Design and Arts
A great deal of attention is drawn to fantastic machines, buildings, cities, and transportation systems. The futuristic design aesthetic of the early 20th century tends to solid colors, streamlined shapes, and mammoth scales. It might be said that 20th century futuristic vision found its ultimate expression in the development of Googie or Populuxe design. As applied to fiction, this brand of retro-futuristic visual style is also referred to as Raygun Gothic, a catchall term for a visual style that incorporates various aspects of the Googie, Streamline Moderne, and Art Deco architectural styles when applied to retro-futuristic science fiction environments.
Although Raygun Gothic is most similar to the Googie or Populuxe style and sometimes synonymous with it, the name is primarily applied to images of science fiction. The style is also still a popular choice for retro sci-fi in film and video games. Raygun Gothic's primary influences include the set designs of Kenneth Strickfaden and Fritz Lang. The term was coined by William Gibson in his story "The Gernsback Continuum": "Cohen introduced us and explained that Dialta was the prime mover behind the latest Barris-Watford project, an illustrated history of what she called "American Streamlined Modern." Cohen called it "raygun Gothic." Their working title was The Airstream Futuropolis: The Tomorrow That Never Was."
Aspects of this form of retro-futurism can also be associated with the late 1970s and early 1980s the neo-Constructivist revival that emerged in art and design circles. Designers like David King in the UK and Paula Scher in the US imitated the cool, futuristic look of the Russian avant-garde in the years following the Russian Revolution. When the German band Kraftwerk issued “Man Machine” (1978), a record whose electronic sound was echoed in the simple geometric shapes and striking red, black and white album cover the design credited to El Lissiztky, they were also tapping into a larger retrofuturist vision. IF their machine imagery was lifted from Russian design motifs that were once considered futuristic, they also presented a “compelling, if somewhat chilling, vision of the world in which musical ecstasy is rendered cool, mechanical and precise.”
Read more about this topic: Retro-futurism
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“For I choose that my remembrances of him should be pleasing, affecting, religious. I will love him as a glorified friend, after the free way of friendship, and not pay him a stiff sign of respect, as men do to those whom they fear. A passage read from his discourses, a moving provocation to works like his, any act or meeting which tends to awaken a pure thought, a flow of love, an original design of virtue, I call a worthy, a true commemoration.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The textile and needlework arts of the world, primarily because they have been the work of women have been especially written out of art history. It is a male idea that to be “high” and “fine” both women and art should be beautiful, but not useful or functional.”
—Patricia Mainardi (b. 1942)