Landscape painter James Dean, who ran a NASA program that invited artists such as Robert Rauschenberg, Norman Rockwell, and Jamie Wyeth to document aspects of the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo missions, was released on March 22. He died in Washington. He was 92 years old.
Her son Stephen was pronounced dead at a nursing home.
From Mercury's last mission in 1963 to 1974, Mr. Dean painted dozens of artists depicting the astronauts, near the launchpad at Cape Canaveral (and at Kennedy Space Center), and the ship that retrieved the astronauts after splashdown in the ocean. gave access to.
Dean believed that artists provide a perspective that cannot be found in photographs.
“Their imaginations allow them to venture beyond the scientific explanations of stars, moons, and exoplanets,” Dean and Bert Ulrich wrote in their book NASA/ART: 50 Years of Exploration (2008). ) is written in
In May 1963, the night before L. Gordon Cooper departed on his final Mercury mission, Mr. Dean allowed painters Peter Hurd and Lamar Dodd to work in a field near the rocket's launch pad. and provided huge lamps for lighting.
Guards who saw the two artists with paints and brushes in the bushes quickly determined that they posed no threat and took them to the top of the launch pad, where Mercury I looked inside the capsule. Inspiration for his abstract gouache painting “Max Q”.
In 1965, then 19-year-old Jamie Wyeth painted “Support,” a watercolor painting depicting Gemini 4's launch from a nearby gantry (a huge structure that surrounds and maintains the rocket before it launches). .
“Jamie would go to the edge and dangle his feet and paint as if he were sitting on a dock somewhere in Maine,” Dean said in 2019, National Air Art Curator of the Year Carolyn. said in an interview with Russo. Space museum.
Rauschenberg roamed the grounds of the space center in the weeks leading up to the Apollo 11 mission, which landed humans on the moon for the first time.
“He didn't bring a sketchpad or anything, but what he wanted to do was look at our photo files and experience the action in real time,” Dean told Russo. Ta.
This experience inspired Mr. Rauschenberg to create “Stoned Moon,” a series of 34 lithographs that includes “Sky Garden.” In this work, a negative image of the Saturn 5 rocket, with its many parts labeled, was superimposed over an image of the explosion. off.
In the hours before Apollo 11's launch on July 16, 1969, Dean, with permission from illustrator Paul Cull, met Neil Armstrong, Colonel Buzz Aldrin, and Lt. Col. Michael Collins for breakfast. He was then allowed to sketch himself wearing the suit. In those spaces.
James Daniel Dean was born on October 14, 1931 in Fall River, Massachusetts. His father, John, was a pastry chef. His mother, Sadie (Griffin) Dean, managed the home.
James discovered he had an artistic talent in high school when his history teacher asked his students to draw for homework and he began sketching planes and ships. He entered the Swain School of Design in New Bedford, Massachusetts in 1950, and after a stint in the Army in Panama he graduated in 1956.
He was hired by the Office of the Secretary of Defense as a graphic designer. Five years later, he joined his NASA Education Programs and Services Division. NASA Administrator James Dean was named its founding director in 1963, the year after Mr. Webb founded the Fine Arts Program, giving him one of his many responsibilities at the agency.
While Dean was in charge of arranging the art program, Hereward Lester Cook, curator of paintings at the National Gallery, contacted the artists, who were each paid $800. They collaborated on his 1971 book Witness to Space, a collection of Apollo-related paintings and drawings.
“Jim had the foresight to believe that artists would make important contributions to the Space Age,” Ulrich said by phone. “The history of the agency unfolds through art and through the eyes of artists.”
The concept of commissioning art from a specialized scientific institution was not widely accepted in the early days, Dean recalls. He told the Orlando Sentinel in 1983 that some space engineers “treated artists in a funny way.”
He added, “Then, as they saw their space hardware transformed into images of fantasy and beauty by artists' imagination and skill, they became increasingly respectful.” .
This work led to exhibitions in 1965 and 1969 and several traveling tours.
Mr. Dean, who referred to himself as the “other” James Dean to distinguish him from the actor, retired from NASA in 1974 and went to the Air and Space Museum (opened two years later) under Colonel Collins. I joined the company as an art curator. Astronaut who was the director of Apollo 11.
Dean was responsible for transporting approximately 2,000 paintings and drawings from NASA to the museum, as well as preparing exhibits and acquiring other art objects. He also donated his Space Shuttle program paintings to NASA.
He retired in 1980 to focus on his painting in a studio in Alexandria, Virginia. He also designed stamps for the United States Postal Service, including one honoring Frederick Bartholdi, who sculpted the Statue of Liberty in 1985.
His friendship with Colonel Collins led Mr. Dean to create sketches of NASA history in “Liftoff: The Story of America's Adventure in Space” (1988).
In addition to his son Steve, Mr. Dean has another son, Richard. He has three grandchildren. and four great-grandchildren. His wife, Rita (Williams) Dean, whom he married in 1952, passed away in 2019. His son James passed away in 2018.
Rockwell's paintings were famous for their nostalgic evocations of small-town America, and Dean was inspired by astronauts John Young and Virgil (Gus) during the countdown test before Gemini 3's flight in 1965. )・I arranged to meet Mr. Grissom.
Mr. Rockwell, who was working at Look magazine at the time, left with a photo of the two astronauts. But after returning to his studio in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, he realized he needed to learn more about spacesuits. He asked Mr. Dean one thing.
Dean's request was initially denied because the lawsuit is confidential and cannot be sent by mail. So he contacted suit engineer Joseph W. Schmidt, who brought the suit to Stockbridge. Mr. Schmidt stayed for a week while Mr. Rockwell drew Mr. Young and Mr. Grissom in their suits.
When the painting was on display at the National Gallery for an exhibition in 1965, Mr. Dean asked the museum's director, John Walker, what he thought of it.
“And he looked at me seriously and said, 'I didn't know Norman Rockwell had these qualities,'” Dean told Russo. The next morning, Mr. Dean called Mr. Rockwell and told him what Mr. Walker had said.
“He said, 'Oh, now I can die happy.'”