Art Deco
Art Deco, short for the French Arts décoratifs, is a style of visual arts, architecture, and product design that first appeared in Paris in the 1910s just before World War I and flourished internationally during the 1920s to early 1930s, through styling and design of the exterior and interior of anything from large structures to small objects, including clothing, fashion, and jewelry. Art Deco has influenced buildings from skyscrapers to cinemas, bridges, ocean liners, trains, cars, trucks, buses, furniture, and everyday objects, including radios and vacuum cleaners.
The name Art Deco came into use after the 1925 Exposition internationale des arts décoratifs et industriels modernes held in Paris. It has its origin in the bold geometric forms of the Vienna Secession and Cubism. From the outset, Art Deco was influenced by the bright colors of Fauvism and the Ballets Russes, and the exoticized styles of art from China, Japan, India, Persia, ancient Egypt, and the Maya. In its time, Art Deco was tagged with other names such as style moderne, Moderne, modernistic, or style contemporain, and it was not recognized as a distinct and homogeneous style.
During its heyday, Art Deco represented luxury, glamour, exuberance, and faith in social and technological progress. The movement featured rare and expensive materials such as ebony and ivory, and exquisite craftsmanship. It also introduced new materials such as chrome plating, stainless steel, and plastic. In New York, the Empire State Building, Chrysler Building, and other buildings from the 1920s and 1930s are monuments to the style. The largest concentration of Art Deco architecture in the world is in Miami Beach, Florida.
Art Deco became more subdued during the Great Depression. A sleeker form of the style appeared in the 1930s called Streamline Moderne, featuring curving forms and smooth, polished surfaces. Art Deco was an international style but, after the outbreak of World War II, it lost its dominance to the functional and unadorned styles of modern architecture and the International Style.
Terminology
Art Deco took its name, short for Arts Décoratifs, from the International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts held in Paris in 1925. In France the distinction of arts décoratifs was first made in the 1858 Bulletin de la Société française de photographie. In 1868, Le Figaro used the term objets d'art décoratifs for objects for stage scenery created for the Théâtre de l'Opéra. In 1875, furniture designers, textile, jewellers, glass-workers, and other craftsmen were officially given the status of artists by the French government. In 1920 the École nationale supérieure des arts décoratifs was established.The actual term Art déco did not appear in print until 1966, in the title of the first modern exhibition on the subject, held by the Museum of Decorative Arts in Paris, Les Années 25 : Art déco, Bauhaus, Stijl, Esprit nouveau, which covered a variety of major styles in the 1920s and 1930s. The term was then used in a 1966 newspaper article by Hillary Gelson in The Times, describing the different styles at the exhibit.
Art Deco gained currency as a broadly applied stylistic label in 1968 when historian Bevis Hillier published the first major academic book on it, Art Deco of the 20s and 30s. He noted that the term was already being used by art dealers, and cites The Times and an essay named Les Arts Déco in Elle magazine as examples. In 1971, he organized an exhibition at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, which he details in his book The World of Art Deco.
Mike Hope lists many other labels that were used for Art Deco architecture: Odeon Style, Liberty style, Style Moderne, Jazz Moderne, Zigzag Moderne, British Moderne, Nautical Moderne, Modern Ship Style, Pacqueboat Style, Ocean Liner Style, White Modern, Futurist Art Deco, Streamline Beaux Arts, Streamline Moderne, PWA Moderne, PWA/WPA Moderne, Federal Moderne, Depression Moderne, Classical Moderne, Classical Modernism, Modernist Classical, Chicago School, Czech Architectural Cubism, Italian Futurism, Prairie School, Atmospheric Theatre, Med Deco, Amsterdam School, Nieuwe Zakelijkheid as in New Objectivity, Mayan Revival, Japanese Secession, Spanish Pueblo Style, Pueblo Deco, Finnish National Romanticism, Neo-Gothic, Neo-Byzantine, Neo-Egyptian, Spanish Mission, International School, European International Style, Wiener Werkstätte, Free Classicism, Stripped Neo-Classicism, Deco Free Classicism, Stripped Classicism, Transitional Modern, Vogue Regency.
Origins
New materials and technologies
New materials and technologies, especially reinforced concrete, were key to the development and appearance of Art Deco. The first concrete house was built in 1853 in the Paris suburbs by François Coignet. In 1877, Joseph Monier introduced the idea of strengthening the concrete with a mesh of iron rods in a grill pattern. In 1893, Auguste Perret built the first concrete garage in Paris, then an apartment building, a house, then, in 1913, the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées.The theatre was denounced by one critic as the "Zeppelin of Avenue Montaigne", an alleged Germanic influence, copied from the Vienna Secession. Thereafter, the majority of Art Deco buildings were made of reinforced concrete, which gave greater freedom of form and less need for reinforcing pillars and columns. Perret was also a pioneer in covering the concrete with ceramic tiles, both for protection and decoration. The architect Le Corbusier first learned the uses of reinforced concrete while working as a draftsman in Perret's studio.
