Program Information

After World War I architects and artists began to experiment with a new style combining color and industrial detail. In a 1960s revival, people called it Art Deco.

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Transcript

Lead: After World War I architects and artists began to experiment with a new style combining color and industrial detail. In a 1960s revival, people called it Art Deco.

Intro.: A Moment in Time with Dan Roberts.

Content: The term “Art Deco” is derived form “arts decoratifs” – French for decorative arts. The term was used in the title of a major international design exhibition in Paris in 1925: Exposition Internationale des Arts Decoratifs et Industriels Modernes. Delayed for a decade because of the wartime emergency, this exhibit launched a major international movement, but nowhere was it more influential than in Europe and the United States.

This style was originally known as Art Moderne and was a reaction against the more flowing, asymmetrical forms and sinuous lines of the pre-World War I – Art Nouveau. Foundations for the art deco movement can be found in Cubism, Expressionism and Futurism.

Art Deco used man-made industrial products in fabrication such as stainless steel, plastic and glass blocks and combined that with rich color variations. Many new mass-produced household appliances during the 1920s and 30s had an Art Deco style. The beautiful stainless steel and lightweight Art Deco Burlington Zephyr started carrying rail passengers in 1934.

Architecture in the United States was greatly influenced by Art Deco and was characterized by a sleek, streamlined look, with zigzags, clean lines, symmetry, and repetition. Not until the arrival of the World Trade Center in the 1970s was it challenged in its dominance of the New York skyline. The Chrysler Building, the Empire State Building, and Rockefeller Center all followed this thematic emphasis. The largest Art Deco district in the United States, with 800 historic buildings, is in South Beach, Miami.

Although the Art Deco design was prevalent up through WWII, during the Great Depression, the buildings in this style were scaled back due to cost restrictions and consequently were more modest. In the 1960s the style had something of a revival and in retrospect acquired its name.

Research assistance by Ann Johnson, at the University of Richmond, this is Dan Roberts.

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