What is retrofuturism?
As the name suggests, retrofuturism is an art movement bound by contradictions. It’s a dated look at the future, combining flying cars with an old-school, vaporwave look that makes it impossible to place to a specific period. Space and technology rule, but it never feels modern. It is perhaps best summed up as an artistic depiction of what the future could look like through the lens of the past. Look it up, and you’ll find a long list of incredibly niche art movements it draws from – all of which you’ve never heard of. Googie architecture, Raygun gothic and steampunk all find their way into the eclectic mix.
The vintage element lends itself to wartime propaganda posters in that there’s a clear agenda at play in its broad aims for the future, but they’re combined with the warmth of retro film posters. Humans intermingle with cyborgs, all so rudimentary in their silvery robotic looks that you know it’s not a modern take on space exploration. In the age of Elon Musk, it’s actually quite heartening to look at aspirations of space exploration that don’t involve colonising Mars.
That said, it does recall the art that came out of Russia during the Space Race when artists realised that under the guise of making Soviet propaganda, their adventurous visions of space weren’t censored. But retrofuturism seemingly has more innocence about it, considering only how huge technological strides could improve life. Art’s vintage glazed future rose up in the 1970s during a period of massive upheaval, and there are two ways to look at the rise of retrofuturism during that time.
The first is that its hazy artwork was an innocent musing on the future, originating from a time when space travel was international front-page news and not just Richard Branson’s side gig. The second looks at the uplifting aesthetic cynically, seeing anxieties about the rapidly developing scientific age echoed in its optimistic creations almost ironically.
With the Vietnam War raging on, the public started to worry that maybe science wouldn’t save them all. Throughout history, science has always been marketed as something that would improve lives. Still, the war and mounting energy crisis said differently, and retrofuturism was a bitter reminder of what people thought all this progress was building to – a future that notably still doesn’t exist.
Whatever way you look at the movement, its charming anachronism has enduring appeal because something about it still feels new, but it’s delivered in such a nostalgic style it’s sort of none of the things it sets out to be – existing entirely on its own as a genre that’s not altogether futuristic or retro. As historians put it in Yesterday’s Tomorrows: Past Visions of the American Future, at its core, it’s “a history of an idea, or a system of ideas – an ideology. The future, of course, does not exist except as an act of belief or imagination.”