PurplePrice Mag · · 3 min read
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Art Deco is the style that shaped architecture, interiors and graphic design between the two World Wars. It was born in Paris in the 1910s, shortly before the Great War, had its moment of glory in the 1920s and, in the United States, carried on throughout the 1930s. It expressed the luxury, elegance and faith in progress of the new modern society.
The name
The name comes from the International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts, held in Paris in 1925, which is why it is also called the "1925 style". But the term "Art Deco" only caught on much later, in the 1960s, with the 1966 exhibition at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris and the 1968 book by the English historian Bevis Hillier.
Its features
After the sinuous lines of Art Nouveau, Art Deco chose geometry: zigzags, chequerboards, sunbursts, stepped forms, clean volumes. It combined precious materials such as ebony, ivory, lacquer, sharkskin and inlaid woods with new materials such as chrome-plated steel, aluminium and plastic. Its sources of inspiration were many: the geometric forms of the Vienna Secession, Cubism, the Ballets Russes, Egyptian art, back in fashion after the discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb in 1922, and African and pre-Columbian art.
The protagonists in France
- Jacques-Émile Ruhlmann, the cabinetmaker of the most refined furniture, made in small numbers in precious woods;
- Jean Dunand, master of lacquer, and Edgar Brandt, of wrought iron;
- René Lalique, with his glass, and the great jewellery houses such as Cartier;
- Eileen Gray, furniture and interior designer;
- Cassandre, author of famous advertising posters.
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American skyscrapers
In the United States Art Deco became the style of the metropolis: the Chrysler Building (1930) and the Empire State Building in New York, the Rockefeller Center, the cinemas and hotels of Miami Beach, which has the largest concentration of Art Deco buildings in the world. In the 1930s the style became smoother and more aerodynamic with Streamline Moderne: soft curves, polished surfaces, horizontal lines evoking speed. Its interpreters include industrial designers such as Raymond Loewy and Henry Dreyfuss.
In Italy
From 1923 Gio Ponti, who thirty years later would come up with the Compasso d'Oro, was artistic director of the Richard-Ginori porcelain factory: with his ceramics he won the Grand Prix at the 1925 Paris Exhibition. Traces of Art Deco can be found in many Italian buildings of the period, from the Coppedè quarter in Rome to Milan Central Station.
The decline
With the Great Depression the style became more restrained; after the Second World War it gave way to the functionalism of the Modern Movement and the International Style, and was long dismissed as decorative and somewhat kitsch. Its revival came precisely in the 1960s, when the style was finally given its name.
Sources
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