While on research for NORMANDIE, and his Splendour and magnificence, a symbol of times gone by, I came across this book - ART DÉCO written by Norber Wolf
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| courtey PRESTEL VERLAG- as sold out, try AMAZON |
Now that books are shedding weight and dematerialising into electronic
pads, I worry about the fate of coffee table books. Perhaps i see it a bit too dark. But books of a certain kind
need to be bulky, and they also cry out to be displayed. Leafing through
them can be as much of a tonic as the coffee or the wine on the table beside them.
ART DÉCO, the style is so recognizable and widespread that its original
impact on the culture in which it emerged has been all but lost in the
clutter of imitation.
by Earl of Cruise
With Norbert Wolf, PRESTEL VERLAG has taken the right decision to present the splendour and misery of `ART DÉCO´ in its entirety. Embedded in the creativity and restlessness of the 1920s, ART DÉCO's design has shaped our taste for decades without ever being able to break out of its hybrid position between art and craftsmanship.
ART DÉCO is the last world spanning design and style movement. Despite BAUHAUS the last international school, ART DÉCO is not as strict and "clean" and incorporated national or continental specialties - as in Brazil, United Kingdom or the USA.
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| courtesy AMAZON UK |
Norbert Wolf´s `ART DECO´ is, like the style itself, a splendidly prepared art book. Bound in a silver cut and thanks to the silver embossing, it is in itself a worthy example of ART DÉCO. But if PRESTEL VERLAG had only published another beautiful art book, the magnificent presentation would not be worth mentioning. Norbert Wolf's well-founded expertise is to be thanked for the fact that the eye candy is also accompanied by a professional feast.
Norbert Wolf traces the chronology of the Art Deco style by looking at the politics and culture of Europe in the 1920s and early 1930s, and the artistic movements that paralleled its popularity. He follows Art Deco’s influence in Europe and its immigration to the Americas and Asia.
Norbert Wolf traces the chronology of the Art Deco style by looking at the politics and culture of Europe in the 1920s and early 1930s, and the artistic movements that paralleled its popularity. He follows Art Deco’s influence in Europe and its immigration to the Americas and Asia.
A definition of aesthetics
Norbert Wolf does a lot of good to the readers. For example, he does not refrain from pointing out at the outset those representatives of ART DÉCO who were characteristic of the late recipients of style, especially for us readers. The apparent aesthetics of the works shown by Lempicka and Cassandre, for example, is always breathtaking. Nevertheless, for Norbert Wolf, the question arises here as to whether ART DÉCO can be seen as an independent style at all, or whether it is just a manifestation of many in an extremely creative and versatile epoch.
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| Copy from ART DECO by Norbert Wolf - courtesy PRESTEL VERLAG |
This dichotomy runs like a Ariadne´s thread through the entire opus. Norbert Wolf approaches the response from the outside by first looking at preceding art trends such as ART NOUVEAU, CUBISM, FUTURISM and HISTORISM, but at the same time not forgetting to embed the ART DÉCO in the political and cultural events of the eventful years between 1920 and 1940. What does ART DÉCO consist of, how does it distinguish itself from artistic parallel worlds such as NEW OBJECTIVITY, based in Germany (NEUE SACHLICHKEIT)?
Who's Who of good taste
Very quickly it becomes clear how much the Art Deco is dependent on craftsmanship. The exhibition' EXPOSITION des ART DÉCORATIFS´ from 1925 in Paris, and its abbreviation will in future be used synonymously for a new style - ART DÉCO. In its basic principle, ART DÉCO is actually fixated on the decorative moment and its aestheticization, without any kind of social criticism. Arts and crafts offer themselves especially here as a platform which is not questioned.
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| Portrait of a man or Mr Tadeusz de Lempicka, 1928 - Source: Wikipedia |
While, on the one hand, Norbert Wolf has his hands full of work to do to portray ART DÉCO in all its international complexity, a glance at the parallel worlds of BAUHAUS, NEUE SACHLICHKEIT (New Objectivity) or AMERICAN PRECISIONISM reveals how difficult it must have been for ART DÉCO artists to find adequate recognition. Many of them found themselves in mass market hotels and luxury hostels, cruise ships (especially the DISNEY CRUISE LINES ships) or embassies. The critics, on the other hand, did not like the obvious penchant for luxury and its unreflected display.
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| Autoportrait (Tamara in a Green Bugatti), for the cover of the German fashion magazine Die Dame |
On the fine line between luxury and bragging
It is precisely the American ART DÉCO that we remember in its architectural form. City-changing buildings such as the Chrysler Building or the Empire State Building are now regarded as milestones of ART DÉCO. In his international perspective, Norbert Wolf shows where the boundaries between aesthetics and gigantomania lie. While hotels in Morocco in the ART DÉCO style appeal to the public, he gains disconcerting power in the hands of the dictators. Many buildings and colossal statues of the Soviet Union, Fashist Italy and the Third Reich orientated themselves on ART DÉCO and cause little more than an oppressive feeling in the stomach area.
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| Chrysler Building by David Shankbone, Retouched - Source: Wikipedia |
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| Empire State Building (aerial view) - Source: Wikipedia |
To me this "fealt or seen connection" to dictatorships is one of the reasons why ART DÉCO became miscredited after WWII especially in Europe and grew out of fashion in the USA, while in Brazil it was blooming till the 1960s.
