L’Art Deco is not just a way of designing and creating objects, decorations, environments, and architecture; it is a taste, an attitude, a language that draws its origins from the fertile landscape of Austro-German Secession and the Avant-garde movements of the early 20th century. It emerges forcefully in the immediate post-war period and dominates undisputedly throughout the 1920s and 1930s, albeit with some changes, only to exhaust its creative trajectory and reasons for existence with the Second World War.

Characteristics of Art Deco

Deco is glamour, charm, mechanical rhythm, and sleek lines; it represents the tireless pursuit of the pleasure of living. This style envisions a world that seeks to free itself from the fierce banality of everyday life, to forget the experience of war, to redeem and exalt its economic and social role. It identifies beauty with luxury, elegance, and lifestyle, without forgetting to dance on the edge of a volcano.

Birth of the Art Deco Style

As the 1910s came to a close, the reference points of the new international artistic language no longer focused on the natural world, asymmetric rhythms inspired by Japanese art, or the flowing and enveloping motion of the continuous line that had characterized Art Nouveau. The roots of the Deco taste delve into syncopated movements borrowed from Futurist grammar, combined with the graphic simplicity of Egyptian bas-reliefs and archaic Greek sculpture reinterpreted by the Secession movements. It emphasizes linearity, graphic rhythm, and the use of non-naturalistic colors, fragmented and devoid of nuances.

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An emblematic moment of the Art Deco era is the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes in Paris in 1925, whose title gave rise to the highly successful term “Art Deco.” In this exhibition, France dominates over all other nations, presenting itself in a cohesive expressive front with artists and designers such as Edgar Brandt, Maurice Dufrène, Jacques Emile Ruhlmann, Lalique, Cartier, Van Cleef & Arpels, Maison Janesich, Ostertag, René Boivin, Paul Brandt, Raymond Templier, and Fouquet distinguishing themselves in the fields of furniture, jewelry, and glass.

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Craftsmanship and Industrial Production

One characteristic aspect of Art Deco is the inclination towards unique and sought-after pieces, crafted by hand with precious and original raw materials, reflecting a utopian conception of reality projected towards a luxurious paradise accessible to a select few. This worldview aligns with the parallel attempt to make consumer goods and everyday items available to everyone, capable of simultaneously satisfying the aesthetic needs of the new modern style and the demands for functionality and practicality at an affordable price, according to the principle of art for all.

The birth of new industries and the spread of machinery and technologies capable of simplifying and speeding up mechanical production allow for the experimentation of new production solutions. Meanwhile, the business policies of some savvy entrepreneurs enable the establishment of fruitful new relationships between producers and artists, who are called upon to invent original forms and decorations suitable for mass production.

Oriental and Folk Influences in Art Deco

An important part of the European collective imagination in the 1920s is occupied by the Orient, from ancient Egypt to Babylon, from the temples of Angkor in Cambodia to mysterious India and imperial China.

Orientalist fantasies and exotic suggestions come to life in interior decoration, fashion, and the art of jewelry. The market is eager to have, in its bourgeois home, a fragment of enchanted Orient. Another source of inspiration concerns the recovery of the folkloric world of Slavic culture, both in terms of iconography and formal aspects, especially the vibrant colors and substantial abstraction of icons and folk tales. These elements are translated into captivating stage designs and costumes of the Ballets Russes by Sergej Djagilev.

Nature in Art Deco

The Deco style is captivated by the exotic wilderness, distant in time and space, cruel in its selective mechanisms, fierce, but precisely for this reason, it is both unsettling and fascinating because Eros and Thanatos express themselves forcefully within it. The “animalier” sculpture and the representation of animals in graphic works, jewelry art, and furnishings enjoy great success.

Bourgeois interiors, cinemas, theaters, and thermal establishments are populated with animals sculpted in bronze, stone, and terracotta, bringing with them the flavor and sounds of the tropical forest and the wild world. Even the view of the plant world undergoes a profound transformation, transitioning from wisteria and iris to the regular and geometric design of camellias and roses, to the decorative appreciation of the bizarrely monstrous, sharp, and wild forms of succulent plants.

Architectural Design and Interior Furnishing in the Deco Style

Art Deco permeates and characterizes not only architectural design in the 1920s but also modifies the distribution and interior furnishing of spaces. Spaces are simplified in the name of linear schematization, carvings, inlays, and the very forms of furniture take on symmetrical cuts and sharp edges, without giving up essential and playful references, from antiquity and exoticism to dynamic futuristic forms and the somewhat affected elegance of the Rococo.

The gallant iconography and charming atmospheres of the eighteenth-century culture assume great importance in the Deco imagination, skillfully interpreted with decorative finesse and witty social commentary through pochoirs by George Barbier and Umberto Brunelleschi.

The ladies in crinoline, Venetian night scenes, gardens providing a backdrop to gallant vignettes, and masks from the Commedia dell’arte are translated into woodcuts, colored engravings, and majolica, as well as decorative panels for entertainment venues and hotels.

Bourgeois interiors undergo a transformation, rejecting the floral organicity of the Art Nouveau style and favoring furnishings with geometric lines, enriched by small carvings of a similar nature or by plastic/architectural elements.

Decorative Arts and Fashion

Art Deco permeates all the arts, especially the decorative arts, and develops as a reaction to the floral language and biomorphic organicity of Art Nouveau. In fashion, significant changes are perceived, with the loss of the sinuosity and softness of the female body promoted and legitimized by the Art Nouveau style. The transition is made from the fluidity of forms elaborated by Paul Poiret to the sophisticated and distinctive geometricism of Madame Vionnet, beautifully represented in the illustrations by Thayaht.

Not only did women have to work and perform tasks that were typically reserved for men, but after the war, as they began to actively engage in sports and develop a new awareness of their bodies and charm, they gave up anything that hindered movement and forced an unnatural posture and definition of anatomical shapes.

Deco clothing shortened, corsets were abandoned, and garçonne-style haircuts became popular. Despite simplified forms, luxury garments adorned themselves with decorations, becoming precious works of art with beadwork, sequins, rhinestones, and jet. This challenge to industrial production also spread as a fashion suitable for a sporty lifestyle, driving cars, work activities, and new rhythmic dances.

The Legacy of Art Deco

Art Deco represents a style that encompasses all decorative arts, altering the concept of beauty and introducing elements of modernity and innovation. Its distinctive characteristics are reflected not only in architecture, interior design, and decorative arts but also in fashion, influencing the collective imagination of the 1920s. The legacy and influence of Art Deco can still be perceived in contemporary culture and aesthetics, demonstrating its enduring relevance as one of the most significant artistic movements of the 20th century.