Artistic Responses to Eclipses: Exhibit in the Arts and Special Collections Research Center (March-September 2024)

This exhibit was curated – and this blog post written – by Jeanne Dittmann

Eclipses have made dramatic impacts on human cultures for as long as we have recorded history. Astronomers and mathematicians have been fascinated by the opportunity to predict these celestial events which can cause great consternation as well as great awe by those who experience them, and artists have long been moved to respond with expressions of their own.

This exhibit has been curated from throughout our collections (including the online image database JSTOR), with an array of visual, musical, poetic, and theatrical eclipse artwork from over a number of centuries and from many parts of the world.

If you can, please come and view these artistic expressions of solar eclipses from our collections and databases. Perhaps they may inspire your own creative response to the Eclipse Over Texas on April 8.

 

Included in the exhibit are the following items:

 

Albert, Stephen, Ted Hughes, and Lucius Annaeus Seneca. Into Eclipse. New York, NY: G. Schirmer, 1993.

 

American Eclipse: A New Musical will be presented in collaboration with Baylor Theatre. April 7, 2024.

 

Anonymous Artists. Lunar and Solar Eclipses. Circa 1487.

From JSTOR database at https://jstor.org/stable/community.12391338.

 

Author: Zakariya ibn Muhammad Qazwini (ca. 1203-1283), and Scribe: Muhammad ibn Muhammad Shakir Ruzmah-’i Nathani. Illustration: Solar Eclipse. 1121 AH/AD 1717 (Ottoman). Ink and pigments on European laid paper. Walters Art Museum, 1931, by bequest.; http://thewalters.org.

From JSTOR database at https://jstor.org/stable/community.16016997.

 

Aztec Astronomy from the Florentine Codex of Sahagún. 1577.

From JSTOR database at https://jstor.org/stable/community.13917778.

 

Berry, Jean de France, Pol de Limbourg, Jean Colombe, Jean Longnon, and Raymond Cazelles. Las muy ricas horas del Duque de Berry. Valencia: Patrimonio, 2010 (facsimile). Original from circa 1410-16.

 

Caron, Antoine, 1521-1599. Astronomers Observing an Eclipse. 1571-2. Oil on canvas.

From JSTOR database at https://jstor.org/stable/community.13922424.

 

Coleman, Steve. Morphogenesis. PI Recordings, 2017.

 

Hamrick, Frank. When the Light Becomes Eternal. Ruston, Louisiana: Old Fan Press, 2023.

 

Kinsey, Leland. Trio – Volume 1: Eclipses. Newark, Vermont: Janus Press, 2014.

 

Lichtenstein, Roy (American painter, sculptor, and printmaker, 1923-1997). Eclipse of the Sun II. 1975. Oil and Magna on canvas.

From JSTOR database at https://jstor.org/stable/community.14777011.

 

Lichtenstein, Roy (American painter, sculptor, and printmaker, 1923-1997). Eclipse of the Sun. 1975. Oil and Magna on canvas.

From JSTOR database at https://jstor.org/stable/community.14774081.

 

Mitchell, Samuel Alfred. Eclipses of the Sun. New York: Greenwood Press, 1969.

 

National Geographic Society–National Bureau of Standards Solar Eclipse Expedition of 1940 to Brazil. Washington, 1942.

 

Tavener, John. Total Eclipse Agraphon. Los Angeles, CA: Harmonia Mundi France, Production USA, 2001.

 

Winant, William. Eclipse Quartet with William Winant. Brooklyn, NY: New World Records, 2013.

 

Workshop of Michael Wolgemut and Wilhelm Pleydenwurff. Constantine IV, Emperor of the East; Sixth Ecumenical Council, Constantinople; Comet; Solar Eclipse. 1493. Woodcut. The Warburg Institute Library.

From JSTOR database at https://jstor.org/stable/community.12253180.