Nuclear art

In the days, weeks and years following the atomic bombing of Japan, trained and untrained artists who survived the bombings began documenting their experiences in artworks.{{cite web

|last1=Dower |first1=John

|title=Ground Zero 1945: Pictures by Atomic Bomb Survivors

|url=http://ocw.mit.edu/ans7870/21f/21f.027/groundzero1945/gz_essay01.html

|website=MIT Visualizing Cultures - Ground Zero 1945

|publisher=Massachusetts Institute of Technology

|accessdate=17 November 2015

}} The U.S. occupation authorities controlled the release of photographs and film footage of these events, while photographers and artists on the ground continued to produce visual representations of the effects of nuclear warfare. Photographer Yōsuke Yamahata began taking photographs of Nagasaki on August 10, 1945 (the day after the bombing), however his photographs were not released to the public until 1952 when the magazine Asahi Gurafu published them.{{cite book

|last1=Japanese Broadcasting Corporation (NHK)

|title=Unforgettable Fire: Pictures Drawn by Atomic Bomb Survivors|date=1977|publisher=Pantheon Books|location=New York|isbn=978-0394748238

|url=https://archive.org/details/UnforgettableFireDrawingsByAtomicBombSurvivors1967

}}

In 1948, the artistic movement of Eaismo published a manifesto illustrating some aspects of the atomic age and, at the same time, criticizing the industrial use of nuclear power.G.Favati, V.Fontani, M.Landi, A.Neri, A.S.Pellegrini, Manifesto dell'Eaismo, Società Editrice Italiana, Livorno, 1948

It was a movement of poetry and painting, founded by the Italian artist Voltolino Fontani, aiming to balance the role of men in a society upset by the danger of nuclear radiation.{{Cite journal

|first=Maria |last=Grandinetti

|title=Punti programmatici del Movimento Eaista

|journal= Arte Contemporanea |location=Roma

|year=1949

|url=http://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/maria-grandinetti_(Dizionario-Biografico)/

|accessdate=1 April 2011

}} The artistic group was strengthened by the poet Marcello Landi and by the literary critic Guido Favati. In 1948 Voltolino Fontani depicted the disintegration and fragmentation of an atom on canvas, by creating the artwork: Dinamica di assestamento e mancata stasi.

In 1950 the painter Fortunato Depero published the Manifesto per la pittura e plastica nucleare.

In 1951 the painters Enrico Baj and Sergio Dangelo created the {{interlanguage link|Arte nucleare movement|it}}, criticizing and putting the repetitiveness of painting (as an artistic and commercial phenomenon) in discussion.Luciano Caramel, Arte in Italia, 1945-1960, Vita e Pensiero, Milan 1994

Plenty of Italian artists, in Milan and Naples, and foreigners like Yves Klein, Asger Jorn, Arman, Antonio Saura joined the movement. The main representative of the arte nucleare movement was Piero Manzoni, who in this context, for the first time in his life, put his talent in evidence.{{cite web|url=http://www.pieromanzoni.org/errorpage.html|title=Piero Manzoni - Pagina non trovata - Fondazione Piero Manzoni|website=www.pieromanzoni.org}}

Unlike Eaismo, recommending artists to pursue painting values (and poetry), the arte nucleare movement tried to promote a new form of art in which painting was marginalized.{{cite web|url=https://digilander.libero.it/_ppricerca/index.html|title=Libero - Community - I siti personali|website=digilander.libero.it}}

===Historical nuclear art in Spain===

In the meantime, Spanish painter Salvador Dalí published the Mystical manifesto (1951), putting Catholic mysticism and nuclear themes together.

In this period Dalì created artworks like Idillio atomico (1945) and Leda Atomica (1949).

In 1949 the French artist Bernard Lorjou started to paint his monumental artwork “l’age atomique” (The atomic age). The painting was concluded after one year and is now located in the Centre Pompidou.

In 1950 Germaine Joumard exhibited 26 nuclear paintings at ''galerie "Art et lecture" in Parishttps://bitterwinter.org/atomic-bomb-and-the-arts-2-italys-nuclear-art/ link read in 2023

The first exhibition of the {{interlanguage link|Arte nucleare movement|it}} took place in Brussels, in the Galerie Apollo (1952).Apart from that,The interest of belgian artists in nuclear art is above all demonstrated by the contribution of two former participants of art movement CoBrA, such as Wout Hoeboer and Serge Vandercam. Both signed the Manifesto contro lo stile (1957),Arte nucleare 1957, Movimento arte nucleare, editore: Galleria San Fedele, Milan, 1957 https://www.abebooks.it/ricerca-libro/autore/movimento-arte-nucleare/ link read in 2023 which was chronologically the second manifesto of Sergio Dangelo and Enrico Baj's italian group.

