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33 Retrofuturism and Steampunk
Get accessElizabeth Guffey is Professor of Art and Design History at SUNY-Purchase. She is also founding editor of the peer-review journal Design and Culture. She is the author of numerous articles on design history and of the books Retro: The Culture of Revival (Reaktion, 2006) and Poster: A Material History (Reaktion, 2014).
Kate C. Lemay is Assistant Professor of Art History at Auburn University-Montgomery, where she teaches courses on American Art. Her research interests include the American memorials, art, and architecture in France dedicated to World War II. Her projects have been supported by fellowships from IIE Fulbright, the Terra Foundation in American Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, le Centre Nationale pour les Recherches Scientifiques and the Mémorial de Caen, and the Emily Landau Research Center at the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum.
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Published:02 October 2014
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Abstract
Retrofuturism can be defined as an ambivalent fascination for a future that never came to pass. But, by engaging the popular strain of Futurism that thrived from the late nineteenth century through the 1970s, the term is usually applied to an array of pop-culture ephemera from the early to mid-twentieth century, from robot toys to shark-finned hovercrafts, pulp magazine covers to architectural utopias. When the term “retrofuturism” was coined in the 1980s, it was believed to reflect changing ideas of progress; recently, however, the “steampunk” movement has emerged as a newer revision of the modern past and its engagement with the future. Steampunk rehabilitates with mock seriousness old-fashioned technoscientific ideas. Recently, steampunk has mutated to become a popular subcultural expression, but is often identified as one more form of retrofuturist style. Yet, unlike the latter movement, steampunk forces us to reconsider the roots and historical import of the digital.
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