FOURTH MAN ON MOON WAS PAINTER
MISSIONS INSPIRED HIS ART
Alan Bean became the fourth man to walk on the moon and turned to painting years later to tell the story of NASA’s Apollo missions as they began receding into history.
Bean stepped onto the lunar surface preceded by Pete Conrad, the mission commander of their Apollo 12 flight, in November 1969, four months after Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first lunar explorers.
Bean died May 26 in Houston. He was 86.
The flight of Apollo 12, while thrilling in its own right, was not nearly as dramatic as the pioneering mission of Apollo 11, but it resulted in a more extensive exploration of the moon.
Bean returned to space in July 1973, when he commanded a three-man flight to the orbiting space research station Skylab, the forerunner of the International Space Station. The astronauts on that mission spent 59 days in space, a record at the time.
Twelve astronauts ultimately walked on the moon in six Apollo missions. When Bean, a former Navy test pilot, left NASA in 1981, he drew on a long-standing interest in painting to become a full-time artist, creating images of the era when science fiction morphed into reality.
Many of Bean’s fellow astronauts were evidently taken aback by his choosing the art world over private business.
“I’d say 60 per cent of them thought maybe I was having a mid-life crisis,” Bean recalled in his book Apollo (1998), written with Andrew Chaikin, in which he reproduced many of his paintings.
“Every artist has the earth or their imaginations to inspire their paintings,” Bean told The New York Times in 1994. “I’ve got the earth and my imagination, and I’m the first to have the moon, too.”
Bean’s paintings drew on his recollections, interviews with fellow astronauts, photos and videos. They included a re-creation of Armstrong securing an American flag in the lunar dust; Bean standing alongside Conrad on the moon, looking toward earth; Eugene Cernan riding in a lunar rover during the Apollo 17 mission and the earth rising above the moon.
Working from his home in Houston, Bean strove for accuracy in presenting the astronauts’ gear and the prevailing light, but his paintings often conveyed a sense of what it was like to work on the moon rather than replicating an exact moment. He employed colour liberally in place of the black, grey and white of the lunar terrain and the skies.
Bean sold his paintings on his website and fetched as much as $175,000 for a single painting, although he received limited attention from critics.
Alan LaVern Bean was born on March 15, 1932, in Wheeler, Texas, but grew up in Fort Worth. He was fascinated by model planes as a youngster and received a bachelor’s degree in aeronautical engineering in 1955 from the University of Texas.
He obtained a commission in Navy aviation and after completing test-pilot school was selected by NASA as one of 14 new astronauts in October 1963. But it wasn’t until Apollo 12 that he flew in space.
Seconds after the capsule’s liftoff, a lightning strike knocked out its electrical equipment, but power was quickly restored. Bean and Conrad made a pinpoint landing on terrain called the Ocean of Storms, having descended in their lunar module from the capsule being flown in orbit by a third astronaut, Richard Gordon.
They spent about seven hours and 45 minutes completing two moonwalks in which they deployed instruments to study the moon’s geology, installed a nuclear generator to power future experimental equipment and collected an extensive assortment of moon rocks.
They also reached Surveyor 3, an unmanned lunar probe that had flown to the moon 31 months earlier, and cut away pieces of it so NASA could examine the moon’s impact on its materials.
The three astronauts splashed down in the Pacific Ocean only three miles from the aircraft carrier Hornet.
Conrad died in a motorcycle crash in 1999; Gordon died in 2017.
Bean retired from the Navy in 1975 but remained with NASA for another six years, overseeing the training of astronauts.
“You know, people romanticize the moon,” Bean wrote in his book. “But I’ve been there and I can tell you it’s mostly black dirt. But I want it to be the most beautiful black dirt that’s ever been painted in the history of art.”
YOU KNOW, PEOPLE ROMANTICIZE THE MOON. BUT I’VE BEEN THERE AND I CAN TELL YOU IT’S MOSTLY BLACK DIRT. BUT I WANT IT TO BE THE MOST BEAUTIFUL BLACK DIRT THAT’S EVER BEEN PAINTED IN THE HISTORY OF ART. — ALAN BEAN, NASA ASTRONAUT