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Originally posted by Kandinsky
I love these old illustrations and especially so as the artists had so much free reign and much less cultural baggage than they have now. I mean, whenever an artist has to imagine a futuristic space-craft or aircraft they have to try and avoid repeating previous concepts. That's probably why the saucer has fallen into obscurity on book covers and in comics. Back then, they could just redesign variations on anything disc-like.
At the same time, it encourages questions about whether art reflects life or life reflects art?
Late '40s and especially the '50s saw flying saucers becoming iconic due to the reports of sightings - think 'saucers,' think 1950s.
The artwork was arguably fuelled by the western cultural saturation of UFOs in the media and the way they came to be characterised by the 'Flying Saucer' motif.
So yeah, saucer artwork was inspired by actual reported descriptions of saucers. Nevertheless, it's rarely so phenomenal and we find excellent saucer illustrations way before Arnold made his claims.
A couple of years ago I was wondering why fiction and hoaxes precede reality? I'd like to rewrite that thread as it didn't do the subject justice - a near miss. Since then, I've found it an enticing avenue of thought that human creativity has a reciprocating relationship with what is called the paranormal or 'the phenomena.'
Interesting how the classic flying saucer shape was common.
Originally posted by Kandinsky
...
Since then, I've found it an enticing avenue of thought that human creativity has a reciprocating relationship with what is called the paranormal or 'the phenomena.'