Art Deco facts for kids

The Chrysler Building is an Art Deco building

Packard sedan, 1941

Art Deco is a style of decorative art, design and architecture of the 1920s and 1930s in Europe, the United States and other countries. It was named after an international exhibition held in Paris in 1925, but there are some examples dating back to before the First World War. Art Deco followed another design style, Art Nouveau, which was influenced by organic plant-like forms.

Art Deco was one of the first styles of modern architecture. It was influenced by different styles and movements of the early 20th century, Neoclassical, Constructivism, Cubism, Modernism, and Futurism. Later Art Deco of the mid to late 1930s is also sometimes called Streamline Moderne.

One idea behind art deco architecture was to apparently streamline buildings the same way you would streamline a car for aerodynamics. The style was much more common in commercial buildings than in houses; many banks, schools, and libraries were built in this style. Most of the public buildings built by the Works Progress Administration during the Great Depression are in the Art Deco style.

American skyscrapers marked the summit of the Art Deco style; they became the tallest and most recognizable modern buildings in the world. They were designed to show the prestige of their builders through their height, their shape, their color, and their dramatic illumination at night.

Style of luxury and modernity
Buildings
Sculpture
- Studio sculpture
Painting
Glass art
Images for kids
See also

Style of luxury and modernity

Mayakovskaya Metro Station in Moscow, Russia (1936)

Art Deco armchair made for art collector Jacques Doucet (1912–13)

During its heyday, Art Deco represented luxury and glamour. It combined very expensive materials such as ebony and ivory, and exquisite craftsmanship. Nothing was cheap about Art Deco: pieces of furniture included ivory and silver inlays, and pieces of Art Deco jewellery combined diamonds with platinum, jade, coral and other precious materials. The style was used to decorate the first-class salons of ocean liners, deluxe trains, and skyscrapers. It was used around the world to decorate the great movie palaces of the late 1920s and 1930s. Later, after the Great Depression, the style changed and became more sober.

Buildings

The American Radiator Building, New York City, N.Y., by Raymond Hood (1924)

In New York, many buildings from the 1920s and 1930s are monuments to the style. Famous Art Deco buildings include the Chrysler Building in New York City and the Chicago Board of Trade Building in Chicago. Another is Bullock's Wilshire in Los Angeles. Many art deco buildings have elaborate terra cotta or murals inside them. The towers of the Golden Gate Bridge have an art deco design.

The grand showcases of American Art Deco interior design were the lobbies of government buildings, theaters, and particularly office buildings. Interiors were extremely colorful and dynamic, combining sculpture, murals, and ornate geometric design in marble, glass, ceramics and stainless steel. Some examples include the Fisher Building in Detroit, the Guardian Building (originally the Union Trust Building) in Detroit, and the Medical and Dental Building called 450 Sutter Street in San Francisco.

In France, the best example of an Art Deco interior during this period was the Palais de la Porte Dorée (1931) by Albert Laprade, Léon Jaussely and Léon Bazin.

Many of the best surviving examples of Art Deco are cinemas built in the 1920s and 1930s. The Art Deco period coincided with the conversion of silent films to sound, and movie companies built large display destinations in major cities to capture the huge audience that came to see movies.

Sculpture

Christ the Redeemer by Paul Landowski (1931), soapstone, Corcovado Mountain, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Sculpture was an integral feature of Art Deco architecture. It usually represented heroic or allegorical figures. In France, allegorical bas-reliefs representing dance and music by Antoine Bourdelle decorated the earliest Art Deco landmark in Paris, the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, in 1912.

In the United States, the most prominent Art Deco sculptor for public art was Paul Manship. His most famous work was the statue of Prometheus at Rockefeller Center in New York City. Other important works for Rockefeller Center were made by Lee Lawrie, including the sculptural façade and the Atlas statue.

During the Great Depression in the United States, many sculptors were commissioned to make works for the decoration of federal government buildings. They included sculptor Sidney Biehler Waugh, who created stylized and idealized images of workers and their tasks for federal government office buildings. In San Francisco, Ralph Stackpole provided sculpture for the façade of the new San Francisco Stock Exchange building. In Washington D.C., Michael Lantz made works for the Federal Trade Commission building.

In Britain, Deco public statuary was made by Eric Gill for the BBC Broadcasting House, while Ronald Atkinson decorated the lobby of the former Daily Express Building in London (1932).

One of the best known and certainly the largest public Art Deco sculpture is the Christ the Redeemer by the French sculptor Paul Landowski, completed between 1922 and 1931, located on a mountain top overlooking Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Studio sculpture

"Victoire" by René Lalique, 1928

Many early Art Deco sculptures were small, designed to decorate salons.

One of the best-known Art Deco salon sculptors was the Romanian-born Demétre Chiparus, who produced colourful small sculptures of dancers. Other notable salon sculptors included Ferdinand Preiss, Josef Lorenzl, Alexander Kelety, Dorothea Charol and Gustav Schmidtcassel. Another important American sculptor in the studio format was Harriet Whitney Frishmuth.

