The year 1956 is widely considered the moment when container shipping was born. On April 26 that year, American trucking entrepreneur Malcom McLean put 58 trailer vans aboard a refitted tanker ship, the SS Ideal X, and sailed them from Newark, New Jersey to Houston, Texas.
The same year has a few similarities with today’s troubled shipping scene – Israeli troops invaded the Sinai Peninsula and the Suez Crisis occurred.
1956 was also the year Jackson Pollock, an American figure in the abstract expressionist movement, passed away, aged 44 in a car crash.
The creators of the always entertaining Maritime Analytica substack have used artificial intelligence to take subscribers on an artistic odyssey where container shipping becomes a canvas for the echoes of timeless painters including Pollock above.
Among other painters Maritime Analytica has reimagined giving their impression of container shipping include Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Picasso, Van Gogh, Monet, Munch, Rembrandt, Turner and Dali.
The shipping artwork has similarities to an interactive London gallery event Splash covered in late 2020 where well-known artworks were reimagined to depict a zero-carbon maritime future. The Future Seascapes exhibition saw art by Turner, Monet and Van Gogh displayed side by side with zero carbon interpretations of each scene.
