Retrofuturism

Retrofuturism is the creative reimagining of the future as earlier eras pictured it. Where the original Futurists raced toward tomorrow, retrofuturism is the remembering of that anticipation - savoring the gap between the confident futures of the late nineteenth to mid-twentieth century and the present that arrived instead. Its visual signature is a blend of old-fashioned retro styles with futuristic technology: Art Deco chrome and streamlined curves wrapped around flying cars, atomic ray-guns and robot servants, exploring the tension between past and future and between the alienating and empowering effects of technology. The word is recent - early uses date to 1981 - but the material it feeds on is old: World's Fair visions, pulp science-fiction covers and interwar industrial design. In the early 2020s retrofuturism surged across culture, transport, architecture and entertainment.

Defining characteristics

• Period styling - Art Deco, streamline moderne, mid-century modern - fused with imagined advanced technology
• Anachronistic gadgetry: analog dials, levers and vacuum tubes standing in for the digital
• Chrome, glossy surfaces and streamlined aerodynamic forms
• Atomic-age and space-age motifs: fins, orbits, ray-guns, robots
• Nostalgic, often saturated period palettes and vintage typography

Key figures

• Hugo Gernsback (1884-1967) — Pulp publisher whose science-fiction magazines seeded the visual vocabulary of the future
• Norman Bel Geddes (1893-1958) — Industrial designer whose Futurama exhibit at the 1939 New York World's Fair staged a gleaming tomorrow
• Terry Gilliam (b. 1940) — Filmmaker whose Brazil (1985) is a touchstone retro-futurist fantasy

Example works

• Things to Come — William Cameron Menzies (1936)
• Brazil — Terry Gilliam (1985)

Sources

• Retrofuturism - Wikipedia encyclopedia

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