The Beauty and Backstory Behind Art Deco Design
A historical spotlight on the Jazz Age art movement.
It was 2013 and I was in Miami for a week-long internship at a media conference. It was basically my last college hurrah before graduating. On a free night, some fellow interns and I went shopping downtown. While most of their attention was diverted to the shops, I could not stop noticing the buildings. The pastels, the neon, the colors, and the architecture was like nothing I’d ever seen before. Maybe at Six Flags or on television, but never in real life.
What I was seeing was Miami’s collection of authentic art moderne buildings that were constructed mainly in the 1930’s and 40’s. As I later found out, this style was part of a second American wave of one of the most interesting design movements of the 20th century — art deco. The art deco style originated in the 1920’s and grew to massive popularity by the 1930’s in both America and Western Europe. It was a modern style with plenty of distinguishing features, and in fact, those decorative features are the main ingredient of the design style itself. Through the decades, the art deco style has also enjoyed revivals of interest through the 1960’s and 1980’s, and many wonder when it will make its next comeback.
As a creative and graphic designer, I’ve always been intrigued by the art deco style. As we come up on almost a century since its origins, I wanted to find out more about where it came from and how it became so hugely popular during one of the world’s most wild and crazy decades. Grab your 1920’s-era gin cocktail and let’s cheers to this architectural deep-dive.
The Name and the Origin
Like so many great art styles, art deco came from Europe. In particular, France was the origin of this modern design movement that began at the turn of the century. The style was essentially a direct response to art nouveau, a popular stylized, detailed, and curvy look that enjoyed popularity for some time. However, two huge global events would change all of that: the turn of the century and the onset of World War I. Soon, favor toward the nostalgic and familiar art nouveau with its heavily stylized and ornate details was beginning to fall out of fashion.
The new modern world was full of industry, changing social norms, and reformation. This new century demanded a new look, and so a group of French innovators, artists, and designers formed The Society of Decorative Artists and decided to do just that. First, they reestablished the role of decorative art (which is where the name “art deco” comes from) as an important piece of the design movement. Second, they drew inspiration from both ancient and modern styles, such as the ancient Mayans, Greeks, Egyptians, and Native Americans and paired these features with modern art styles like Bauhaus and Cubism. Third, they planned a big exhibition to debut this new style originally planned for 1914, but the event finally occurred in 1925.
This Exposition Launched the Art Deco Design Movement
For 7 months of the exposition’s run, thousands of artists displayed their work for over 16 million people. By this time, the style had already taken root in many European cities. But as a result of the expo, a global modern art movement had officially begun. However, it wasn’t called by the name we know it today. At this time, it was called style moderne. It wouldn’t get its official name of “art deco” until the 1960's.
If there was ever as style that went fully against the grain of its predecessor, rebelling like an angsty teenager, art deco is it. The style exchanged the soft smooth lines and curves of the past for hard angles, verticals, contrast, and geometry. Art deco didn’t play by the rules and every main feature of the style wanted you to know it.
All of this made it the perfect design style to accompany the most lavish, rebellious, and loudest decade in American history, the Jazz Age, or as it’s also commonly called, the Roaring 20’s.
Art Deco in America
By 1925 in America, World War I had ended, stock markets were soaring, skirts and bobs were shorter, women had earned the right to vote, F. Scott Fitzgerald had penned The Great Gatbsy, and a time of luxury, prosperity, and social freedoms for many Americans was heightened. The beginning of Prohibition in 1920 simply added to the cacophony of the era with the rise of a new bootlegging and speakeasy culture which caused big illegal money booms that would last even beyond the end of Prohibition in 1933.
The attitudes in America during this new century became fertile ground for ushering in new creative energies. There was so much new innovation that it almost seemed to burst at the seams, and in fact we still reap the fruits of that creativity today. The art deco design movement was birthed into being at the same time as the world’s first “talkies,” or movies with sound, in the beginning of the glamorous Hollywood golden era. Walt Disney soon began making his first animated movies as part of Walt Disney Studios in 1923. Then in 1925, Coco Chanel created the perfume Chanel №5 along with the first Chanel suit and little black dress.
In terms of the way that the art deco design movement was expressed in architecture, furniture, jewelry, and the newer, sleeker fashion of the time, we can look at it as a direct statement, a response not only to what was happening to American wallets and industries at the time, but what was happening in American psyches. The emerging modern styles of the 1920’s were a loud expression of expansion and forward-thinking optimism into the future. It was a celebration of the lavish and the extravagant, but also somewhat of a rebellion against the constricting laws and social norms preventing growth. It is a theme and attitude that still exists in American culture to this day.
