Astronomy and the Muse

Astronomy and the Muse

Astronomical themes in the visual arts, music

and poetry

Astronomical themes and images have inspired artists of all type since the first brush was put to

canvas, note to staff or word to page.

Astronomy and the Composers

Gustav HolstThe Planets(1914-1916)

Mercury – The Winged Messenger

Venus – The Bringer of Peace

Mars –The Bringer of War

Jupiter –The Bringer of Jollity

Saturn – The Bringer of Old Age

Uranus –The MagicianNeptune – The Mystic

Astronomy and the Composers

• Sir William Herschel• Beethoven• Debussy (Claire de Lune -

1890)

Claude-Joseph Vernet 1769

Astronomy and “Pop-Music”

• Bruce Cockburn (Northern Lights – Dancing in the Dragon’s Jaws 1978)

• Bruce Cockburn (Lord of the Starfields -1976)

Lord of the starfieldsAncient of DaysUniverse MakerHere's a song in your praise

Wings of the storm cloudBeginning and endYou make my heart leapLike a banner in the wind

O love that fires the sunKeep me burning.Lord of the starfieldsSower of life,Heaven and earth areFull of your light

Voice of the novaSmile of the dewAll of our yearningOnly comes home to you

O love that fires the sunkeep me burning









































Astronomy and the Poets

When I heard the learn'd astronomer,When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in

columns before me,When I was shown the charts and diagrams to add,

divide, and measure them,When I sitting heard the astronomer where he

lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,Till rising and gliding out I wander'd off by myself,

In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,Look'd up in perfect silence at the stars.

Walt Whitman

FOOL Thy asses are gone about 'em. The reason why the seven stars are no more than seven is a pretty reason.

KING LEAR Because they are not eight?

FOOL Yes, indeed: thou wouldst make a good fool.

I am like a slip of comet,Scarce worth discovery, in some corner seenBridging the slender difference of two stars,Come out of space, or suddenly engender'd

By heady elements, for no man knows;But when she sights the sun she grows and

sizesAnd spins her skirts out, while her central starShakes its cocooning mists; and so she comes

To fields of light; millions of travelling raysPierce her; she hangs upon the flame-cased

sun,And sucks the light as full as Gideons's fleece:

But then her tether calls her; she falls off,And as she dwindles shreds her smock of goldBetween the sistering planets, till she comes

To single Saturn, last and solitary;And then she goes out into the cavernous dark.

So I go out: my little sweet is done:I have drawn heat from this contagious sun:

To not ungentle death now forth I run.

Gerard Manley Hopkins

from Year of Meteors [1859-60]

… Nor the comet that came unannounced out of the north flaring in heaven, Nor the strange huge meteor-procession dazzling and clear shooting over our heads, (A moment, a moment long it sail'd its balls of unearthly light over our heads, Then departed, dropt in the night, and was gone;) Of such, and fitful as they, I sing--with gleams from them would gleam and patch these chants, Your chants, O year all mottled with evil and good--year of forebodings! Year of comets and meteors transient and strange--lo! even here one equally transient and strange! As I flit through you hastily, soon to fall and be gone, what is this chant, What am I myself but one of your meteors?

And the Skies of night were alive with light, with a throbbing, thrilling flame;

Amber and rose and violet, opal and gold it came.

It swept the sky like a giant scythe, it quiverred back to a wedge;

Argently bright, it cleft the night with a wavy golden edge.

Pennants of silver waved and streamed, lazy banners unfurled;

Sudden splendors of sabres gleamed, lightning javelins were hurled.

There in our awe we crouched and saw with our wild, uplifted eyes

Charge and retire the hosts of fire in the battlefield of the skies.

Robert W. Service from "The Ballad of the Northern Lights"

Northern Lights

I went out for a walk one night;looking skyward, the Northern Lightsswirled and danced, pirouetting on the edges of eternity.I went out for a walk one night;looking skyward, red and blue and greentinges laced in swirling curlsaround and around intricately patterned;they weaved to and fro.I went out for a walk one night;looking skyward, skyward and earthward,round and round, twirling and spiritingback and forth, they danced to the Creator's delight.

Clifford Lander - 1993 (TKUC student)

Astronomy and the Painters

The Paintings of Edvard Munch

The Scream 1893

Is the lurid red sky a symbol, a depiction of an actual sky or both?

