What is Art Deco?
A tale of two movements
“The fruit of a fearful union between the flashier side of Ballets Russes and a hopelessly vulgarised version of Cubism … elements … popularised by the Paris Exhibition of 1925, such as the all too generous use of the obscure and more hideous woods … unvarnished wood and chromium plate, relentlessly applied.” — Osbert Lancaster
One often hears the term “Art Deco” bandied about, with all of its associations with luxury, glamour, exuberance — as well as the Jazz age, Flappers and the roaring twenties — but what does it really mean? It was originally used pejoratively by the famous detractor and egomaniacal modernist Le Corbusier (1887-1965), in articles in which he criticized the style for its ornamentation, a characteristic that he regarded as otiose in modern architecture. Indeed it wasn’t until the late 1960s, when interest in the style was reinvigorated by a panoply of forward thinking dealers, that the term was used in a positive manner by British art historian and critic Bevis Hillier in her book Art Deco of the 20s and 30s (the genre had previously been referred to as Art Moderne). Essentially “Art Deco” is a very broad descriptive term relating to a period of art and architecture that stemmed from the desire to create and design a new lifestyle and aesthetic based on innovation and modernity. After centuries in which surface decoration reigned supreme, the puritanical tenet underpinning what would become a period of unrivalled excess was: form must follow function, to ensure that “ornamental” elements are not haphazardly implemented. In 1896, American architect Louis Sullivan — pioneer of the modern skyscraper — coined the maxim “form (ever) follows function” (a theory his apprentice, the young Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959), would later apply to his own practice). Then in 1908, the radical Austrian architect Adolf Loos (1870-1933) wrote an allegorical essay titled “Ornament and Crime” in a reaction to the florid forms of the Art Nouveau movement in which, without pulling any punches, he declared decorative details were for degenerates. Modernists would adopt Loos’ moralistic argument as well as Sullivan’s maxim, with the credo eventually becoming a battle cry of Modernist architects after the 1930s. It’s commonly accepted that Art Deco — sometimes referred to as Deco — first appeared in France in the early years of the twentieth century and reigned until the outbreak of the Second World War. It is a style quintessentially French, taking its name, short for Arts Décoratifs, from the Exposition internationale des arts décoratifs et industriels modernes (International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts) held in Paris in 1925 — though the diverse styles that characterize Art Deco had already appeared in Paris and Brussels before World War I.
Maison de Verre (“The Glass House”) (1925-1932) designed by Pierre Chareau
The bathroom of Jeanne Lanvin (c. 1924-1925), designed by Armand Albert Rateau
The staging of the 1925 Exposition, devoted to modern design in the decorative and applied arts, created an unprecedented international draw and is considered to be the high point of Art Deco production. Interestingly though at this stage there coexisted two competing schools: on the one side, there were the traditionalists, who in 1901 had founded the Société des artistes décorateurs (Society of Decorative Artists), or SAD, for e.g Émile-Jacques Ruhlmann (1879-1933), Jean Dunard (1877-1942), sculptor Antoine Bourdelle (1861-1929), and the exuberant French fashion designer Paul Poiret (1879-1944), who combined rare and luxurious materials with modern forms and traditional craftsmanship. On the other side were the modernists, who increasingly rejected the past and wanted a style based upon advances in new technologies, simplicity, a lack of decoration, inexpensive materials, and mass production. The modernists founded their own organization, The Union des artistes modernes (“French Union of Modern Artists”), or UAM, in 1929. Its members included architects Pierre Chareau (1883-1950), Francis Jourdain (1876-1958), Robert Mallet-Stevens (1886-1945), Le Corbusier, and, in the Soviet Union, Konstantin Melnikov (1890-1974); the Irish designer Eileen Gray (1978-1976), and French artist Sonia Delaunay (1885-1979), as well as the jewellers Jean Fouquet (1899-1994) and Jean Puiforcat (1897-1945). They fiercely attacked the traditional art Deco style, which they said was created only for the wealthy, and insisted that well-constructed buildings should be available to everyone, and that form should follow function. The beauty of an object or building resided in whether it was perfectly fit to fulfil its function. Modern industrial methods meant that furniture and buildings could be mass-produced, not made by hand.
Interior of the Palais de la Doree, Paris, by Émile-Jacques Ruhlmann, featuring one of his “Elephant” armchairs, as well as furniture in macassar ebony
An interior of the Templeton Crocker Penthouse (1929) by French decorator Jean-Michel Frank, typically austere and original, with walls clad in parchment
Art Deco is of course undeniably frivolous and makes very few concessions to Modernist reductivism. Interior designer Paul Follot (1877-1941) offered a defence of the movement when he said: “We know that man is never content with the indispensable and that the superfluous is always needed ... If not, we would have to get rid of music, flowers, and perfumes.” To an extent, of course, Fallot was just pointing out the blindingly obvious: one cannot get poor by satisfying the popular taste for high-end decor. Indeed the architecture, interiors, furniture, glass, jewellery and other decorative arts displayed at the 1925 Exposition were for the rich — the very very rich, the 0.01% — but their advancement of techniques offered ideas to industrial manufacturers who in the 1930s would supply affordable, stylish furnishings for the mass market. Amongst its many detractors Osbert Lancaster (1908-1986) described the glut of modernistic style cultivars and Art Deco in particular as: “the fruit of a fearful union between the flashier side of Ballets Russes and a hopelessly vulgarised version of Cubism.” During the course of the Exposition, Le Corbusier wrote a series of articles for his magazine L'Esprit Nouveau, under the title “1925 EXPO. ARTS. DÉCO.”, which were combined into a book, L’art décoratif d’aujourd’hui (“Decorative Art Today”); which was not only a spirited attack on the excess of the colourful and lavish objects displayed at the inaugural Art Deco exhibition, but expounded the idea that practical objects such as furniture should not have any decoration at all. His pithy, succinct conclusion was that “Modern decoration has no decoration”. Such conflict is perhaps only to be expected as from its outset Art Deco was influenced by a multitude of sources from abstraction and the bold geometric forms of Cubism, Russian Constructivism and Futurism, as well as other sometimes conflicting influences including the art of Africa, India and Persia as well as traditional Japanese lacquer techniques, the Vienne Secession, Egyptology and the bright colours of Fauvism, to name but a few.