Main Features & Famous Art Deco Buildings
Just hearing the term ‘art deco’ typically conjures into the mind images of hard lines, blocky exteriors, or a geometric aesthetic. It‘s a style based on modern innovations, industry, and strength. Because this style fuses ancient and modern features, it gets both a nostalgic and futuristic tone.
Distinguishing features of art deco design are:
- Vertical lines
- Repeating geometric patterns
- Symmetry
- Lavish ornamentation, often in gold or metal plating
- Ziggurat patterning and structure
- Curves juxtaposed against angular lines
- Stone reliefs
- Simplistic figures (such as the eagles of the Chrysler building)
Again, because the creators of the style drew its inspiration by blending both the ancient and the modern, the style itself seems to be a sort of bridge from the old world into the new.
In America, those with “new money” and new credit to use were an inspiration for this new style that celebrated the high life and consumerism which would evolve over the course of the mid 1920’s and into the 1930’s.
Some notable art deco buildings:
During this design age came a huge growth period in cities across the country, which means many of the skyscrapers and city buildings built at the time were made with the art deco style and can still be seen today. Here is a list of some notable buildings crafted with the style:
- Chrysler Building (1930, New York City)
- Empire State Building (1931, New York City)
- Chicago Board of Trade Building (1930, Chicago)
- Carbide & Carbon Building (1929, Chicago)
- Rockefeller Center (1939, New York City)
- Radio City Music Hall (1932, New York City)
- Eastern Columbia Building (1930, Los Angeles)
- Continental Life Building (1930, St. Louis)
- Breakwater Hotel South Beach (1939, Miami)
- Koppers Tower (1928, Pittsburgh)
Art Deco Revivals Through the Decades
If art deco seems to look familiar to you (and you’re a millennial or beyond) it’s probably because you may remember the revival of the style that happened back in the 1980’s. Just like any popular style, this one has had it’s iterations, revivals, and comebacks.
During the 1930’s and 40’s, the style morphed into what became the second wave of art deco, or the American version of the style which was called art moderne or streamline moderne. This was the rounded, funky style I caught a glimpse of that night in Miami. It’s a style with curves, minimal exterior decoration (usually stucco), and almost has a fun cartoon-like quality.
Innovation with art deco began to wane after World War II and made way for the more traditional, minimal, and natural mid-century modern styles to emerge. But as things often do, they come back around.
It was during a revival of interest in the 1960’s when art deco got its official name. Originally coined negatively by an architect and critic of the modern style named Le Corbusier, that attitude was then shifted into a positive connotation during its reinvigoration during this time by Bevis Hillier, a British art historian and critic.
The 1980’s also saw a notable revival of the deco style as well with symmetry, straight lines, geometric designs, and a lot of pink. Many malls, bowling alleys, or public places were designed with this modern edgy style which fit in well with the aesthetic of this eclectic decade.
Art Deco in Pop Culture
In today’s arts and pop culture, elements of the art deco look can be spotted across films, books, games, and television. It appears in movies like The Great Gatsby (2013), Superman Returns (2006), The Mask (1994), Tim Burton’s Batman movies (1989–1992) along with Christopher Nolan’s Batman movies (2005–2012). Features of the style on the silver screen range from location selections and hints at the style to a more all-encompassing aesthetic. Portrayals of the fictional comic book cities of Gotham City and Metropolis have evolved over the years to often feature a clear art deco look, perhaps to lend a timeless quality and pay homage to the design era of both comic’s debuts, 1938 and 1939.
A 1980’s revival of interest in art deco can be seen on screen as well, both with a nod to the style in the Starcourt Mall design from Season 3 of Stranger Things (2019) as well as in Todd and Margo Chester’s home, the cranky neighbors of the Griswold’s in National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation (1989).
Some other notable places to spot this design style are throughout the popular video game series BioShock, as well as on book cover artwork, such as the 35th anniversary edition cover of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged.
This design style tends to have a glamorous, nostalgic, and otherworldly effect in movies, television, books, and games that works well in the background to transmit a clear feeling of being in a different time and place, such as being in an alternate world or reality that feels just different enough to suspend belief, but modern enough to feel familiar.
A Modern Style Frozen in Time
Nearly a full century after its original debut, could we be due for another revival? Just like every popular style, no doubt elements of it will come back around at some point, but most likely with a modern twist, like a negroni cocktail with a splash of LaCroix.
This design movement encapsulates a truly unique and special style that lifts the curtain on American attitudes during a time of great prosperity, modern innovations, and optimism toward the future. It will forever will be a style that seems frozen in time, except in those special moments through the decades when it makes a welcomed comeback. Maybe (hopefully) a revival of this style will be fitting for the 2020’s after all.