Radebaugh’s work has been resurrected by the Lost Highways Archive & Research Library, a Philadelphia-based non-profit that has grown out of the various obsessions of curator Todd Kimmell and his wife, Kristin. The Lost Highway group began with a fascination with old campers and trailers-the roots of the RV movement. The group has now branched out into various loving explorations of wheeled vehicle historiana, from the “auto camping” craze of the ’20s and ’30s to American station wagon design.
In the course of his research on automotive art, Kimmell ran across a cache of work by a once-renowned advertising illustrator named A.C. Radebaugh, who worked from the ’30s through the ’50s. Radebaugh was a bit of a technologist as well: an early master of the new-fangled air-brush, during WWII he also helped the Air Force adapt fluorescent paint for the instrument panels of bombers. (After the war Radebaugh decorated his own office wall with a nighttime view of Rio de Janeiro rendered in fluorescent paint; at night, under black light, it became a glittering cityscape.)
When, in the ’50s, photography began to replace illustrations in advertising, Radebaugh needed new income and so turned his hand to newspaper and magazine features about the world of the future. Lost Highway’s Kimmell decided to expand the exhibit to include not only Radebaugh’s automotive imagery, but also digitally restored versions of his exuberant futurism. The exhibit opens this Friday in Philadelphia as well as on the Web (where the non-profit organization helps support itself by selling prints of the work).
These images are a vivid reminder of how the popular sense of the future was once overwhelmingly optimistic. The post-apocalyptic landscapes of “Blade Runner” and the dark cynicism of cyberpunk science fiction were still far away, and-at least for the prosperous white Americans depicted in the imagery-the future was going to be utterly swell.