The painter and photographer Eugene Von Bruenchenhein painted the artwork “Atomic age” in 1955,{{cite web|url=http://www.ktfineart.com/past/?object_id=86&show=project_images&heading_id=&project_id=90&detail_id=602,|title=link read in 2016|publisher=}} and other apocalyptical and post apocalyptical paintings up to 1965.

The British sculptor Henry Moore created a bronze public sculpture entitled Nuclear Energy (sculpture) (1967), which both depicted the fatality of nuclear weapons and celebrated the invention of nuclear energy for use as electrical power. The sculpture is located on the grounds of the University of Chicago, where the first self-sustaining nuclear reaction was produced at the Chicago Pile-1, under the oversight of the Manhattan Project and Enrico Fermi. The sculpture is in the form of a hybrid mushroom cloud and human skull.{{cite web

|last1=Smithsonian American Art Museum

|title=Nuclear Energy (sculpture)

|url=http://siris-artinventories.si.edu/ipac20/ipac.jsp?session=121J354443PW7.6174&profile=ariall&source=~!siartinventories&view=subscriptionsummary&uri=full=3100001~!296234~!75&ri=3&aspect=Browse&menu=search&ipp=20&spp=20&staffonly=&term=Moore,+Henry+Spencer,+1898-1986,+sculptor.&index=&uindex=&aspect=Browse&menu=search&ri=3

|website=Art Inventories Catalog

|publisher=Smithsonian Institution

|accessdate=17 November 2015

}}

File:NagasakiSurvivors1945.jpg, NagasakiSurvivors1945]]

After the March 2011 accident that caused three nuclear reactors to melt down at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant in Japan, there have been numerous responses by contemporary Japanese artists, including Shigenobu Yoshida, Tatsuo Miyajima, Shimpei Takeda, Fuyuki Yamakawa, Iri and Toshi Maruki, and Hiroshima bomb survivor, Tadasi Tonoshiki.{{cite web

|last1=Shimizu|first1=Hiroko|title=A new Perspective: Ichi Ikeda

|url=http://weadartists.org/japanese-anti-nuclear-art-ichi-ikeda-interview

|website=Atomic Legacy Art issue

|publisher=WEAD

|accessdate=17 November 2015

}} In 2015 an exhibition was organized in the Fukushima exclusion zone, "Don't Follow the Wind" by curator, Kenji Kubota, that includes the work of 12 international artists.{{cite web

|last1=Quackenbush |first1=Casey

|title=The Radioactive Art Exhibit that You Can't Even Go To

|url=http://observer.com/2015/07/the-radioactive-art-exhibit-that-you-cant-even-go-to/

|website=Observer

|accessdate=17 November 2015

}}

The cultural critic, Akira Mizuta Lippit, has written that the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were the most significant photographic and cinematic event of the 20th Century.{{cite book

|last1=Lippit|first1=Akira Mizuta

|title=Atomic Light (Shadow Optics)

|year=2005

|publisher=University of Minnesota Press |location=Milwaukee, MN

|isbn=978-0816646111

|url=http://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/atomic-light-shadow-optics

}} There have been numerous exhibitions of photographic works, including the 2015 show, Camera Atomica, at the Art Gallery of Ontario, exhibiting two hundred works.{{cite web

|last1=Art Gallery of Ontario|title=Camera Atomica

|url=http://www.ago.net/camera-atomica

|publisher=Art Gallery of Ontario Musée des beaux-arts de l"Ontario

|accessdate=17 November 2015

}}{{cite book

|last1=O'Brian|first1=John|last2=Bryan-Wilson|first2=Julia|title=Camera Atomica: Photographing the Nuclear World|date=2015|publisher=Black Dog Publishing|location=Canada|isbn=978-1908966483|url=http://blackdogonline.com/photography/camera-atomica.html}}{{cite journal

