This is a new addition to Prestel publishing’s successful ’50s’ series (cf 50 Women Artists You Should Know, which I read a month or so ago) and it does just what it says on the cover.
First there’s a ten-page introduction to Art Deco – then 50 double-page spreads showcasing works from nearly every artistic medium, from paintings and photography to furnishings and film, with the work of art on the right and a page of introduction/commentary/analysis on the left – all topped off by a page of recommended further reading.
Exactitude by Pierre Fix-Masseau (1932)
Some of these one page commentaries are really interesting. The one on the Bugatti poster starts with a fascinating overview of the phenomenal spread of cars, and the way they created an entire sub-culture of new roads, motels, gas stations, along with ads for all the necessary accessories, petrol, tyres, motoring gloves, goggles and so on, plus the new idea of racing cars, the popularisation of the Grand Prix races, with their attendant posters and promotions.
There are similar insights into the growth of luxury ocean cruises on ships which, with each passing year, grew larger, more impressive, including more modern conveniences – or of the promptness and stylish service aboard a new generation of luxury trains – again all promoted with stylish posters in the new Modern style.
From Art Nouveau to Art Deco
Art Nouveau felt old hat by 1905. Slowly a newer taste developed for more geometric designs, influenced by the arrival of motor cars and other new highly designed technologies on the one hand and, at the rarefied end of the spectrum, by the taste for the geometric among a whole range of avant-garde artists as different as the Cubists, Futurists, Constructivists and so on.
Worried that German designers and craftsmen were stealing a march on them, the French government subsidised the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes (International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts) held in Paris in 1925. 16 million visitors came to see over 100 buildings featuring about 15,000 exhibitors.
It was about escapism and luxury, new sleek fast cars, ocean liners, stylish cigarette lighters. It was about advertisements and posters for high-end, luxury products and experiences, for sleek transcontinental trains and transoceanic liners, for airplanes and autos, along with women shaped and designed in the same slimline moulded style, flat breasts, fashionable cloche hat, sparkly Jazz Age dresses.
Art Deco fell out of favour with the outbreak of World War II and afterwards a new, much plainer, brutally functionalist International Style dominated architecture and domestic design. It was, apparently, only in the 1960s that there was a revival of interest in between-the-wars style and that a book by historian Bevis Hillier publicised the name which came to describe it – Art Deco.
Art Deco pieces I liked
- Finale by Demetre Chiparis (1925) painted bronze and carved ivory. Two classic flappers flanking a taller figure who looks like a classic goddess of speed.
Finale by Demetre Chiparis (1925)
- La Danse by Maurice Picaud (1929) relief outside the Folies Bergère. I love well-defined lines, and love the space helmet roundel over her ear.
- Bugatti poster by René Vincent (1930) A classic advertising image of speed and luxury, all wrapped in beautifully clean lines.
Bugatti poster by René Vincent (1930)
- Rotterdamische Lloyd by Johann von Stein (1931) Luxury can be yours!
Art Deco pieces I didn’t like
- Oasis folding screen by Edgar Brandt (1924) a genius combination of design and metalwork
- Chiffonier by André Groult (1925) jokily referencing the female body, including sharkskin panels
- État cabinet by Émile-Jacques Ruhlmann – the design in inlaid ivory seems really fussy to me
- Jazz ginger jar and cover by Enoch Boulton (1928) I can see the artistry but still… yuk
Art Deco paintings I liked
- Jeune fille aux gants by Tamara de Lempicka (1927) What’s not to love, especially her belly button! The rather scrappy Futurist painters like Boccioni turned into a stainless steel dream, the face huge and expressionless as on a billboards, the hair like metal turnings from a lathe, the apple green dress as bright and artificial as can be.
Art Deco paintings I didn’t like
- Les Perruches by Jean Dupas (1925) the most renowned painting of the 20s and 30s, apparently, created to go over the fireplace in E-J Ruhlmann’s Grand Salon room at the Art Deco exhibition
- Le serpent by Eugène-Robert Poughéon (1930) Strange, no?
Art Deco dancing
Jazz, black chic, primitivism, the female, the nude and sexy and naughty (risqué) came together in the figure of the sensational dancer Josephine Baker, who had a great success dancing half-naked in Paris. She’s presented by Federle Orr as a liberated and liberating figure. I’m surprised and a bit confused. Matisse or Picasso using African masks in their paintings is ‘cultural appropriation’ and exploitation, but a theatre full of rich white people watching an almost naked young black woman, wearing only a skirt of bananas, feverishly dancing to fake African rhythms is… liberating?
-josephine-baker.jpg)
Josephine Baker photographed by Dora Kallmus (aka Madame d’Ora)
Anyway, for me the core appeal of Art Deco is the sleek clean lines of its best sculptures and posters.
Art Deco architecture
- The Chrysler building by William van Allen (1930)
- The Golden Gate bridge by Strauss, Morrow and Ellis (1933-37) Not, maybe, the first image which springs to mind when asked to think about Art Deco.
- The chariot of Poseidon by Jean Dupas (1934) I found the spectacular interior designs of Art Deco without exception dark and claustrophobic and far too cluttered with detail – the opposite of the sleek, clean posters. Dupas’s huge mural was created to decorate the lounge of the new French luxury liner, SS Normandie. Compare and contrast with the entrance hall to the old Daily Express building in Fleet Street (1930).
Entrance hall to the old Daily Express building in Fleet Street (1930)
Streamline Moderne
Apparently, the 1930s saw sleeker, longer, simpler lines, partly a stylistic restraint in response to the hard times of the Depression, partly due to the arrival of new stronger materials like chrome plating, stainless steel and plastic.
This sleeker 1930s version, with its curving forms and polished surfaces, is sometimes called Streamline Moderne, a term generally applied to buildings with characteristic rounded edges e.g. the Hotel Normandie in Puerto Rico, itself inspired by the look of the French passenger liner mentioned above.
The Hotel Normandie in Puerto Rico
Summary
This is a fun book, a colourful introduction to, but only really a taster for, the vast world of Art Deco architecture, interior design, furnishings, household accessories, cars, trains, movies, posters and much much more.
Books & Boots 