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BONESTELL, CHESLEY (1888–1986). American artist.
Appeared in: The Fantasy Film World of George Pal
(documentary) (Arnold Leibovit 1985).
Despite
training as an architect, Bonestell was a better painter, and he eventually
obtained regular employment as a matte artist in Hollywood. But he was destined
for greater things than anonymously painting French landscapes for The
Hunchback of Notre Dame, and a 1944 magazine assignment to paint scenes of
space and other planets for Life magazine would define the rest of his
career. As a pioneer in the field of space art, Bonestell insisted upon
"getting it right," to use a phrase from a Gregory Benford article on
Bonestell; he always sought out the latest and best scientific information
available in order to paint astronomical scenes precisely the way they would
look to a human observer on the scene. As a result, later photographs and
footage from space flights and space probes have not invalidated his work, but
rather have spectacularly vindicated his vision and made it even more
compelling.
Soon in great demand, Bonestell kept busy with a number of projects,
including science fiction magazine covers, paintings for a memorable
1952 series of articles in Collier's magazine advocating an
American space program, and a number of illustrated books, including
The Conquest of Space (1949) with science writer Willy Ley.
So it was than when writer Robert A. HEINLEIN
and producer George PAL resolved to make a
painstakingly realistic film about space travel, Destination Moon,
they wisely sought out the services of Chesley Bonestell.
Heinlein's
article "Shooting Destination Moon" establishes just how intimately
Bonestell was involved in all aspects of its production, including the choice
of one particular crater, Harpalus, as the most visually suitable locale for
the film's lunar landing. Due to his skills and hard work, the film's scenes of
astronauts venturing outside of their spaceship, and walking across the barren
Moon, are both stunning and genuinely dramatic, in contrast to
superficially more lively space epics with communist spies and rubber-suited
aliens which, one gathers from published reports, science fiction film critics
oddly prefer. Bonestell had less to contribute to two subsequent Pal films that
were more earthbound, When Worlds Collide and War of the Worlds,
but the astronomical travelogue that opens the latter film is arguably its most
striking sequence, and it isn't Bonestell's fault that cheap, hurried
production led to the use of his rough sketch, not a finished painting, as the
final alien landscape in the former film. I'm sure that his paintings of the
Moon for Cat-Women of the Moon were characteristically impressive, but
they were hard to notice with all those silly pin-up girls and giant spiders
implausibly cluttering up the stark majesty of the Moon. And while watching Conquest
of Space is for the most part a dire experience, those who endure to its
concluding scenes can relish Bonestell's majestic portrayal of a forbidding
Martian surface. As the science fiction films of the 1950s grew cheaper and
less concerned with scientific accuracy, however, Bonestell's talents were no
longer needed, and after some work for the television series Men into Space,
he retired to his painting career.
Though his name no longer appears in credits, Bonestell's singular presence
can sometimes be felt in later science fiction films, most notably
2001: A Space Odyssey—featuring meticulously rendered astronomical
vistas that were surely inspired by Bonestell (since co-author Arthur
C. CLARKE had often praised his work and later collaborated with him
on a book, Beyond Jupiter [1972]). One also thinks of the opening
track shot of Robert ZEMECKIS's Contact,
or the dynamic panoramas of strange worlds and galaxies that launch
the credits of the later Star Trek series, promising more sobering
dramas than the melodramas and soap operas that usually ensued. Yet
it is now the science documentary, more than the science fiction film,
that most regularly calls upon the services of Bonestell's successors,
like space artist Don Davis, to provide viewers with realistic images
of the well-known and newly discovered wonders of the cosmos. Perhaps
it is inevitable that films will gravitate towards human drama; but
the creators of science fiction film still should sometimes confront
the inhuman drama of the vast and unsettling universe which we inhabit.
And, when filmmakers take a long and hard look at outer space as it
truly is, they are continuing to see it through Chesley Bonestell's
eyes.
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