[Art] Art Deco

[Art] Art Deco

Art Deco, short for the French Arts décoratifs (lit. 'Decorative Arts'),[1] 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 in the United States, Mexico and Europe 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 (International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts) 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 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.

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 (2 November 1966) and an essay named Les Arts Déco in Elle magazine (November 1967) 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 (after the style used by Odeon Cinemas in the 1930s), 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 (also Neue Sachlichkeit, Neues Bauen, New Sobriety, 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.