Edited by Lærke Rydal Jørgensen, Marie Laurberg. Foreword by Poul Erik Tøjner. Text by Marie Laurberg, Anja C. Andersen, Stephen Petersen, E.C. Krupp.
Myths of the moon in the arts and sciences, 50 years after the first manned landing
The moon has long furnished humankind with an artistic icon, an image of longing and object of scientific inquiry. Encompassing art, film, literature, architecture, design, natural history and historical objects, and published on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the first manned landing (July 20, 1969), The Moon surveys the iconography of the moon, from Romantic landscape paintings to space-age art. It takes the 1969 landing as a thematic fulcrum and a culmination of the deep-rooted cultural conceptions invested in the space race in the 1960s, from David Bowie to Disney.
The book also accounts for the science of the moon throughout the ages, from Galileo to NASA, addressing the many lunar myths that have existed throughout time. Also explored here is moonlight, an important theme in the Romantic nocturnal landscapes of Caspar David Friedrich, J.C. Dahl and Carl Julius von Leypold. Another powerful artistic genealogy is associated with science fiction, a genre that has on occasion influenced space programs: Jules Verne's From the Earth to the Moon (1865), for instance, famously inspired NASA's Apollo programs. Film pioneers such as Georges Méliès and Fritz Lang created cinematic lunar voyages, and in the 1930s, surrealist artists such as Joseph Cornell, Salvador Dalí and Max Ernst explored the moonlit landscape as psychological allegory. Later, during the Cold War, superpowers on both sides of the Iron Curtain worked closely with artists to orchestrate and interpret the space race: Robert Rauschenberg, for example, was one of eight artists invited by NASA to witness Apollo 11, while artists in the Soviet Union played a central role in building the cult of the cosmonaut.
The Moon looks at all these lunar themes and myths, in a thrilling and inspirational gathering for anyone who has felt the moon's pull on their imagination.
C.W. Eckersberg's "Moonlight Painting" (1821) is reproduced from 'The Moon: From Inner Worlds to Outer Space.'
PRAISE AND REVIEWS
The New York Times
Andrew Dickson
Reveals humans have wanted the moon for most of our history — wanted to understand it, capture it, land on it, own it.
Apollo Magazine
...explores the importance of the moon for writers and artists from the Romantics to the present day.
Arts Summary
Mixes the images of art with material from cultural and natural history to emphasize the quest for knowledge and awareness that art shares with other cultural spheres.
The Art Newspaper
José Da Silva
Explores the many different ways that artists, photographers, film makers, historians, astronomers and more have tried to capture the image of the moon.
Wall Street Journal
From Romantic moonlit oil paintings to surrealist lunar fantasies, images range from Galileo’s early maps of the moon to contemporary views in virtual reality.
Frieze
From a 19th-century scientific model, to a Surrealist painting by Salvador Dali?, the illustrated work compiles representations of the moon throughout history.
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Featured photograph, of astronomer Johann Friedrich with Julius Schmidt's plaster model of the moon, 1898, is reproduced from The Moon: From Inner Worlds to Outer Space—a book that seems to carry the right spirit for a new year. "As the only heavenly body whose surface can be seen with the naked eye from earth, the moon has fascinated artists throughout the ages," Louisiana Museum of Modern Art curator Marie Laurberg writes. "Its round white disk has been an open projection screen for myths, imaginings and dreams. The moon is a basic symbol in which the inner world and outer space meet—science and folklore, fiction and technology, existential searching and the urge towards economic expansion. And in visual art these ideas are given condensed expression, where the moon is a mirror for mankind's thoughts about existence and our place in the world. What is important to us, to what do we ascribe value, how do we create meaning in the world? Ask the moon. It hovers in the sky like a blank white screen and shows us the stories we tell about it." continue to blog
In honor of today's Supermoon (affectionately nicknamed "Snow Moon"), which so happens to be the brightest and largest of 2019, we are featuring Max Ernst's 1969 oil painting, "The Birth of a Galaxy" from The Moon: From Inner Worlds to Outer Space. This book is special because it features renderings of the moon both artistic and scientific over the past several centuries. It also contains an unusual blend of critical and literary texts. For example, "The Moon" by Jorge Luis Borges: There is such loneliness in that gold.
