Planet Madness: Illustration inspired by detective comics and 1950s America
Artists have long been pairing fifties Americana with surrealism. A decade often described as one of the most economically prosperous in the whole of American history, it seems that anything was believed possible under the guise of 'the American dream' in the 1950s.
In his series Planet Madness, Hungarian director and motion designer Rene Mednyanszky has provided his own spin on the period – injecting supernatural characters into neat concrete landscapes that contain pop cultural references associated with the time.
A bottle green vintage car is slotted under the yellow awning of the Blue Moon Diner, while a mummy stands by. A woman rides an escalator through a twisted, concrete landscape reminiscent of a scene from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. An unmistakably 1950's brown suit and hat balance in mid-air in front of a hotel tower block, with a yellow taxi cab parked outside.
The methods used to create the images are photo-manipulation and digital painting. Mednyanszky states his inspiration for the series as detective comics, 1950s America, Magical Realism and Igor Stravinsky’s Firebird Suite Introduction theme.
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