Other new technologies that were important to Art Deco were new methods in producing plate glass, which was less expensive and allowed much larger and stronger windows, and for mass-producing aluminium, which was used for building and window frames and later, by Corbusier, Warren McArthur, and others, for lightweight furniture.
Vienna Secession and Wiener Werkstätte (1897–1912)
The architects of the Vienna Secession, especially Josef Hoffmann, had a notable influence on Art Deco. His Stoclet Palace, in Brussels, was a prototype of the Art Deco style, featuring geometric volumes, symmetry, straight lines, concrete covered with marble plaques, finely-sculpted ornament, and lavish interiors, including mosaic friezes by Gustav Klimt. Hoffmann was also a founder of the Wiener Werkstätte, an association of craftsmen and interior designers working in the new style. This became the model for the Compagnie des arts français, created in 1919, which brought together André Mare and Louis Süe, the first leading French Art Deco designers and decorators.Society of Decorative Artists (1901–1945)
The emergence of Art Deco was closely connected with the rise in status of decorative artists, who until late in the 19th century were considered simply artisans. The term arts décoratifs was used in France as the status of decorative arts rose, and in 1875 furniture designers, textile makers, and other craftsmen were officially recognized as artists by the French government. In 1901, the Société des artistes décorateurs, or SAD, was founded, and decorative artists were given the same rights of authorship as painters and sculptors. A similar movement developed in Italy. In 1902, the first international exhibition devoted entirely to the decorative arts, the Esposizione Internazionale d'Arte Decorativa Moderna, was held in Turin.Several new magazines devoted to decorative arts were founded in Paris, including Arts et décoration and L'Art décoratif moderne. Decorative arts sections were introduced into the annual salons of the Sociéte des artistes français, and later in the Salon d'Automne. French nationalism also played a part in the resurgence of decorative arts, as French designers felt challenged by the increasing exports of less expensive German furnishings. In 1911, SAD proposed a major new international exposition of decorative arts in 1912. No copies of old styles would be permitted, only modern works. The exhibit was postponed until 1914; and then, because of the war, until 1925, when it gave its name to the whole family of styles known as "Déco".
Parisian department stores and fashion designers also played an important part in the rise of Art Deco. Prominent businesses such as silverware firm Christofle, glass designer René Lalique, and the jewellers Louis Cartier and Boucheron began designing products in more modern styles. Beginning in 1900, department stores recruited decorative artists to work in their design studios. The decoration of the 1912 Salon d'Automne was entrusted to the department store Printemps, and that year it created its own workshop, Primavera.
By 1920, Primavera employed more than 300 artists, whose styles ranged from updated versions of Louis XIV, Louis XVI, and especially Louis Philippe furniture made by Louis Süe and the Primavera workshop, to more modern forms from the workshop of the Au Louvre department store. Other designers, including Émile-Jacques Ruhlmann and Paul Follot, refused to use mass production, insisting that each piece be made individually. The early Art Deco style featured luxurious and exotic materials such as ebony, ivory and silk, very bright colours and stylized motifs, particularly baskets and bouquets of flowers of all colours, giving a modernist look.
Salon d'Automne (1903–1914)
At its birth between 1910 and 1914, Art Deco was an explosion of colours, featuring bright and often clashing hues, frequently in floral designs, presented in furniture upholstery, carpets, screens, wallpaper and fabrics. Many colourful works, including chairs and a table by Maurice Dufrêne and a bright Gobelin carpet by Paul Follot were presented at the 1912 Salon des artistes décorateurs. In 1912–1913 designer Adrien Karbowsky made a floral chair with a parrot design for the hunting lodge of art collector Jacques Doucet. The furniture designers Louis Süe and André Mare made their first appearance at the 1912 exhibit, under the name of the Atelier français, combining polychromatic fabrics with exotic and expensive materials, including ebony and ivory. After World War I, they became one of the most prominent French interior design firms, producing the furniture for the first-class salons and cabins of the French transatlantic ocean liners.The vivid hues of Art Deco came from many sources, including the exotic set designs by Léon Bakst for the Ballets Russes, which caused a sensation in Paris just before World War I. Some of the colours were inspired by the earlier Fauvism movement led by Henri Matisse; others by the Orphism of painters such as Sonia Delaunay; others by the movement known as Les Nabis, and in the work of symbolist painter Odilon Redon, who designed fireplace screens and other decorative objects. Bright shades were a feature of the work of fashion designer Paul Poiret, whose work influenced both Art Deco fashion and interior design.