RETRO FUTURISM
- ARTISTIC HUB MAGAZINE
- Oct 7, 2024
- 3 min read
Updated: Sep 6
When the Past Imagines the Future
Do you remember those futuristic visions from the mid-20th century?
Shiny cities, robot assistants in the kitchen, flying cars... Once the stuff of dreams, they came to life in films and magazines that imagined tomorrow with wide-eyed optimism.
Today, artists around the world are revisiting these visions through what we now call retrofuturism. Yet retrofuturism is more than just nostalgia. It’s a way of using the past to reflect on the present and reimagine what the future could become.
One artist who masterfully bridges past and future is Simon Stålenhag,a Swedish digital creator whose work fuses futuristic machines with quiet, rural scenes from the 1980s. His paintings imagine an alternate past where people stroll beside towering robots, as if they’ve always belonged there.
There’s no sense of urgency or domination, technology blends into the landscape. The result is a world that feels both serene and strangely unsettling. Nostalgia and unease move in parallel, leaving viewers with the feeling that his imagined reality isn’t so distant from our own.
But retrofuturism isn’t confined to visual art.
It has found its way into fashion as well. Designers such as Iris van Herpen have created entire collections inspired by 1960s science fiction, using innovative materials and experimental techniques. Her futuristic dresses seem as if they have stepped straight out of a film like 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Through her work, fashion becomes a space where memories of the past and ideas of the future meet, offering silhouettes that feel both familiar and ahead of their time.
In architecture, retrofuturism comes to life in visionary projects like Biosphere 2.
Built in Arizona in the early 1990s, it was conceived as a prototype for a self-sustaining colony on Mars. The design was deeply rooted in futuristic architectural concepts from the 1960s and 70s, a time when space colonization captured the world’s imagination.
Although the experiment faced technical setbacks, its bold structure remains a lasting symbol of retrofuturistic ambition. Today, both artists and architects revisit this aesthetic to explore how we relate to technology, nature and the future of our planet.
Yet retrofuturism is more than a visual language.
It carries deep social and political resonance. In movements such as Afrofuturism, past and future merge to challenge dominant narratives and imagine alternative realities through the lens of African culture and history. A striking example is the film Black Panther, which draws on Afrofuturist aesthetics to envision a world where advanced technology lives in balance with nature and tradition. It offers a glimpse of what African civilizations might have looked like without the shadow of colonization. This interpretation of retrofuturism goes far beyond entertainment. It invites us to rethink progress, equity and the future of our global connections.
Through art, music, fashion and architecture, retrofuturism reminds us that the future has always been a matter of perspective.
What people imagined fifty years ago did not always materialize, yet those visions continue to shape our collective imagination. Musicians like Daft Punk merge electronic sounds from the 1970s with contemporary technology, crafting songs that feel like echoes of the future we once hoped for. Their visual identity, marked by robotic helmets, highlights this fusion of past and future and reflects how deeply those dreams are woven into our cultural fabric.
A compelling aspect of retrofuturism lies in the critical lens many artists apply. Some revisit environmental concerns, using retrofuturistic imagery to explore how earlier generations might have tackled climate change with the tools available at the time. These works take us back to an era brimming with optimism, while gently questioning the consequences of unexamined faith in progress.
One thing becomes clear. Retrofuturism is not simply a look back. It is a layered exploration of how we once imagined what was ahead and what those visions reveal about us now. Rather than offering conclusions, it invites us to ask more demanding questions—about technology, society, ecology and our place in what comes next.
Today’s artists use retrofuturism like a palette, composing worlds that may seem contradictory but speak in harmony. In their work, we do not merely revisit the past. We are invited to examine the present and reimagine the future through the lens of dreams that never quite faded. That is what gives retrofuturism its enduring appeal—and its striking relevance in the world of contemporary art.
