Outdoor moments from warmer days
This week I’m taking a little breather and the newsletter is largely visual.
These below are two of my sketches from a memorable trip to Crete and Greece: A fisherman sits placidly in the bay of Chania and, underneath, the donkeys of Santorini.
For some people, the steep climb up the hill from the seaside pier to the picturesque town of Santorini is difficult, so the locals offer donkey rides. There are a lot of people and donkeys. The path is crowded and…slippery, if you know what I mean.
More summer sketches
Airy balcony, close-up of a tree, riding the trails in midwestern Ontario and a relaxing afternoon in a Vancouver park in July.
I researched this article last June and enjoyed writing it:
Retro-futurism: how images of the perceived future inspired an art movement
In 1930 a German company, Echte Wagner, maker of margarine, issued collectible advertising cards that presented visions of the future, as imagined back then. In the picture above we see one such fanciful illustration. The caption on the card said:
Each person has their own transmitter and receiver and can communicate with friends and relatives using certain wavelengths. But television technology has become so advanced that people can talk and watch their friends in real-time. The transmitter and receiver are no longer bound to the location but are carried in a box the size of a photo apparatus.
We may be taking our current smart phones for granted. They were nothing but a dream less than a hundred years ago.
As part of a series called Future Fantasy, Wagner also created a series of books in which stickers could be displayed. They show a vision of the future in the early part of the 20th century that gained popularity for decades and inspired an art movement that is still very much alive today.
Here’s another Echte Wagner illustration. This is an image of urban aerial transportation.
This type of imaginative art is known as Retro Futurism, also written in one word as “retrofuturism.” It can be defined as a cultural movement depicting how the future was viewed in the past. But it is more than that. Here’s the Wikipedia explanation:
Characterized by a blend of old-fashioned “retro styles” with futuristic technology, retrofuturism explores the themes of tension between past and future, and between the alienating and empowering effects of technology.
The best way to explain it is to observe it. There are thousands of examples in illustration and art, in the movies, fashion and architecture. In some ways, you can see Retro Futurism as an offshoot of the Art Deco movement of the early 20th century.
Here, for example, is another illustration of an advanced form of transportation.
While a lot of Retro Futurism relates to the art that accompanied science fiction tales from the 1920s to the 1960s, some examples appeared in business applications as well.
Chase, an American upholstery manufacturer, used this poster in the 1940s to advertise its woven and coated fabrics.
In fashion, designers also were intrigued by visions of the future and space travel.
Here's part of the Pierre Cardin collection from the 1960s.
And here’s a coffee shop sign in Los Angeles that dates back to the 1950s. It also relates to the same space age motif. Remember “The Jetsons” TV show?
More recently, Retro Futurism has spawned a number of sub-genres. One is Steampunk, which combines the aesthetics of the 19th century steam-powered technology of the Industrial Revolution era with a retro science fiction style. Here, for example, we see American fiction writer G.D. Falksen wearing accessories designed by Thomas Willeford in the Steampunk style.
Another movement is Dieselpunk, which draws inspiration from the technology of a few decades later, the early-to-mid 20th century, and plays with futuristic ideas. Here’s an example by Polish artist Stefan Prohaczka, who created this image of a flying locomotive in the style of a 1940s poster.
In motion pictures, Retro Futurism provided the artistic inspiration for different worlds and intricate machines in a host of art films. Three of the most well-known movies of this type include Fritz Lang’s early classic, Metropolis (1927), Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (1982) and David Lynch’s Dune (1984).
This is a scene from Dune which shows a fleet of troop-carrying spaceships.
Here’s a still from Blade Runner, set in a futuristic and perpetually rainy Los Angeles.
In architecture, another example can be found in the Los Angeles of today, at the international airport (LAX). The Theme Building, designed in 1959 and completed in 1961, shows the space age design style of the mid-century period mentioned earlier. Inspired by images of spaceports in futuristic art, the structure looks like a saucer that has landed on four legs.
And, to finish, here’s another stunning example. This is the Contemporary Art Museum across the bay from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Retro Futurism has left its mark on popular culture and continues to evolve.
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Notes:
https://thevou.com/fashion/retro-futurism/
The Echte Wagner collection: https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/futuristic-visions-cards-germany/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retrofuturism
Thoughts on inspiration: “All the best ideas come out of the process…”
Painter and visual artist Chuck Close offers this:
The advice I like to give young artists, or really anybody who'll listen to me, is not to wait around for inspiration. Inspiration is for amateurs; the rest of us just show up and get to work. If you wait around for the clouds to part and a bolt of lightning to strike you in the brain, you are not going to do an awful lot of work.
All the best ideas come out of the process; they come out of the work itself. Things occur to you. If you're sitting around trying to dream up a great idea, you can sit there a long time before anything happens. But if you just get to work, something will occur to you and something else will occur to you and something else that you reject will push you in another direction. Inspiration is absolutely unnecessary and somehow deceptive. You feel like you need this great idea before you can get down to work, and I find that's almost never the case.
Source: Interview (March 2007), as quoted in James Clear’s newsletter, Feb. 15, 2024.
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Thanks for reading this week’s post. Have a good week!
-Renato