James Dean, a landscape painter who ran a NASA program that invited artists such as Robert Rauschenberg, Norman Rockwell and Jamie White to capture aspects of the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo missions, died March 22 in Washington. It was 92.
His son Stephen confirmed the death, at an assisted living facility.
From the final Mercury mission in 1963 to 1974, Mr. Dean gave dozens of artists access to astronauts, to areas near the launch sites at Cape Canaveral (and the Kennedy Space Center), and to ships that retrieved astronauts from the oceans.
Mr. Dean believed that artists offered a perspective that could not be found in photographs.
“Their imaginations enable them to venture beyond a scientific explanation of the stars, the moon and the outer planets,” Dean and Bert Ulrich wrote in their book, “NASA/ART: 50 Years of Exploration.” (2008).
The night before L. Gordon Cooper launched on the final Mercury mission in May 1963, Mr. Dean allowed painters Peter Hurd and Lamar Dodd to work from a field near the launch site and provided them with huge lamps for lighting.
A security guard who spotted the two artists in the bushes with their paints and brushes quickly determined they posed no threat — and escorted them to the top of the launch pad, where they peered inside the Mercury capsule, which gave Mr Dodd the inspiration for the abstract gouache painting, “Max Q”.
In 1965 the then 19-year-old Jamie White painted “Support,” a watercolor of the launch of Gemini 4 from a nearby bridge, the massive structure that encloses and serves the rockets before they lift off.
“Jamie went over the edge and let his legs dangle and he paints like he’s sitting on a dock in Maine somewhere,” Mr. Dean said in a 2019 interview with Carolyn Russo, the curator of art at the National Air and Space Museum .
Mr. Rauschenberg wandered the grounds of the space center in the weeks before the Apollo 11 mission that landed the first men on the moon.
“He didn’t have a sketch with him or anything like that, but what he wanted to do was look at our photo archives to experience the action in real time,” Mr. Dean told Ms. Russo.
The experience led Mr. Rauschenberg to create ”Stoned Moon,” a series of 34 lithographs, including ”Sky Garden,” in which he superimposed a negative image of the Saturn 5 rocket, with many of its parts labeled, over the images of it being launched. away from.
In the hours before the launch of Apollo 11 on July 16, 1969, Mr. Dean obtained permission from the illustrator Paul Calle to sketch Neil Armstrong, Col. Buzz Aldrin and Lt. Col. Michael Collins having breakfast and then dressing up — the only artist which is allowed. in these areas.
James Daniel Dean was born on October 14, 1931 in Fall River, Massachusetts. His father, John, was a confectioner. His mother, Sadie (Griffin) Dean, ran the household.
James recognized that he had artistic talent in high school when a history teacher told students to draw their homework, and he began sketching planes and ships. In 1950, he entered the Swain School of Design in New Bedford, Massachusetts, and graduated in 1956, while serving in the military in Panama.
He was hired as a graphic designer in the office of the Secretary of Defense. five years later, he joined NASA’s Educational Programs and Services office. In 1963, a year after James Webb, NASA’s administrator, created the fine arts program, Mr. Dean was named its founding director, one of his many responsibilities at the office.
While Mr. Dean handled the logistics of the art program, Hereward Lester Cooke, curator of paintings at the National Gallery of Art, approached the artists, who were paid $800 each. They collaborated on the 1971 book Eyewitness to Space, a collection of Apollo-related paintings and drawings.
“Jim had the foresight to know that artists would make significant contributions to the space age,” Mr. Ulrich said by telephone. “The story of the agency unfolds through the art and through the eyes of the artists.”
The idea of entrusting art to an agency devoted to science was not universally accepted early on, Mr. Dean recalled. He told The Orlando Sentinel in 1983 that some space technicians “viewed the artists with amusing tolerance.”
He added: “Later as they saw their space material transformed by the imagination and skill of artists into images of fantasy and beauty, they came to respect more and more.”
The artwork led to exhibitions in 1965 and 1969 and several travel tours.
Mr. Dean — referred to as the “other” James Dean to distinguish himself from the actor — left NASA in 1974 to join the Air and Space Museum (which opened two years later), as curator of art under Col. Collins. the Apollo 11 astronaut who was his director.
Mr. Dean was responsible for transporting approximately 2,000 paintings and drawings from NASA to the museum as well as preparing exhibits and acquiring other works of art. He also contributed space shuttle program charts to NASA.
He retired in 1980 to concentrate on his own painting from a studio in Alexandria, Virginia. He also designed stamps for the US Postal Service, including one in 1985 celebrating Frederic Bartholdi, who sculpted the Statue of Liberty.
His friendship with Colonel Collins resulted in Mr. Dean creating sketches depicting the history of NASA in “Liftoff: The Story of America’s Adventure in Space” (1988).
Besides his son Steve, Mr. Dean has another son, Richard. three grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren. His wife, Rita (Williams) Dean, whom he married in 1952, died in 2019. His son James died in 2018.
Mr. Dean arranged for Mr. Rockwell, whose paintings were famous for their nostalgic impressions of small-town America, to meet astronauts John Young and Virgil (Gus) Grissom during a pre-flight countdown demonstration test. Gemini 3 in 1965.
Mr. Rockwell, who was then working for Look magazine, left with photographs of the two astronauts. But after returning to his studio in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, he realized he needed more detail for their spacesuits. He asked Mr. Dean for one.
Mr. Dean’s request was initially denied because the material in the suit was confidential and could not be mailed. So he contacted Joseph W. Schmitt, a costume designer, who brought one to Stockbridge. Mr. Schmidt stayed for a week as Mr. Rockwell painted Mr. Young and Mr. Grissom to match.
When the painting was hanging in the National Gallery for an exhibition in 1965, Mr Dean asked John Walker, the museum’s director, what he thought of it.
“And he looked at me seriously and said, ‘I never knew Norman Rockwell had that quality,'” Mr. Dean told Ms. Russo. The next morning, Mr. Dean called Mr. Rockwell to tell him what Mr. Walker had said.
“He said, ‘Oh, now I can die happy.’
