Apollo : An Eyewitness Account By Astronaut/Explorer Artist/Moonwalker [Hardcover]

Alan Bean (Author), Andrew Chaikin (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 10, 1998

Lunar missions chronicled in paintings by Apollo 12 astronaut Captain Alan Bean.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

When NASA sent the crew of Apollo 12 to the moon, they may not have realized that they were giving an artist the vision that would carry him through a lifetime of painting. The artist, of course, was astronaut Alan Bean, whose trip to the moon with pals Pete Conrad and Dick Gordon sunk so deeply into his brain that he's been trying to get it down on canvas ever since. He even mixes moon dust and bits of charred Apollo 12 heat shield into his paints to capture a bit of the Ocean of Storms in each image. The astronauts Bean paints are brave, exuberant, and all-American, right down to the reflections of Old Glory in their mirrored visors. His moon is surprisingly colorful and dreamlike, a magical place for jumping higher than you ever did before, racing around in the lunar rover, and swatting golf balls into orbit. Apollo: An Eyewitness Account, coauthored with space expert Andrew Chaikin, is filled with Bean's riveting stories and paintings, recording a long, successful career as an explorer-artist. He recreates the drama and brash enthusiasm of the Apollo program in bold strokes. --Therese Littleton

From Publishers Weekly

With the descent of the lunar lander Intrepid, Apollo 12 astronaut Bean became the fourth man to walk on the moon. Since his retirement from NASA in 1981, Bean has devoted himself to his realist paintings; this handsome volume allows him to display both his artistic skills and his orbital experience, reproducing dozens of Bean's paintings of lunar surfaces, moonwalks, astronaut gear and so on, alongside a blow-by-blow narrative of Apollo 12, which Chaikin (The National Air and Space Museum Book of Aviation and Space Flight) has written very much from Bean's perspective. Chaikin and Bean describe the thrills and setbacks on the latter's path from naval aviator to astronaut, his first view of the blue-and-white Earth from 293,000 miles and the technical problems of making sure an American flag stays up on the moon. Final chapters track Bean's adventures with the paint and canvas he took up in 1974 ("Flying skills are so much like painting skills, it's amazing"), the exploits and close calls of other astronauts and Bean's hopes for his art and for space exploration. Short paragraphs in which Bean explains his pictures' subjects and techniques alternate with the longer segments of narrative; this format can make the whole book seem scattered, though the images, and the anecdotes, retain undeniable power. The meticulously detailed paintings themselves add warmth and a mid-19th-century softness to the photos and equipment on which many of them are based.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 176 pages
• Publisher: The Greenwich Workshop Press; 1st edition (January 10, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0867130504
• ISBN-13: 978-0867130508
• Product Dimensions: 12.1 x 9 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #226,802 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Reviewing Hero's, September 15, 2005

By 

P. A. Neal (Orange, New Jersey) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Apollo : An Eyewitness Account By Astronaut/Explorer Artist/Moonwalker (Hardcover)

If you have a strong interest in Space travel, and always wanted to talk to the Astronauts that went to the moon to ask them how it felt or what they were thinking as they walked on a planet other then earth, this is the book that will bring you to a time that has never been repeated. A time when man walked on the moon.

Mr. Bean's use of his fantastic artwork to describe a part of his life when he was a member of the elite few, chosen by NASA, to become the first to walk on the moon, is the closest you will get to actually being there.

It is a book of Mr. Beans paintings but also a trip thru the minds of some of our first Astronauts. If how space travel began interests you at all, I strongly recommend obtaining this book. It's a must have to any collector of Space Memorabilia.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A stunningly beautiful book, January 5, 1999

By 

[e-mail] (Southwick, MA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Apollo : An Eyewitness Account By Astronaut/Explorer Artist/Moonwalker (Hardcover)

Alan Bean's unique artistic vision is beautifully presented in this book. Bean's art thoroughly supplements the pounds of moonrocks and racks of datatapes as payback for the Apollo program, and the book is the first comprehensive collection of his work. Bean's first hand stories of Apollo 12, and Chaikin's text provide an adequate refrence for the pictures... but the pictures are the story. The Apollo program may well be the defining event for all the 20th century, and Alan Bean's artwork captures the humanity of the moon landings in a way that is instantly comprehendable on a very human level. I won't be shocked if, 100 years from now, Alan Bean's paintings of the early days of theexploration of space is treasured along side Thomas Moran's paintings of the American West.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Impressionistic Representations of Apollo, October 12, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Apollo : An Eyewitness Account By Astronaut/Explorer Artist/Moonwalker (Hardcover)

This is a nice addition to the currently available literature on the Apollo program. For those who are unfamiliar with Alan Bean's work, it is more impressionistic, rather than focusing on complete, detailed accuracy. Those who watched "From the Earth to the Moon" and expect the same kind of art may be disappointed. However, Bean's work adds another layer to the basic photographs we've already seen, incorporating the sense of grandeur and "magnificent desolation" that the astronauts were able to experience. Chaikin's text does not add anything that was not already covered in his book, so don't purchase this text to find out new facts about Apollo. DO purchase this book for the paintings. It makes you want to own a Bean original!