Art Deco

Art Deco 

              As exemplified by the geometric shapes and designs of various famous buildings in New York like the Chrysler Building and the Rockefeller Centre, the Art Deco Movement was one of the most fashionable and international design movements in modern art starting from the 1925’s till the          1940s.

            Much like the earlier Arts and Crafts Movement and as the curvilinear and organic style of design known as the Art Nouveau accompanied by the German movement known as the Bauhaus design school concept, Art Deco sought to embrace all types of the arts, including crafts as well as fine arts. It was being applied to a lot of the decorative arts such as interior design, furniture, jewellery, textiles, fashion and industrial design; it was even being applied to the art of architecture and in painting and graphics.

            Art Deco was influenced by a lot of the major art styles that occurred during the early 20th century. These influences contain a lot of the geometric forms which are also found in the Cubism, the machine-like- forms of the Constructivism and the Futurism movements and the unifying approaches of the Art Nouveau movement. Its highly intensive colours may have been inspired from the Parisian Fauvism. Art Deco also borrowed some of its designs from the Aztec and Egyptian art and as well from the Classical Antiquity. Unlike its predecessor movement Art Nouveau, however, the meaning of Art Deco was purely decorative and aesthetically pleasing.

              The Art Deco movement which was adopted by architects and designers all around the globe which gave life to a series of “events” such as the "Roaring Twenties",  the Great Depression which occurred in the early 1930’s, and the years which lead up to World War II. It suffered a great blow in its fame during the period of the late 1930’s and early 1940’s when the movement  was starting to be seen as too extravagant and showy for its surroundings which contained a war-like atmosphere. After that it quickly fell out of fashion. Later on there was a revival of the interest in Art Deco which occurred during the 1960s which coincidently occured with the movement's effect on a more recent art movement called Pop Art  and later on in the 1980s which was in line with the growing interest in graphic design.

Bigman, A. (2012). Art Deco: A strong, striking style for graphic design - Designer Blog. [online] The Creative Edge. Available at: http://99designs.com/designer-blog/2012/06/05/art-deco-a-strong-striking-style-for-graphic-design/ [Accessed 23 Dec. 2014].

Visual-arts-cork.com, (2014). Art Deco Design Style: Origins, History, Characteristics. [online] Available at: http://www.visual-arts-cork.com/history-of-art/art-deco.htm [Accessed 23 Dec. 2014].