Lunar Legacy
Astronaut Alan Bean is on a mission: To capture his out-of-this-world vision in fine art
From Earth to the surface of the moon is a journey of some 238,000 miles. And Texan Alan L. Bean is one of only a few humans who’s made it. (He’s the only Texas native, in fact, among the elite cadre of 12 U.S. astronauts who’s walked on the moon.)
It’s been more than 45 years since Bean flew on the 1969 Apollo 12 moon mission with Charles “Pete” Conrad and Richard F. “Dick” Gordon, but he still works every day to recreate that experience and share it with others. An accomplished painter, Bean left the space program in 1981 to devote his full energies to capturing his adventure on canvas.
His departure from the program must have puzzled his bosses and even his fellow astronauts, but Bean took his new mission as a serious calling. “When I considered retiring from NASA,”
he says, “I saw lots of young men and women who could fly the shuttle just as well. But I was the only one of the 12 of us walking on the moon who could paint it.”
Bean, born March 15, 1932, in the small hospital upstairs from the drugstore in the Panhandle town of Wheeler, didn’t take to pigments and paintbrushes right off. “I carried on about planes and such,” he says, while growing up in Temple and Fort Worth and while completing his B.S. in aero- nautical engineering at the University of Texas. But during Navy test pilot train- ing some years before he’d been selected for the astronaut program in 1963, he began to consider how he might apply his artistic gift. He cultivated it with classes over the years, landing on his signature subject matter after returning from commanding Skylab Mission II in 1973. He’s never looked back.
STATE OF THE ART “About half the astronauts thought it was a midlife crisis or something,” Bean once said of his decision to take up painting. “The other half — the ones who were more right brain — thought it was a pretty good idea.” As an added touch, Bean integrates minute bits of moon dust into his paintings and stamps them with an Apollo boot model.
MONET OF THE MOON
Bean’s first solo art exhibition was held in Fort Worth in 1984. Since that time he’s created more than 200 space-related works, mainly as commissions these days. Forty of his paintings and drawings were showcased in a 2009 exhibition at the National Air and Space Museum celebrating the 40th anniversary of the first Apollo mission.
He paints nearly every day, devoting most of his working hours to creating art that he alone on the planet can make. “I spent 18 years at NASA risking my life so I could do this,” he says, and he means it: he guards his time, allotting little of it for public appearances or other distractions.
In his sunlit Houston studio he has several paintings going at once on easels, and the dove-gray walls are graced with several originals as well as moon-mission memorabilia. The room is a riot of light, from the gold foil encasing a scale model of the lunar landing module to a glass mosaic of his own creation, to strips of beveled mirrors reflecting differ- ent sides of mini-astronaut mannequins.
Such artifacts, in addition to the detailed reference files and notes Bean keeps, ensure that his paintings depict a particular moment with precision. “I like to feel it’s as accurate as I can make it,” he says. “More accurate than it can ever be done in the future in fine art” — because he’s the one who was there. That photorealistic accuracy extends to, say, the angle of the sun, as documented in flight records, or the exact equipment used on the mission he’s portraying.
His style, however, is colorfully impressionistic, combining carefully chosen color schemes with bas-relief sculptural elements formed by tools and boot soles. And he’s hit on the inspiration of incorporating into his acrylic pigments a few grains of dust vacuumed from salvaged uniform patches.
It’s that gray moon material that’s the hardest to capture in an earthly work of art, he claims, using the scene he’s currently painting as an example. “The most difficult part is the lunar surface, not because of the rocks or the dirt or anything — but because from right here it’s gray rock, and as far as you can see it’s
gray rock, and that way and that it’s gray rock.” Adding touches of warm and cool accents makes the compositions more visually appealing, and in fact mirrors the human eye’s expanded capability to perceive color under zero gravity conditions.
Bean isn’t tempted to cheat by modifying the arrangement of actual events and participants, though — his mission is to show the scene as faithfully as he lived it. “If you’re going to be an artist — and truly be an artist — you have to be disciplined,” Bean told a writer in 2011. “I’ve got successful artist friends, and they’re always painting. And I’ve got unsuccessful artist friends, and they’re always talking about painting.”
DOWN TO EARTH At the unveiling of a larger-than-life bronze likeness at the Wheeler County Historical Museum in September 2016, Bean greeted hundreds of well-wishers, including the family of Wheeler native Pam Hill (right).
TRIPPING THE LUNAR LIGHT FANTASTIC
One painting, for instance, depicts a graceful zero-G moment in mid-step. Bean’s self-portrait “Tiptoeing on the Ocean of Storms” is based on a photo shot by fellow Apollo moon-walker Pete Conrad. “That’s how you move around on the moon,” Bean says, indicating the dancelike motion. “You’re leaning forward and both feet usually aren’t on the ground; when you walk around on the moon, that’s a lot of work. But if you run along and use your ankles and just prance along, that’s a lot less effort.”
Until the day other humans have the same opportunity as the Apollo astronauts to travel to the moon, the spirit of Bean’s paintings will have to serve. He tries to capture the feeling in words: “I was at a Cowboys game, watching the punters. I was thinking, ‘I could take a rock and throw it higher than those guys.’ Someday they’ll play football on the moon.”
Bean predicts a lunar Olympics as well. “Sprints won’t be very interesting, but high jumps — unbelievable!” He smiles. “Pole vaulting, I can’t even imagine that. You might be able to pole-vault higher than that TV screen in Dallas.”
FRONTIERS ON EARTH AND BEYOND
Bean is sincere about sharing the goal of space travel with future generations. While a journey to Mars might not happen in his lifetime, it will happen, he believes, when the costly year-and-a- half mission becomes a national priority again. “We have the technology,” he says, “but it’s going to cost so much money.” In the meantime, great strides are being made in technology and in multi-agency cooperation with the International Space Station.
On a two-day trip to his hometown last September to unveil a statue dedicated in his honor, Bean inspired Wheeler students from kindergarten through high school with his recollections of standing on the moon’s surface. He encouraged them to pursue their dreams, whatever they might be.
“The pioneers who came to Texas were brave,” Bean told the students, “much braver, I believe, than it takes to go to the moon and back, where you’ve got 400,000 people supporting you and watching you and giving you directions.”
That line drew a laugh. But the previous evening, at a dinner with local museum and historical commission members, Bean had gazed out briefly as the sun set over Wheeler County’s rugged, cedar-covered hills. “Can you imagine if you came out here in a covered wagon?” the pilot of the Apollo 12 lunar module mused. “There’d just be these beautiful rolling plains, but you could get lost out here.”
A GRAND ADVENTURE
Bean, who logged 1,671 hours and 45 minutes in space and has gone on to preserve those hours for posterity, characteristically shifts the spotlight to others. “Apollo was one of the great adventures in all history,” he says, “and it will be celebrated through the centuries just the same as Columbus or Magellan.” He adds, with modesty: “Neil Armstrong’s name will go along in history in the same way.”
Armstrong’s likeness, however, will also go down in history as only Alan Bean can depict it — and Bean’s artistic gift is now recognized in the city of his birth with a sculpture portraying his own likeness. Just as in the moon mission, Bean has trained well for his role and carries out his part with perfectionism and passion. “I’ve got to do my job right, as I see it,” he believes. “That’s it — that’s all I could ever do.”
