Art Deco
アール・デコ
A style of design in furniture, decorative objects, and architecture from the 1920s and 1930s, recognizable by its geometric forms.
01About
The name comes from a Paris fair of 1925, the International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts, though it became a common label only in the 1960s. The style can be read both as the heir of Art Nouveau and as a reaction against it. Furniture, ceramics, textiles, jewellery, and glass all show it, and it was a leading look for cinemas and hotels. What mainly separates it from Art Nouveau is Cubism, which pushed Art Deco designs toward fragmented, geometric forms, although some designs kept plant motifs and flowing curves. Its inspirations were wide-ranging: Egyptian art of antiquity, Aztec art and other art from ancient Central America, the look of modern ships, trains, and cars, the Bauhaus school, and the modern buildings and designs of architects like Le Corbusier and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. At the time it also circulated under other names, such as style moderne, and people did not yet see it as one distinct, coherent style.
02In the gallery
Find an object or a design and pick out its geometric shapes, then look for any plant-like curves that survive among them. Does anything recall a ship, a train, or a car?
Wall label terms in Japanese
- アール・デコ
- Art Deco
- アール・ヌーヴォー
- Art Nouveau
- 幾何学的
- Geometric
- キュビスム
- Cubism
03Notes
Art Deco usually reads as geometric, a look that came largely from Cubism.
On an object, a building, or a pattern, do you see straight lines and geometric shapes, or curves?