From century to century, from birth to death, humans have felt their inseparable connection with the Earth, marveling at its bounties and suffering from its harshness.
Poets of all times have praised this "cradle of life," its uncreated temple; priests have deified the power of Mother Earth. This continued until humanity itself began to dominate the planet and started to become increasingly burdened by its too "earthly" nature. The opposition of sky and Earth, the "upper" and the "lower," seemed an immutable law of life, and people did not yet know that they were destined to challenge it. All world culture arose under the sign of this opposition between these two main principles; their struggle became the essence of ancient dialectics, generating daring desires and brilliant insights among scientists and sages who sought answers to the insoluble questions of existence in the fiery "empyreans"—beyond the cloudy veil and blue firmament.
Ancient geographical representations expanded, and in the languages of all advanced peoples, the humble word "Earth" became the name of an entire planet. For a long time, disparate centers of human life gathered into one large Earth, and only gradually did its peoples realize themselves as a single humanity.
But in the 20th century, before our eyes, the word "Earth" burst into the sky, into space, and became one of the symbols of exploring extraterrestrial space!
In 1970, the tracks of space technology left their first furrows on the "lunar lands," and five years later, humanity marveled at the austere outlines of the "lands" of Venus and Mars; soon, forward observers will see the distant "lands" of Jupiter and Saturn...
Visual art quickly broke free from the confines of cosmic fantasies. Following telescopes, space television gave artists the ability to see the invisible and the unknown. In our era of brilliant scientific and space technology successes, fantasy artists with equal brilliance uphold the main virtue of their talent—the ability to see more sharply and deeply than others. Both experienced and novice artists are united in their main goal—to enrich the world of art with the world of science.
In Oleg Kirienko's drawing "On Mars" (above), one cannot help but feel the influence of scientific knowledge about this planet.
The artist does not try to invent anything; he knows much for certain and strives to complement the already known with the means of art. He attempts to merge scientific data and his heightened poetic feelings, or rather premonitions, into a single artistic image.
The future will show whether this synthesis of art and science was successful, whether the artist could continue the work of scientists. But let us try to imagine, along with him, what the first Earth crews will see on Mars... A light haze of the thin atmosphere, the trail of hot gases from a recently launched rocket hanging in the sky, a cloud of whirling dust obscuring the rising Sun. A lifeless cracked desert stretches to the horizon. Only light mirages run over it, playing with all the colors of the rainbow. One may lament that Mars did not meet the hopes of the first science fiction writers, from Wells to Alexei Tolstoy, who sought life on it. But let us look more closely at the bottom of a rocky cleft, where another spacecraft is frozen. Bright spots on the ground catch the eye—could these be colonies of microflora, the possibility of whose existence in the Martian canyon areas was confirmed by infrared imaging of Mars in 1976 by the automatic station "Viking-2"?
The watercolor technique gave the drawing the character of a quick sketch from nature, creating an additional sense of authenticity. It can be noted that tempera and oil paints, more typical of the previous "analytical" period of scientific and fantasy painting, have lost their monopoly in this genre. Who knows, maybe now visual art is already preparing to create sketches and studies on a cosmic plein air in the near future? One of the experiments of this kind can be considered another work by Kirienko—"Launch from the Moon." Cyclopean structures of the lunar spaceport, which could have been built only thanks to the planet's weak gravity, majestically rise before us. A giant rocket, easily lifting off from the launch pad, seems to hover over it for a moment. In an instant, the main engines will ignite, rapidly carrying the ship away. And when the sunlit dust cloud settles, the clear outlines of the "lunar continent" transformed by human creative labor will reappear before the eyes of Earthlings.
Even if our descendants are destined to become conquerors of many yet undiscovered "beyond the clouds lands," we know that they will never cease to feel their inseparable connection with Earth, the colors of the blue planet will never fade for them, nor will the dear images of their Homeland—the dearest "earthly land" in the world—diminish in their hearts, imprinted in childhood.
Valery KLENOV,
art critic
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