Except the orthodox Easter this year the 12-th of April is the day when humanity proved that the Heaven is somewhere higher and further than just above the sky. One man had a possibility to look at our beautiful planet from the absolutely new angle and distance. He was the one who had seen the Earth from the space first time ever – his name was Yuri Gagarin.

45 years ago in 1961 USSR’s space program had reached the unbelievable success. Soviet Union was the first country to send a man into space. This day is the great day of human history, which started the new era – era of man’s expansion into space.

After almost a year the USSR Government had claimed the 12 of April the International Day of Human Space Flight. However, this holiday had never succeeded to become an International in global meaning. Till now I was celebrated only in the Soviet Union and after it collapsed – in several former soviet countries

Yuri Gagarin

And what about the rest of the world?

The rest of the world, particularly the United States and Western European Countries accepted the news of the Soviet cosmonaut space flight as a failure in the concept of the Cold War. However, this fail gave birth to another, even bigger achievement for humanity – Human Landing on the Moon. That was the crew of the Apollo-11 space craft.
In spite of the fact, that there are still a lot of arguing whether this event to place in our history, or not, the United States were proud of this victory and celebrated mostly the Moon Landing, And the first human space flight disappeared in the shade of the Apollo program success.apollo
This lasted for deacades untill the General Assembly of UN on 7 April 2011, declared 12 April as the International Day of Human Space Flight “to celebrate each year at the international level the beginning of the space era for mankind, reaffirming the important contribution of space science and technology in achieving sustainable development goals and increasing the well-being of States and peoples, as well as ensuring the realization of their aspiration to maintain outer space for peaceful purposes.”
Anyway, this holiday still remains not very pupular, but the Yuri’s Night parties with the space cosumes and stuff are widely spread among youngsters and in the club culture. However clubbing is not the only sphere where the space topic became popular. Stars, planets, travelling through galaxies etc. are used as a plot ideas in different types of modern art.

Vostok-1 Launch. The space craft, which brought Yuri Gagarin to the Earth orbit.

Space topic in art.
WriterFirst of all, literature. The whole gengre of it is dedicated to the space topic – this is science fiction. Such writers as Ray Bradbury, Ivan Yefremov, Isaac Asimov, Dan Simmons and others took their chance in this writing style and reached success. There are a lot fiction written about space even before the first flight took place. And these authors brought us their fantasies and predicted fufture, giving all those amazing moments and feeling of travelling to other worlds and see the sunsets on unknown planets.

The Space topic also became very popualr in sculptures. There are a lot of statues and even whole buildings around the world connected with deep and close space. Also there are some old spacecrafts, which became the satues of mankind’s capacity themselves in museums.

World Within World by Linda Johns

Seattle Space Needle

Soviet Rocket in Baikonur

Space tattoo

Also space topic is widely spread in other kinds of the fine art, like for example in tattoo art. There is the whole trend among tattoo artists to show objects of space in their pure beauty or in a new school way.

Black hole oil on canvas painting

And as the ancestor of all fine art are paitings. Modern space connected masterpieces are marvelous and rad. There are plenty of artist who engraved their phantasies in canvas and street art.

Pietus

Lunar Scene by John J. Olson

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