she made debuted at the U.S. Capitol. The bust of Sojourner Truth, a former slave and activist, is the first sculpture of a black woman at the Capitol.

From the LA Times:

"The world's coming around to seeing black as beautiful," Lane said in an interview at her home in Los Angeles' Fairfax district. "When I came up, they were laughing at darker people."

The campaign to memorialize Truth in the nation's Capitol began more than a decade ago. A self-educated abolitionist who changed her name from Isabella Baumfree, Truth played a large role in the women's suffrage movement and in 1851 delivered the famous "Ain't I a Woman?" speech at a women's rights convention in Ohio.

Truth, who died in 1883, "encompassed all aspects of a truly free woman," Lane said. "She personified women's rights, equal rights . . . the struggling and understanding that was taken away from us because of slavery."

E. Faye Williams, chair of the nonprofit National Congress of Black Women, which commissioned the work, said many believed that Truth should stand alongside women's rights figures Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott in a portrait monument that was placed in the Capitol Rotunda in 1997.

Congressional legislation to include Truth in that group failed, Williams said. But Congress approved a bill in 2006 to memorialize the black suffragist in a stand-alone sculpture. Williams said Lane was the first choice to produce the work.

Michelangelo's first painting

Currently on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC is what experts believe to be Michelangelo Buonarroti's first painting, The Torment of Saint Anthony. The painting was made between 1487 and 1488, which would make Michelangelo only 12 years old. Michelangelo used to visit the studio and workshop of Ghirlandaio to visit his lifelong friend, Francesco Granacci, an apprentice for the painter. The shop is most likely where Michelangelo acquired his first materials and became fascinated with art. This painting of his is completely astonishing, and to think that he was only a child when it was created simply knocks me off my feet. I'm sure the images don't even do it justice, so I am definitely heading over there to see it soon.

From the Met:

Like many boys then and now, Michelangelo loved monsters. He loved them so much, he made them the stars of his first painting, “The Torment of Saint Anthony,” which he copied from an engraving by Martin Schongauer (1448-14910) the way kids today copy scenes from comic books.

Visit the Michelangelo show at the Met

or read the Examiner article about Michelangelo's first painting

First Family gets some new art

The Obamas have borrowed Ed Ruscha's "I Think I'll..." (1983) from the National Gallery

President Barack and First Lady Michelle Obama are shaking things up in D.C. in more ways than one. Besides being the first black Presidential family, the Obamas are changing out the artwork in the White House.

Currently, the White House is full of Hudson River School paintings, landscapes, and the like. The Obamas, supporters of the arts, are actively seeking out modern and contemporary work made by women, Latinos, Asian, and African-American artists. It is said that they have a "wish list" of about 40 artists that they would like to see in their home, and are contacting museums and galleries to borrow the work.

Read more about the Obama artwork shakeup:

• Changing the Art on the White House Walls from The Wall Street Journal

• Listen to "Yes We Can Be More Artistically Inclusive" from WNYC's The Brian Lehrer Show

• Art Goes to the Obama White House from Time

First photographs

Although people were experimenting with primitive photography techniques, pin-hole cameras, camera obscuras, etc. for centuries, the first permanent photograph is said to have been created around 1825 by Nicéphore Niépce. Niépce referred to this type of images as heliographs (sun writings). Using a plate coated in bitumen, he exposed the plated with a camera obscura over an 8-hour period. After he washed the plate with lavender oil, the View from the Window at Le Gras appeared.

Currently, the original plate is on display at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, at the University of Texas at Austin.

First Oil Paintings

Just last year scientists discovered what are being described as the world's first-ever oil paintings. Much like the Lascaux paintings, these were found on caves, however in Afghanistan. The findings prove that oils had been used in Asia hundreds of years earlier than in Europe.



From CNN:
Scientists found the murals in a network of caves where monks lived and prayed in the Afghan region of Bamiyan, according to a statement on the Web site of the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility, where the ancient paintings were analyzed.

Until 2001, two colossal 6th-century statues of Buddhas stood at the mouth of the caves. Then the Taliban, which then ruled Afghanistan, blew up the statues on the grounds that they were un-Islamic. The action drew international condemnation.

Inside the caves, scientists found murals painted in the 7th century. They show images of Buddha in vermilion robes sitting cross-legged amid palm leaves and mythical creatures.

In 12 of 50 caves, the murals were painted using drying oils -- perhaps from walnuts and poppy seeds -- the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility said.

Its findings on the age of the oil paintings were published this week in The Journal of Analytical Atomic Spectrometry.

"This is the earliest clear example of oil paintings in the world," said Yoko Taniguchi, leader of the team of scientists.

keep reading about the first oil paintings...

our first space artist

This summer, 40 years after Neil Armstrong walked his first steps on the moon, "space artist" Alan Bean will exhibit a group of his paintings in a show entitled Alan Bean: Painting Apollo, First Artist on Another World at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum.

Alan Bean was the fourth man to walk on the Moon in 1969 (with Apollo 12). After working with NASA for 18 years as an astronaut, Bean retired so that he could focus on his painting.

The Smithsonian, heralding Bean as the first "space artist", says, "Displaying both art and artifacts, this exhibition weaves the technology of one of humankind’s greatest achievements with an artist’s firsthand account of a new frontier."

Opening Thursday, July 16, 2009
Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum
The National Mall
Independence Ave at 6th Street, SW
Washington, DC 20560

Tiptoeing on the Ocean of Storms, 1982, acrylic on masonite



Kissing the Earth, 1994, acrylic on masonite