A Style For The 20’s

In this first Raves and Faves post I’d like to give a little time to one of my favorite stylistic periods, the much loved and often reviled style that became a movement, introduced in Paris at the 1925, “Le Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes,” in English, “The International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts,” more commonly known as “Art Deco.” Perhaps no other style in history is so filled with tacky kitsch, yet has such continued potential for elegance and influence. Originally associated with both luxury and modernity, Art Deco combined very expensive luxury materials and fine craftsmanship in a combination of modern geometric and organic forms. Furniture was fabricated of expensive and often exotic woods and featured ivory, silver, and bronze and other inlays of precious materials that often had the character of fine jewelry. The jewelry itself combined silver, gold and platinum, with diamonds and other precious and semi-precious stones and materials. High fashion clothing, textiles, wallpaper, and ceramics picked up the style, and brought bright colors picked up from contemporary modernist art styles to the party. It often featured symmetrical, classically influenced, formal compositions of repeated geometric designs, chevrons, zigzags, and stylized organic forms, but was just as likely to appear in informal asymmetrical configurations. As a style it quickly grew in popularity, symbolizing a new, modern, fast paced lifestyle that spoke of the future. It appeared in the first-class salons of ocean liners, airship interiors, streamlined trains and automobiles, and in the massed forms and surface decorations of skyscrapers. It also showed a more utilitarian commercial aspect, as Art Deco styled appliances, kitchen gadgets, radio consoles, furnishings and even toys made the style readily available to the everyday man, woman, and child on the street. Everyone had a place in this new unified fast paced world of the future.
In reality Art Deco was a collection of varying and often contradictory styles. It borrowed from contemporary and ancient classical art from around the world. Asian, African and Polynesian designs, influences from 20^th century industry, the recently discovered tomb of Tutankhamen from ancient Egypt, as well as the ancient cultures of Greece, Rome, and Mesoamerica all combined and influenced the style. Perhaps the most visible display of such cultural blends were in the Art Deco showplaces that were the great movie palaces of the late 1920s and 1930s. These great temples of the moving pictures were places of celebration of progress and later escape from the harsh realities of the period between two World Wars. I think that’s one reason it’s a favorite of mine. That, and it’s an unlikely mix of high brow and low brow, geometric and organic, expensive and cheap, ancient and contemporary, celebration and escape. It has the potential to be all things to all people, which is its greatest weakness and perhaps its greatest strength.