Norbert Wolf's main merit, however, is to show how much ART DÉCO has influenced the aesthetic perception of the masses. In emerging America, the industrialization of advertising aesthetics is preparing the ground. There are even hair dryers in ART DÉCO design, advertising graphic designers work almost exclusively according to the design principles of ART DÉCO. Precisely because ART DÉCO has had such a lasting influence on the taste of modernity, however, Norbert Wolf repeatedly denies him the right to be allowed to be a style of his own. For him, ART DÉCO means more design and aesthetics than stylistic, forward-looking art. He rightly refers to Tamara de Lempicka, who has played a decisive role as an artist for ART DÉCO and yet confined herself to mass-compatible representations with little expressiveness.
One of the other designers that shaped our reception on ART DÉCO is Raymond Loewy, the French designer and marketing genius, who shaped modern America.
Lasting influence
The fact that the ART DÉCO nevertheless exerted an influence, especially on industrial design, fashion and advertising graphics, remains undisputed. It is also clear to be seen that his penchant for extravagant materials and luxury still inspires the wishful thinking of many contemporaries. How much design differs from art, however, becomes apparent when you browse through the wonderfully designed art book, in which Norbert Wolf skillfully juxtaposes images of the interiors of luxury liners with paintings by Matisse and Picasso. It is only in direct comparison that the difference between art and craftsmanship becomes abundantly clear.
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| courtesy Amazon Germany |
And everytime, when it comes to "making something more worthy than it is" ART DÉCO style is used, because of ART DÉCO´s penchant for extravagant materials and luxury.
However, such restrictions do not detract from the visual enjoyment of the art book, nor do they disappoint when reading it. On the contrary, thanks to the obvious expertise of Norbert Wolf, one feels fundamentally informed and can enjoy ART DÉCO as a design as well as contemporary artistic tendencies, which are also briefly presented in their idiosyncrasies. ART DÉCO contains much more complex questions than you might think at first glance and the magnificent presentation is a fair reward for the work done.
Lasting influence - NORMANDIE is one of the best examples for. The French ART DÉCO wonder, criticized by some as "over the top" or too "exagerated" influenced even those, "who know to build a ship" and those who built ships in the future after his "death" in New York - "This is a Navy job!"
Lasting influence - NORMANDIE is one of the best examples for. The French ART DÉCO wonder, criticized by some as "over the top" or too "exagerated" influenced even those, "who know to build a ship" and those who built ships in the future after his "death" in New York - "This is a Navy job!"
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| NORMANDIE passing another liner amid the Atlantic - courtesy colouring by Daryl Le Blanc |
When writing a review about ART DÉCO and the book by Norbert Wolf I had my friend in mind, who is an expert of ART DÉCO:
What is Art Deco? By Pascal Ives Laurent
When I am asked,
“What is Art Deco?” I often like to answer, “That’s a never-ending
question!” thereby opening the discussion rather than closing it. In
this essay I will try to be more specific as I share my definition of
Art Deco. I’m an architect, so I’ll use architecture as my primary point
of departure.
What makes Art Deco a style in its own
right is the phases it passed through during its evolution, like the
Greco-Roman, the Romanesque-Gothic, or the Classical-Baroque. Art Deco
burst forth in the 1910s; staked its claim in the 1920s; reached its
peak in the 1930s; and finally became more baroque by the 1940s. This
evolution took half a millennium for other styles, but for Art Deco, it
required less than half a century.
What are the distinctive attributes of this style we call Art Deco? To
express verbally what I instinctively recognize as its features, I’ve
used Le Corbusier’s Five Points of Modern Architecture as a guide and
formulated five main characteristics of Art Deco:
Stylization: This point encompasses
geometrization of figurative forms; vitality of abstract figures; rhythm
of straight lines, and opposition of curved and straight lines.
Plasticity: With modern and synthetic
materials such as concrete, Bakelite, metal plating, veneer, and
plastic, ergonomics and movement figure prominently in the structural
logic of both objects and buildings. It is this momentum that gives the
skyscraper its forceful presence, the velocity that imprints its walls
and surfaces, and conveys a sense of movement.
Light: Even more than concrete, electric
light is the modern “building block” of Art Deco. It sculpts space and
is diffused and indirect. Its source is never seen, but it creates the
mood conveyed by a space.
Exoticism: Defined
as the art of using décor to provide the sensation of being in the here
now and at the same time far away. Exoticism is the art of illusion and
embellishment. The exotic décor is stylized enough to leave room for
one’s fantasies. Every house is a monument of sorts, and every building
is, to some extent, a steamer bound for a distant land.
Uchronia: Art Deco often creates an
alternative reality, a reinterpretation of antiquity, a Hollywood-like
ambiance, or a bright future. The present is but a brief passage between
the Old World that died in Paris in 1925 and the future world that
began in Chicago in 1933.
Although this style eventually became
known as Art Deco, those who practiced it called it “contemporary.” One
wonders what future generations will label the art and architecture of
the beginning of the twenty-first century. The word “modern” has been
used for every period in the past, but when the modern movement at the
end of the 1920s appropriated that term, “contemporary” served as an
alternative and united those who didn’t define themselves dogmatically
as modern. It is perhaps no coincidence that our own era has a renewed
interest in those earlier “contemporaries.” There is certainly a
resemblance between today’s creative expression and that of the interwar
period. The two eras are linked, even if their means of artistic
exploration are quite different.
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