The moon of the nights is not the moon
Whom the first Adam saw. The long centuries
Of human vigil have filled her
With ancient lament. Look at her. She is your mirror. continue to blog
The exquisitely produced exhibition catalogue The Moon: From Inner Worlds to Outer Space reads like a tell-all book on interplanetary theories, history and even conspiracies. Flip the pages and you may land on one of Leopold Galluzzo’s illustrations of winged fairy-like creatures dancing amongst unicorns and waterfalls. Flip a few pages further and land on Hito Steyerl’s 2016 project, "ExtraSpaceCraft," a postmodernist figuration of fantastical space exploration. The project combines photoshop and digital editing to produce a comical imagining of what astronauts do on the moon, from fishing to walking a goat to blowing bubbles. The point here is that the book represents more than just the scientific aspect of the moon, but also the artwork that the moon has inspired for centuries. For everyone from hipster astrological theorists to astronomical scientists, The Moon offers a fresh take on the iconography of the moon. Featured image is "Portrait of Dr. Ignacio Chávez" (1957) by Remedios Varo. continue to blog
On the fiftieth anniversary of the historic Apollo 11 launch from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida , which all the world watched on this day, July 1969, with a single, unified sense of wonder, we are pleased to recommend the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art's pitch-perfect survey of Moon-related artworks and writings from the Romantic era until now, from which Richard Hamilton's 1962 painting, "Towards a definitive statement on the coming trends in men's wear and accessories" is reproduced. The work's subtitle, "Together let us explore the stars," is drawn from President John F. Kennedy's 1961 inaugural speech. continue to blog
FORMAT: Hbk, 8.5 x 10.25 in. / 128 pgs / 150 color / 50 b&w. LIST PRICE: U.S. $35.00 LIST PRICE: CANADA $47.5 GBP £28.00 ISBN: 9788793659087 PUBLISHER: Louisiana Museum of Modern Art AVAILABLE: 10/23/2018 DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. RETAILER DISC: TRADE PUBLISHING STATUS: Active AVAILABILITY: In stock TERRITORY: WORLD Except France
Published by Louisiana Museum of Modern Art. Edited by Lærke Rydal Jørgensen, Marie Laurberg. Foreword by Poul Erik Tøjner. Text by Marie Laurberg, Anja C. Andersen, Stephen Petersen, E.C. Krupp.
Myths of the moon in the arts and sciences, 50 years after the first manned landing
The moon has long furnished humankind with an artistic icon, an image of longing and object of scientific inquiry. Encompassing art, film, literature, architecture, design, natural history and historical objects, and published on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the first manned landing (July 20, 1969), The Moon surveys the iconography of the moon, from Romantic landscape paintings to space-age art. It takes the 1969 landing as a thematic fulcrum and a culmination of the deep-rooted cultural conceptions invested in the space race in the 1960s, from David Bowie to Disney.
The book also accounts for the science of the moon throughout the ages, from Galileo to NASA, addressing the many lunar myths that have existed throughout time. Also explored here is moonlight, an important theme in the Romantic nocturnal landscapes of Caspar David Friedrich, J.C. Dahl and Carl Julius von Leypold. Another powerful artistic genealogy is associated with science fiction, a genre that has on occasion influenced space programs: Jules Verne's From the Earth to the Moon (1865), for instance, famously inspired NASA's Apollo programs. Film pioneers such as Georges Méliès and Fritz Lang created cinematic lunar voyages, and in the 1930s, surrealist artists such as Joseph Cornell, Salvador Dalí and Max Ernst explored the moonlit landscape as psychological allegory. Later, during the Cold War, superpowers on both sides of the Iron Curtain worked closely with artists to orchestrate and interpret the space race: Robert Rauschenberg, for example, was one of eight artists invited by NASA to witness Apollo 11, while artists in the Soviet Union played a central role in building the cult of the cosmonaut.
The Moon looks at all these lunar themes and myths, in a thrilling and inspirational gathering for anyone who has felt the moon's pull on their imagination.
