From images I've seen so far seem a lot closer to the
sublime of the Hudson River School (I spent so much
time in Albany with the collection there, absorbing and
being absorbed.). Although the images are vastly different
in place, origin, and scale, their similarity of form (in
some of the Coles especially) is by no means accidental.
As patterns of energy-taking and energy-giving, they're
similar takes generated by similar processes. But then,
how 19th century of me...
--Gerald S.
Say it isn't so, Joe!
From Saturday's London Independent:
Hubble scientists compared with artists of Old West
Images of stars and galaxies taken by the Hubble space telescope fall into
the Romantic landscape tradition that inspired the "America sublime"
artists
of the 19th century.
"An art historian has found similarities in the way American painters
depicted the beauty of the Old West with the subjective decisions made by
the astronomers to form Hubble pictures.
The Hubble records optical images but the colours have to be processed from
black-and-white pictures with filters sensitive to different frequencies of
the spectrum. But astronomers trying to depict space as realistically as
they can have to make subjective choices on contrast, composition and
colour, Elizabeth Kessler, of the University of Chicago, told the American
Association for the Advancement of Science.
"The Hubble images are part of the Romantic landscape tradition" she said,
pioneered by the likes of Moran and Albert Bierstadt.
David DeVorkin, of the Smithsonian Institution, said: "Just as 19th-century
artists accompanied ... exhibitions to persuade of the greatness of the
West, the space telescope images are doing that for space."
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