America of the future imagined in the 1910s - 1930s
Posts marked retro
Chinese Space Children Posters collected by Retronaut. Click on the images to see their translations.
Some pieces from artist Rik Allen’s wonderful blown glass Spacecraft Series
From his artist statement:
Existence can be a myopic affair, focused on the immediate and the practical. We live our lives unaware of the true ways of the world. What lies beneath the surface of everyday? What collection of intricate quantum clockwork winds the mainspring of the universe? Those few that do gain access to those secrets – figures such as Nicola Tesla, Marie Curie, Albert Einstein – are isolated spelunkers into a vast hidden world, able with a single discovery, invention, or mode of thought, to pull back the veil of the visible and reveal in wondrous awe the true nature of Everything.
Rik Allen’s current body of work mines that rich vein between the outward mysteries of creation and the inward journeys of the human imagination. What began several years ago as an exploration of the iconic rocketship in its purest form has evolved into a contemplation of the role of individuals in our finite world, all in relation to the infinite complexity and vastness of the cosmos. We are each explorers on a journey through existence and Allen’s sculptures evoke this introspection and conveyance – spacecraft captained by lonely cartographers mapping the inky black seas between us all, organic vessel-creatures harbouring spores of complex knowledge bound for undiscovered mental landscapes, or sentient mechanical emissaries propagating our viral truths through the fabric of being.
Eerie images from a bomb test in Nevada in 1955.
Before CERN there was the Synchrophasotron.
The Synchrophasotron was a synchrotron-based particle accelerator for protons at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna that was operational from 1957 - 2003.
Wonders and curiosities collide in the work of illustrator Michael Waraksa.
Plates from the X-ray Atlas of the Skull. 1918
Vintage illustrations from The Human Body: What It Is and How It Works. 1959
Just in time for the current election season, The Library Of Congress has published Presidential Campaign Posters: Two Hundred Years of Election Art, a fantastic collection of 100 ready-to-frame political campaign posters from the annals of American history.
The British Imperial War Museum has culled from its collection of over 20,000 wartime posters their favorite 30 from World War II and released them in the form of a free app. Each one has details about its designer as well as the stories behind the designs and comments from IWM’s curators. You can also buy prints of the posters, including everybody’s favorite:
The GraphicHouse Etsy shop sells vintage illustrations of ocean creatures, anatomy, etc. for many uses, like making cool hoodies like this one:
NASA Common’s Ornamentation gallery has more shiny balls than a Christmas tree.
The art of propaganda may have peaked with the mid-century Soviet space program. Nobody since has been able to match their ability to mix inspiration with intimidation. Judging from these posters, I’m not sure whether they just wanted to just reach the stars or to conquer them.
Some awesomely retro highlights from the NASA Apollo Mission Events archive.
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