The present is hurtling into becoming the past as we speak, and right now you might feel like we can’t move into a more compassionate future fast enough. But through this Friday, November 7, you can still see artist and writer Bruce McCall’s Visions of the Retrofuture and lose yourself in his Jetson-style imaginary worlds, where cars have wings and takeout is delivered to space stations on bikes soaring through the stars, along with works exhibiting a healthy dose of class consciousness. McCall (1935–2023) often referred to having invented his own lexicon to describe his work: “Retrofuturism.” He saw himself as something of a misfit in the modern world, declaring in a 2009 TED Talk that he didn’t own a cell phone and that his works were painted on paper using gouache, “which hasn’t changed in 600 years.” McCall described his technique as “a painstaking realism of editorial illustration” that he copied as a kid, adding, “I never unlearned it.”

The perfect servants — no tongues for tattling or complaining; from the series “Zeppelin: Skeleton Crew” (1974).

Visions of the Retrofuture includes more than 60 works from McCall’s estate, including paintings that appeared on the cover of the New Yorker (he did more than 80 covers for the magazine) and pieces for Esquire and the original National Lampoon, as well as drawings from his books, including The Last Dream-O-Rama (The Cars Detroit Forgot to Build 1950–1960), All Meat Looks Like South America, and Marveltown. Notes and sketches from his archives provide a backstory to the paintings and drawings, and a window into McCall’s perspectives.

A retro-future we’d like see now: Horses get to relax on carriage rides and tax refunds rain from above.

This is the first posthumous exhibition of McCall’s works since his death. In that same TED Talk, McCall, speaking about how past generations viewed the future, stated, “They are always wrong, often hilariously, optimistically wrong.”  ❖

Visions of the Retrofuture
Adam Baumgold Fine Art
DFN Projects, Fuller Building
41 East 57th Street, Suite 1103
Through November 7

 

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