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Art Deco
1989 • JG Press
112 pages / ISBN 1572153512
In New York City alone, millions of tourists have visited Rockefeller Center, Radio City Music Hall, and the Chrysler Building, all typical of the Art Deco movement that influenced design across much of the early 20th century. Deco, which is largely a functional art - 'art for use,' if you wish - found its place throughout the world, including Germany, France, England, Canada, and much of the United States. This success is owed greatly to its vibrant images, clean lines, and unshakeable sense of balance combined with a practicality that has served Deco well in architecture, interior design, and public exhibitions.
The practical nature of Art Deco and its ability to combine with a given environment have helped the style to remain omnipresent in both cities and rural areas. In many places, Art Deco has been taken so much for granted that citizens occupy buildings, sit around Deco furniture, and watch classic films without total awareness of the style. To those who consciously look upon the aesthetic, Art Deco offers rich history that began like wildfire a century ago. The style has never flagged in appreciation, either, with much of its handiwork still well-preserved today.
Deco's use of streamlining and sharp angles makes it perfect for display in books, including Eva Weber's 112-page overview 'Art Deco,' first published in 1989 by JG Press. Weber, a Canadian-born exhibits director at the Hampshire College Art Gallery in Amherst, Massachusetts, supplies a vivid, if textually dry, primer of creations that blazed Art Deco's trail from the 1880s, when continental Europe furthered the Art Nouveau style and the Arts and Crafts Movement made substantial headway in Great Britain. 'Art Deco' outlines both the pivotal and standard works of Deco exhibition displays, architecture, interior design, sculpture, painting, and photography.
The book uses a regular art history format, offering photographs in both black-and-white and color with Weber's text placing Art Deco in the given social frameworks. Weber fares strongly in explaining Art Deco's influences; she has a firm grasp on the material, delineating the categories of Art Deco (e.g., Bauhaus, International, classical moderne) with ease. The photographs were thoughtfully selected and arranged, many of them eye-catching in this oversized 10 ¼" by 14 ¼" format. Especially striking are full-page images of paintings in the last section, including Wyndham Lewis's 'Praxitella,' a Vorticist work from 1921. Essential champions of Art Deco are given full attention, including Frank Lloyd Wright, Eliel Saarinen, and Donald Deskey.
While Weber's commentary is informative, it's written in the typically dry, academic style of art historians. Weber, by convention, uses a long-winded, often stilted language to make her points. The text too often reads like a grocery list of which artist created what and what the characteristics of a particular Art Deco school were. In the spirit of New Criticism, artists' lives are mentioned only if their experiences directly influenced their art. There is also little discussion of how the works were conceived or the processes by which they were made.
A major reason as to why art frightens the general public is an overtly scholastic form of presentation and explanation that its writers insist on using. One of the ways to improve art's 'public relations' is by reforming the books that art historians are turning out. Weber's 'Art Deco' is visually stimulating and its text is enriching, but I find it difficult to believe that a person with only mild interests in art will care to 'read the words.'
There are many who will seek a quick pleasing of the eye by browsing through pictures and afterwards leaving this book on a coffee table. Nevertheless, Weber's 'Art Deco' is recommended to art enthusiasts for its fine visual presentation and informative text. Deco is an appealing style and Weber's book will offer plenty of reasons why. Reprinted in 2004, numerous copies are for sale on the Internet and can be found in major bookstores. It's also very worthwhile to attend an Art Deco exhibit at your local museum and experience the real thing.
