By Patricia Anderson
Bikini Atoll Atomic Test, Arthur Beaumont, 1946, watercolor on paper
Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer was last year’s biggest cinematic success. Winning seven Academy Awards out of thirteen nominations (including Best Picture), Nolan’s biographical thriller charts the life and legacy of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the American theoretical physicist responsible for the birth of the atom bomb. Neither Oppenheimer, his scientists, the U.S. military, or the American people could then foresee the indelible effect these scientific “advances” would have on our world. Now, given that the atom bomb’s developmental history has piqued public interest once again, the Jonathan Arts Foundation is taking a look back at a major work by artist Arthur Beaumont (1890-1978): the seminal Bikini Atoll Atomic Test.
Produced in 1946, this watercolor provides Beaumont’s eyewitness testimony of the first nuclear explosions to follow the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan. In that sense, Bikini Atoll Atomic Test is part of a history documenting the evolution of nuclear technology: one that brought World War II to an end, though at the cost of tens of thousands of innocent lives, inaugurated the Cold War, and changed the course of world history. The painting is currently on loan to the National Atomic Testing Museum in Las Vegas from the Jonathan Club.
Beaumont was best known for keeping an accurate artistic record of U.S. Navy ships, in battle or simply at sea, while also capturing the spirit of the Navy men who served. As the official artist for Operation Crossroads – a series of nuclear tests that took place in the Marshall Islands – Beaumont was there to provide a keen account. In Bikini Atoll Atomic Test, his usual plein air style feels markedly different. The naval vessel and its crew are not the canvas’s focal point. The explosion is detailed and dramatic, relative to its eerily still surroundings. It is factual. And there is no danger of Beaumont romanticizing the painting’s island setting, with landfall barely visible in the distance.
Although completed almost a year after World War II ended, one wonders if Beaumont – an artist experienced in observing warfare and transcribing it in paint – was cognizant of the greater significance of these nuclear experiments. Bikini Atoll Atomic Test is rendered in a rather detached, matter-of-fact style. Yet the gaze of every one of the depicted crew is inexorably drawn towards that terrible mushroom cloud of doom. On speaking to JAF Collections Manager Ashley Lumb, Geoffrey Beaumont (author of Arthur Beaumont: Art of the Sea) explained that his father considered the viewing of the two bombs at Bikini as the most important event that he witnessed in his life. Perhaps that is because it provides an objective snapshot of the momentous event, and leaves the viewer to draw their own conclusions about its place in history
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