Parallel with these Art Deco sculptors, more avant-garde and abstract modernist sculptors were at work in Paris and New York City. The most prominent were Constantin Brâncuși, Joseph Csaky, Alexander Archipenko, Henri Laurens, Jacques Lipchitz, Gustave Miklos, Jean Lambert-Rucki, Jan et Joël Martel, Chana Orloff and Pablo Gargallo.

Painting

Workers sorting the mail, a mural in the Ariel Rios Federal Building, Washington, D.C., by Reginald Marsh (1936)
Art in the Tropics, mural in the William Jefferson Clinton Federal Building, Washington, D.C., by Rockwell Kent (1938)
Detail of Time, ceiling mural in lobby of 30 Rockefeller Plaza in New York City, by Josep Maria Sert (1941)

Two painters are closely associated with Art Deco. They are Jean Dupas and Tamara de Lempicka.

During the Great Depression, the Federal Art Project of the Works Progress Administration was created to give work to unemployed artists. Many were given the task of decorating government buildings, hospitals and schools. There was no specific art deco style used in the murals; artists engaged to paint murals in government buildings came from many different schools; they included Reginald Marsh, Rockwell Kent and the Mexican painter Diego Rivera.

Glass art

Window for a steel mill office by Louis Majorelle (1928)

Art Deco was an exceptional period for fine glass and other decorative objects, designed to fit their architectural surroundings. The most famous producer of glass objects was René Lalique, whose works, from vases to hood ornaments for automobiles, became symbols of the period. He had made ventures into glass before World War I, designing bottles for the perfumes of François Coty, but he did not begin serious production of art glass until after World War I. In 1918, at the age of 58, he bought a large glass works in Combs-la-Ville and began to manufacture both artistic and practical glass objects. He treated glass as a form of sculpture, and created statuettes, vases, bowls, lamps and ornaments. He used demi-crystal rather than lead crystal, which was softer and easier to form, though not as lustrous.

Lalique provided the decorative glass panels, lights and illuminated glass ceilings for the ocean liners SS Île de France in 1927 and the SS Normandie in 1935, and for some of the first-class sleeping cars of the French railroads. Other notable Art Deco glass manufacturers included Marius-Ernest Sabino, who specialized in figurines, vases, bowls, and glass sculptures of fish and animals. For these he often used an opalescent glass which could change from white to blue to amber, depending upon the light. His vases and bowls featured molded friezes of animals or busts of women with fruit or flowers. His work was less subtle but more colourful than that of Lalique.

Other notable Deco glass designers included Edmond Etling, Albert Simonet, Aristide Colotte and Maurice Marinot.

The Great Depression ruined a large part of the decorative glass industry, which depended upon wealthy clients.

Amiens Cathedral has a rare example of Art Deco stained glass windows in the Chapel of the Sacred Heart, made in 1932-34 by the Paris glass artist Jean Gaudin based on drawings by Jacques Le Breton.

Images for kids

1937 Cord automobile model 812, 1935
Niagara Mohawk Building, Syracuse, New York
New India Assurance Building, 1936, Mumbai, India.
Grand dining room of the ocean liner SS Normandie by Pierre Patout (1935); bas-reliefs by Raymond Delamarre
Interior of the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, with Bourdelle's bas-reliefs over the stage
Display of early Art Deco furnishings by the Atelier français at the 1913 Salon d'Automne from Art et décoration magazine (1914)
The gilded bronze Prometheus at Rockefeller Center, New York City, N.Y., by Paul Manship (1934), a stylised Art Deco update of classical sculpture (1936)
Chrysler Building, New York City, by William Van Alen (1930)
New York City's skyline (c. 1931–33)
Crown of the General Electric Building (also known as 570 Lexington Avenue), New York City, by Cross & Cross (1933)
30 Rockefeller Plaza, New York City, by Raymond Hood (1933)
Empire State Building, New York City, by Shreve, Lamb & Harmon (1931)
Stairway of the Economic and Social Council in Paris, originally the Museum of Public Works, built for the 1937 Paris International Exposition, by Auguste Perret (1937)
Lee Lawrie, 1936–37, Atlas statue, in front of the Rockefeller Center (installed 1937)
Ralph Stackpole's sculpture group over the door of the San Francisco Stock Exchange, San Francisco, California (1930)
Los Angeles City Hall by John Parkinson, John C. Austin, and Albert C. Martin Sr. (1928)
Interior of the Palacio de Bellas Artes (Palace of Fine Arts) in Mexico City, Mexico (1934)
Dressing table and chair of marble and encrusted, lacquered, and gilded wood by Follot (1919–20)
National Diet Building in Tokyo, Japan (1936)
Anzac Memorial in Sydney (1934)
Century Building in Melbourne (1939)
Louisiana State Capitol in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, USA (1930–32)
Buffalo City Hall in Buffalo, New York, USA (1931)
The Bacardi Building in Havana, Cuba (1930)
Altino Arantes Building in São Paulo (1947)
Palacio Municipal and fountain in Laprida (Buenos Aires)
Guardians of Traffic pylon on Hope Memorial Bridge in Cleveland (1932)