Much as once a week I like to take time off to cover warships (Wednesdays), on Sunday, I like to cover military art and the painters, illustrators, sculptors, and the like that produced them.
Combat Gallery Sunday: The Martial Art of Robert McCall
Born Robert Theodore McCall on the day before Christmas Eve, 1919 in Columbus, he earned a scholarship to the Columbus Fine Art School but during WWII did his part in the Army Air Corps, seeing the bombers and fighters of the era up close and personal.
After the war he worked as an advertising illustrator in Chicago and then New York getting by, doing pieces for everything from pulp stories to concrete adverts.
LET IT RAIN! YOU ALWAYS FEEL SO SAFE AND STEADY DRIVING ON NEW-TYPE CONCRETE! Portland Cement Association, 1960
But McCall had a passion and real eye for aviation work, over time donating some 45 paintings to his old service branch, by then the modern U.S. Air Force.
B-24s over Ploesti, Romania, August 1943, ca.1955
By the 1960s he was working for LIFE and others chronicling the space race, then Stanley Kubrick used his work in what is perhaps the best known near-future sci-fi film of all time.
This painting by artist Robert McCall, “Orion Leaving Space Station,” shows a space vehicle darting from the lit bay of a wheel-shaped space station. It was used in a promotional poster for Stanley Kubrik’s 1968 sci-fi classic, “2001: A Space Odyssey.” Credit: Robert McCall/MGM via NASA
This led to direct work for the National Air and Space Museum and NASA, who contracted him for a series of inspring murals located not only in Washington but at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston; the Dryden Flight Research Center in Lancaster, California, and the Kansas Cosmosphere and Space Center in Hutchinson.
Robert McCall’s 2003 “Celebrating One Hundred Years of Powered Flight” mural graces the entrance of NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center’s main building. In it, the famed aerospace artist painted a timeline beginning with the dawn of powered flight, and topped it off with flight’s progress into space. 2003 NASA Photo / Tony Landis
Robert McCall’s 1997 mural “Accepting the Challenge of Flight” at NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center, Edwards, CA, is focused on portraits of actual Dryden employees. Flight research aircraft of that era fly above, and his ever-optimistic view of the final frontier is in view at the top. 1997 NASA Photo / Tony Landis
Title: “Celebrating One Hundred Years of Powered Flight 1903-2003” Artist: Dr. Robert T. McCall 2003 Medium: oil on canvas Dimensions: 6 feet by 18 feet Commissioned by: NASA Dryden Flight Research Center, Edwards, CA June 5, 2003 NASA Photo / Tony Landis
Handshake in Space 1974. Image via NASA
Shuttles, Stations, and Spacewalkers, 1979. Image via NASA
Aeronautics Icons. This McCall mural at the NASA Dryden Flight Research Center in Edwards, Calif., showcases a host of experimental aircraft. The large silver craft in the foreground is the HL-10 lifting body, which was used for research which paved the way for the shuttle program. The black X-15 rocket plane streaking to the left at the top center of the mural flew 199 missions from 1959 to 1968, setting speed and altitude records for winged aircraft. Image via NASA
Many visitors stop to have their photo taken in front of McCall’s The Space Mural — A Cosmic View when visiting the National Air and Space Museum on the National Mall. Image Number: WEB11351-2010 Credit: Image by Eric Long, National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution
McCall produced a number of concept paintings for the 1970 20th Century Fox motion picture Tora! Tora! Tora!, which now hang in the National Air and Space Museum’s World War II Aviation gallery entrance.
On his death in 2010 at age 90, Motherboard called him the Picasso of the Space Age which I feel is something of an insult to McCall. Perhaps the Raphael or Michelangelo of the Space Age would be a better comparison.
The Artist at work. Image via NASA
“I think when we finally are living in space, as people will be doing soon, we’ll recognize a whole new freedom and ease of life,” McCall was quoted as saying. “These space habitats will be more beautiful because we will plan and condition that beauty to suit our needs. I see a future that is very bright.”
NASA has an extensive gallery of McCall’s aerospace work and there is always McCall Studios.com for prints and more information.
Thank you for your work, sir.
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