Typically when we say Art Deco people think of what one might call “the first wave” of ensembliers, those such as Armand-Albert Rateau (1882-1938); a very singular personality, whose fantastical creations combine a highly individual interpretation of neoclassicism, with an entirely original bestiary and preference for quality and noble materials. Working for an elite roster of international clients (including the Duke and Duchess of Alba, and Cole and Linda Porter), top to bottom, every element of Rateau’s designs, from the bronze furniture — evocative of a classical past, yet unrelentingly modern — which made his name, to the Arpège scent bottle he designed for his client and eventual employer, the great couturier Jeanne Lanvin, encapsulated an aesthetic that was, and remains, unique. Amongst his most important commissions were the residences of philanthropists and collectors George and Florence Meyer Blumenthal in New York, Paris and Grasse, as well as Lanvin’s hôtel particulier at 16, rue Barbet-de-Jouy, Paris (much of which is now in the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, donated by her son-in-law, Prince Louis de Polignac), which was a veritable journey into dreamlike antiquity. The work of this first wave was characterised not only by refinement and purity of form, but also an exuberance of style, playfulness and pursuit of luxury. Émile-Jacques Ruhlmann (1879-1933) who was, indisputably, one of the finest representatives of this group, revolutionized our consideration of exquisitely crafted fine furniture as an art form in itself. Never one to compromise, and refusing to conform to criticism by those who considered his work elitist, merging luxury with functionality, he drew upon historical French designs and updated them with modernist flourishes. This generation also comprised the work of designers such as Georges Lepape (1877-1971), André Groult (1884-1966), Paul Iribe (1883-1935), Jean Després (1889-1980), Louis Süe (1875-1968) and André Mare (1885-1932) (who co-founded the Compagnie des arts français), Jules Leleu, René Lalique (1860-1945), Jean Dunand (1877-1942) and Eyre de Lanux (1894-1996).
In stark contrast to the luxurious interiors imagined by the first wave, the “second wave”, or rather, the modernists, championed an architectural and aesthetic vision — based on concepts of functionalism and economy — whereby, through advances in industrial techniques, everyone would have access to great design. The main progenitors of which in France are generally thought to be Robert-Mallet Stevens (1886-1945), Pierre Chareau (1883-1850), René Herbst (1891-1982), Jean Prouvé (1901-1984), as well as the on/off triumvirate of collaborators Pierre Jeanneret (1896-1987), Charlotte Perriand (1903-1999) and Le Corbusier, and again, Eileen Gray, who made a seismic stylistic shift from the sort of heavily ornamented lacquer furniture produced at the beginning of the twentieth century (for e.g. Le Destin (1914), a four panel screen inspired by a drawing, reputed to be of a madman incarcerated in La Salpetrière hospital), to the airy white rationalism of her villa E-1027 in Roquebrune-Cap-Martin. Somewhat ironically, despite their best efforts to create a truly egalitarian and democratic art movement, todays collectors are mainly, the very wealthy, exactly the sort of clients catered to by Ruhlmann, Dunand and Leleu. Considering such works contemporaneously, when one factors in the inherent cost of research, prototypes and manufacture, such pieces were often still a relative luxury. Not only that, but numerous pieces, such as those designed by Perriand and Jeanneret for Le Corbusier were part of commissions for the haute bourgeois, where the entire house was designed to be a gesamtkunstwerk, meaning literally a “total work of art”; even authorised reproductions — of the sort sold by Vitra and Cassina for e.g. — are still extremely expensive, luxury purchases.
Today, when we talk about the peak of Art Deco — i.e. those makers and manufacturers who at the beginning of the twentieth century changed the course of art and design as we know it — we are, in essence, referring to a limited number of works, highly sought after by a wealthy and knowledgeable collector base (despite the very large number of fakes and forgeries which might have one believe some of these designers were rolling furniture off on a production line). For a period of time the interest and demand for Art Deco had, quite frankly, died a death, and it was only in the 1960s, through a series of events and exhibitions — such as Les Années 25: Art Déco/Bauhaus/Stijl Esprit Nouveau (1966) — at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, in which were shown important donations such as the collection of French fashion designer and art collector Jacques Doucet (1853-1929), as well as the apartment of Jean Lanvin, that there was a renewed vigour for what was, after all, an extraordinary period of design. This was a trend spurred on by Parisian dealers such as Jean-Jacques Dutko, Félix Marcilhac (1940-2020) (the author of numerous reference monographs on artists Art Deco), Cheska Vallois (who famously acquired Gray’s Fauteuil aux Dragons (“Dragons” armchair) at auction in 1971 for $2,700, which was sold by Vallois to the French fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent in 1973, and then at Christie’s in Paris in 2009 for €21,905,000, establishing a new record for a piece of 20th century decorative art), Anne-Sophie Duval; and Matthew Solomon (1966-2001) of Maison Gerard and Barry Friedman in the US. The popularity of Art Deco has had its peaks and troughs, as with any other area of decorative arts, but in part due to the eminent private collections of figures such as Yves Saint Laurent (1936-1008) and Pierre Bergé (1930-2017), Andy Warhol (1928-1987), Karl Lagerfield (1933-2019), and more recently, the American Fashion designer Marc Jacobs (b. 1963), its popularity only continues to grow.