The Full Story: Each generation has artists that speak for it. The Baby Boomers had Koons. The Silent Generation had Warhol. And the Millennials? Hannah Rothstein.
Published in The New York Times, TIME, The Guardian, Vogue Italia, and more, Rothstein is redefining art in the eyes of the Millennial Generation. Bridging both millennial’s taste for irony-clad humor and their concerns regarding the world around them, Rothstein’s work spans a wide variety of topics, sentiments, and media.
Rothstein’s early works embrace Millennials’ pithy, playful approach to our cultural lexicon. Her oeuvres Thanksgiving Special, Dr. Dreidel, The Cocktail Hour Coloring Book, and Broga (now a book published with Sterling, Yoga for Bros) turn iconic and beloved aspects of pop culture on their heads. The works captured Millennials’ lighthearted mindsets at the time, and went viral in the press and on social media.
More recently, Rothstein has changed the focus of her work to address the most pressing topic facing her generation: climate change. Her first climate-focused project, National Parks 2050, puts a spin on the classic WPA-style national parks posters, updating them to reflect a future in which climate change has run unchecked. The project went viral, and in addition to being featured widely in the press, it’s also been published in academic journals. Since this project, Rothstein has released other climate-change works including Climate of Denial and Protect Our Parks, the latter of which was commissioned by groups fighting fossil fuels.
Rothstein understands that in our media-overload world, people increasingly want to see art they can easily understand. They also find the alienating elitism of ivory-tower institutions to be a turn off. This in mind, Rothstein makes art that’s poignant and impactful, yet easy to relate to, and releases her work where people from all backgrounds feel comfortable approaching it: online and via social media. In this way, Rothstein aims to change the art world from the ground up.
