So, when a publicist queried me recently to see if I would be interested in reviewing a couple of books with Art Deco themes, I wasn’t all that excited. I’ve seen deco this and deco that, which really wasn’t even deco at all, so many times that I was sort of expecting another deco downer to show up in my mailbox.
However, I’m pleased to say that I was surprised in a very good way when these books arrived. Both these Bullfinch Press titles, Essential Art Deco by Ghislaine Wood and Art Deco Fashion by Suzanne Lussier, are as pleasing to the eye as they are informative on their respective topics.
For instance, the introduction of Essential Art Deco provides a thorough overview of the influences that affected the movement toward Art Deco styling in the years leading up to 1914.
“It drew life from many sources: the art of ancient civilizations and of the avant-garde, the exoticism of the Ballets Russes, the motifs of the French tradition and the imagery of the machine age,” wrote Wood. “It was a style shaped , in Scott Fitzgerald’s words, by ‘all the nervous energy stored up and unexpended in the War.’”
The actual term Art Deco wasn’t coined until the 1960s, according to Wood. Prior to that time the style was known as Zig-zag modern, Jazz modern or simply Moderne. At times Deco styled pieces are still referred to as Art Moderne, which wouldn’t be incorrect, just not quite as familiar as far as terminology goes today.
All these terms reflect the very modern, geometric lines that were very new to the 1920s eye and solidified in interior design, fashion and architecture in the 1930s at the height of Deco influence. This styling was decorative, commercial, fashionable, individualistic and symbolic of the times, and the ensuing designs rolled all that up into a somewhat disjointed yet attractive and colorful style.
“Without a defining doctrine or manifesto, the style fragmented, like a Cubist painting, to envelop the modern world at its most dramatic points – ocean liners, skyscrapers, automobiles, jazz and Hollywood film,” Wood mused. And her book gives the reader a morsel of all these delights visually while explaining traditional motifs, the stylized nature of Art Deco, exotic themes, geometry used in the designs and even touches on theories of abstraction.
(See page two for more on Art Deco Fashion)