Note the similarity of the sky in Angst and in Despair. All painted between 1893 - 1894. BUT - is this a "real sky"?

Melancholy, 1892

First notice the similarity in the clouds - is this characteristic of the clouds seen in Oslo?

One group of modern sleuths (Olson, Doescher,Olson 2004) claim that Munch's skies are real but are from his memory of the sunsets of November 1883 - February 1884 – 10 years earlier! Why is that? .....

“One evening I was walking out along a mountain road near Christiania (Oslo) .. The sun went down … it was as if a flaming sword of blood slashed open the vault of heaven – the atmosphere turned to blood - with glaring tongues of fire … I felt something like a great scream – and truly I heard a great scream. (Munch’s own description of what prompted the painting)

In 1891 Munch’s friend Christian Skredsvig writes…

For a long time he wanted to paint the memory of a sunset. Red as blood. No, it was coagulated blood.

August 26,1883, the island volcano of Krakatoa in Indonesia, exploded with devastating fury. The eruption was one of the most catastrophic natural disasters in recorded history. The effects were experienced on a global scale. The explosion was heard more than 3000 miles away. Volcanic dust blew into the upper atmosphere affecting incoming solar radiation and the earth's weather for several years. Remarkable sunsets were seen around the globe and in Europe between November 1883 and February 1884.

The “Night-time art” of Tom Thomson

The Hunting Lodge - 1916

Moonlight on a hot summer evening

Summer Moonlight

The Northern Lights

The Paintings of Vincent VanGogh

Starry Night over the Rhone, Arles September 1888.

What the sky looked like on September 23, 1888 at 11:00 pm

Landscape with Couple Walking and Crescent Moon, May 1890, St-Remy.

Just when did he paint Couple Walking? Compare the painting with the following computer re-constructions:

A thin crescent, 8:30 May 21, 1890. Roughly correct position, phase BUT - notice Venus. He would not have ignored this. Must have been painted later

Phase looks better but now the problem is darkness. This is May 22, 9:09 pm - probably the time Van Gogh observed the moon. Gets worse if we go to later dates.

Road with Cypress and Star. Saint-Rémy, 12-15 May, 1890. This is a real problem if you believe the dates and that Van Gogh "painted them as he saw them".

Two "controversial ideas":• the painting is based on observations not from May 12-15

but April 21, 1890 • Van Gogh "flipped" the scene - perhaps for compositional

reasons. Note that he appears to have painted both Venus and Mercury!

Here is some more evidence that I found on the net…

Here is a quote that I found in a letter that Van Gogh wrote to Albert Aurier (10 or 11 February 1890)

... next batch I send to my brother, in remembrance of your article. I am still working on it at the moment, as I want to put a small figure into it . The cypress is so characteristic of the Provence landscape. You will feel it, and say, “Even the colour black.” Until now

and to Gauguin, 17 June 1890:

I still have a cypress with a star from down there, a last attempt - a night sky with a moon without radiance, the slender crescent barely emerging from the opaque shadow cast by the earth - one star with an exaggerated brilliance, if you like, a soft brilliance of pink and green in the ultramarine sky, across which some clouds are hurrying. Below, a road bordered with tall yellow canes, behind these the blue Basses Alpes, an old inn with yellow lighted windows, and a very tall cypress, very straight, very sombre. Evening Landscape with Rising Moon, Saint-Rémy: early July,

Evening Landscape with Rising Moon, Saint-Rémy: early July, 1889

This is a moonrise of an almost full moon on the evening of July 11, 1889. Note Jupiter above and right.

Starry Night, Saint-Rémy: June, 1889.

Sadly, not much can be done here - this was painted from memory while Van Gogh was in the asylum in St-Remy.

Factories Seen from a Hillside in Moonlight. Paris: first half, 1887

There is not really enough data here to apply an astronomical insight. If one could identify the buildings and location then moonrise could tell us the approximate date of the painting.

Cafe Terrace on the Place du Forum, Arles, at Night, .Arles: September, 1888.

This is one of his most famous night scenes but - unless I take a trip to Arles I can't really tell which way I'm looking. Hmmm

The End

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Astronomy and the Muse