art deco essay

ART DECO

Art deco was not exactly an art movement as such as no one artist was the head and led it, it was more as a result the designers in Paris creating art work between the wars, it was not until the sixties that it arrived in the English language from the French exhibition in 1966. The movement was vaguely associated with the ‘roaring twenties’ and there were aspects of art deco, which was known as stylistically daring. It was brought about to convey a happier mood after the war and a period of intense social and industrial change, it was about and moving out of stuffy Victorian styles and looking to the future. It was also a very broad style, and as it came about between the two world wars it was made cheaper resulting in the middle class being the main consumer at the time. Art deco derived from the decorative arts and cubism that were in at the time, consisting of natural forms which had been slightly abstracted, it was neither fully geometric nor total abstraction, making images of the human form and flowers a lot more angular. Silver was used as to separate block colours and as it was such a popular colour so was chrome and glass, giving a hard edge to art deco.  This lent itself greatly to mass production, modernism, fashion and the avant-garde. The period had two distinct areas in design; the first centered on the fashion world and up to the minute chic, such as clothes became updated with streamlining and geometry. Whereas the other being based on the building on the discoveries of the machine age. This was an aim for luxury for the newly rich without any concern for war and financial crashes.

MASS PRODUCTION

The general ethos of art deco did little to enhance the image of mass production; it gave the image of badly designed items at first as they were cheaply made for the middle class. There were furniture companies copying Tudor or Georgian furniture and taking away the distinguishing features and masking them with over decoration using the cheaper materials that weren’t ideal for creating these styles. They were advertised as ‘unique’ and ‘crafted’ to remove the idea of the machine. But finally in the late twenties these ‘cheap’ man made materials were being seen in a positive light and as the designs were adapted to the machine art deco was then well suited to mass production. As mass production grew manufacturers had to start asking shops what the consumers wanted and as most were middle class they wanted well-designed fashionable items. They wanted items made just by machines, the new and shiny, such as radios and cameras. This same idea was then translated into other areas such as architecture and entertainment, creating house styles. Thonet, the company, were making mass produced bentwood furniture and later began producing steel designs by le Corbusier, this led to them changing the clinical chromed metal by contrasting it with leather and suede, sticking to the sleek art deco style. They were modern and luxurious, but to sell it to the bigger consumer market of the middle class they started creating the designs of leather and changing them to canvas. There was also another cheaper material around, laminated wood was created in Finland in the 1890s, and this was also machine made and was environmentally friend which metal wasn’t. This created a cheap alternative for solid woods, which started with badly made plywood furniture but alvar Aalto worked to the material instead of against it. He bent the plywood like metal instead of working it like solid wood Aalto became popular with his designs in the thirties. 

SOCIAL HISTORY

The Paris exhibition took place in 1925 and this was the time when art deco first got its name. This event was one of the most important international exhibition of applied arts in this century, along side others happening in Paris at the time, such as Picasso and Matisse showing their work off. Also performances such as bunels le Chen andalou: and in 1924 André Breton published the surrealism manifesto. Not only the art world was booming but also the design world also had started to develop. Advertising and commercial viability of modern art was discovered by Ambrose vollard and Daniel kahnweller before the war and during the 1920s.so artists that was aspiring to be the next Picasso could still work in Paris but to do so they had to work in all areas and mostly within design and the decorative arts. This became popular to do this as Paul poiret and other artists employing artists as designers and this artist- come – designers didn’t really have any restrictions and by doing this, it promoted a universal style. One of the first exhibitions of this sort was that of salon d’automne in 1910, French designers and critics were shocked by the success of this German decorative arts exhibition and wanted to bring the same success over to France. To create this style everything had to go together from furniture to metal work and carpets to curtains: creating the ensemble and the esembler. One person that had a career, as an esembler were Louis sue which were a painter and architect before developing into this new style in 1911. In 1924 a dress rehearsal as you could say for the 1925 exhibition was that with the theme of a lady’s boudoir, this promoted this style of decorative arts. Designers created an ensemble of harmonizing furniture with light fittings and so on.

But as the creative changes were happening so were other parts of society too. In1925 Syrians were revolting against the French rule and riff tribesmen invaded French morocco. Also the value of money was going down in France to while taxes went up. But as the exhibition was to happen, France put on a brave face for the visitors from overseas, as this increase of population increased work in places such as hotels and restaurants, which France desperately needed. Germany was not invited to take part in the exhibition; government of America declined the invite to take part and in Asia, only china and japan represented. In the African continent only French Polynesians and Norway didn’t take part either. Besides this the event was a success with any of the goods displayed were in styles relevant to the nation that produced them, many remotely anything like art deco. This widely the idea of art deco and showed that art deco had established an international style brought together by the 1925 exhibition in france.

Shortly after the1925 event, the British artist George Shermingham said this:

 ‘English visitors to the Paris exhibition might be divided into two types: one, the persons who spent a day at the exhibition on the return journey from a Swiss holiday, and the other, the more serious people, who spent a week or more really studying the exhibition. The Swiss holiday type, with their eyes thoroughly out of focus from staring at the mountains, misunderstood and disliked nearly all they saw in their rush round. The serious people though critical and somewhat startled, were on the whole, deeply impressed; and with good reason, for the exposition des arts decoratifs was one of the events of modern history’

CHARLES RENNIE MACKINTOSH

One of the designers at the time were Charles rennie Macintosh, he was from Glasgow at the time of the industrial revolution, along side this Asian styles started to emerge and influenced mackintosh greatly. When the Japanese isolationist regime softened, this opened it up to globalization resulting in Japanese influences around the world, especially in Glasgow along the river Clyde as they were exposed to the Japanese navy and training engineers. With popularity for this style it were given the new name Japonism. Macintosh admired this style as it had restraint; it had simple forms and natural materials rather than pattern and ornament. Western style furniture were ornament displaying the owners wealth on how long it took to create whereas Japanese style furniture were more about quality of space creating a more calm and organic feeling. Along side this new style, a new philosophy came about called modernism. Mackintosh were known as the pioneer of this movement even though his style didn’t fit that well within the movement, the main concept of it were to develop new ideas and new technology, more about the present and future rather than history and tradition which does fit mackintosh’s style rather well. The difference being he wanted to build around the needs of people as individuals not as just machines but as works of art.

Another thing that went with mackintosh’s body of work was that of the design work of The Four. This were a collaborative group which met at evening classes at the Glasgow school of art and the four members also including his wife, Margaret MacDonald, were the people involved in the Glasgow school movement. This group of people made work for exhibitions in London Glasgow and Vienna. This helped mackintosh’s reputation.

Mackintosh were commissioned to design the Glasgow school of art building which were to be his masterwork, he then went on to get recognition from all over Europe continually bringing out new building and products inspired very much by traditional Japanese interior. In 1914 though he were starting to realize he would never receive the level of recognition that he felt he deserved in his own country. This was when he decided to move to London with his wife Margaret MacDonald of which he met at the school of Glasgow after becoming one of The Four, a group that defined the Glasgow’s style. But at this time world war one was beginning and all building work were restricted, plans for artist studios were never built and the same for a new style theatre went the same way. In 1916, the client w j Bassett loweke employed Macintosh to redesign a number of his building. These designs showed his style well, emphasizing his bold geometric designs combining decoration and construction. But the originality went virtually unheeded and ended he ended his career painting in France in 1923.