|last1=Lerager|first1=James

|title=A Photo Essay: Nuclear History, Nuclear Destiny

|journal=Women Environmental Artists Directory

|year=2013

|issue=Atomic Legacy Art

|url=http://weadartists.org/a-photo-essay-nuclear-history-nuclear-destiny

|accessdate=17 November 2015

}}

In addition to photography, contemporary North American artists have engaged with nuclear themes through painting, installation, and curatorial practice. Among them is Angel Rafael "Ralph" Vázquez-Concepción, a Puerto Rican artist, curator, and educator whose work explores the emotional and historical dimensions of nuclear technology. Vázquez-Concepción’s artistic practice incorporates visual representations of radiation, energy, and atomic structures, utilizing scientific instruments such as seismographs and radiographic imaging to create layered, textured compositions. Through the use of color and gesture, his work examines the tensions between human agency and the indifferent forces of the universe, drawing on both historical and contemporary discourses surrounding nuclear science.{{Cite web |last=Watson |first=David de Caires |date=2022-08-28 |title=Abstract Art Brings Atomic Healing To Nuclear Power Debate |url=https://medium.com/generation-atomic/abstract-art-brings-atomic-healing-to-nuclear-power-debate-cb6adce5a52 |access-date=2025-03-18 |website=The Kernel |language=en}}

Vázquez-Concepción’s art projects further contribute to the discourse on nuclear energy, engaging with both the aesthetic and political dimensions of atomic history. His advocacy for nuclear energy, particularly in relation to Puerto Rico’s energy infrastructure, informs his artistic vision, which seeks to highlight the dual nature of nuclear power as both a force of destruction and a means of progress. By integrating historical inquiry with contemporary artistic methodologies, Vázquez-Concepción’s work situates him within a lineage of nuclear artists who examine the intersections of science, history, and human resilience.{{Cite web |title=Ángel Rafael Vázquez-Concepción – U.S. Department of State |url=https://www.art.state.gov/personnel/angel_vazquezconcepcion/ |access-date=2025-03-18 |language=en-US}}{{Citation |title=Coloring Outside the Nuclear Lines With Angel “Ralph” Rafael Vázquez-Concepción |date=2024-11-07 |url=https://open.spotify.com/episode/01Xhm9HJlGJ30Chv3jrvZN?si=i-Cpo5G3TKuWW8IoQ_YU6g&nd=1&dlsi=db22ed2c88cd473d#login |access-date=2025-03-18 |language=en}}

Contemporary exhibitions have played a crucial role in expanding public discourse on nuclear energy and its cultural impact. Notably, Hot Spots: Radioactivity and the Landscape (2016) at the Krannert Art Museum in Illinois brought together artists and collectives exploring the long-term environmental effects of nuclear energy. Similarly, The Scholar Stones Project (2020) at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago featured works by Yelena Popova, who incorporated soil from nuclear sites worldwide into her paintings. These exhibitions, among others, reflect the ongoing engagement of contemporary artists with issues related to nuclear technology, from the environmental consequences of radiation to the ethical dilemmas posed by nuclear energy and weaponry.{{Cite web |title=Hot Spots: Radioactivity and the Landscape {{!}} Krannert Art Museum |url=https://kam.illinois.edu/exhibition/hot-spots-radioactivity-and-landscape |access-date=2025-03-18 |website=kam.illinois.edu |language=en}}{{Cite journal |last=Popova |first=Yelena |date=2020-01-01 |title=The Scholar Stones Project |url=https://www.academia.edu/41734594/The_Scholar_Stones_Project |journal=The Scholar Stones Project}}

{{Reflist|colwidth=35em}}

• E.Baj, S.Dangelo, Manifeste de peinture nucleaire, Brussels, 1952, in T. Sauvage, Pittura italiana del dopoguerra, Scwwarz Editore, Milan, 1998.
• Martina Corgnati, Il Movimento nucleare arte a Milano, edizioni Credito Artigiano, Milan, 1998.
• {{Cite journal

|title=Storia della poesia del dopoguerra by Luigi Vita

|author=Joseph Vittorio Greco |type=Review

|journal=The Modern Language Journal

|volume=57 |issue=7

|date=November 1973

|pages=367–368

|publisher=National Federation of Modern Language Teachers Associations

|doi=10.2307/324669

|jstor=324669

}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Nuclear Art}}

Category:Art movements

Category:Nuclear warfare