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| INTRODUCTION TO ART DECO |
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The Art Deco movement developed during the latter part of the first decade of the twentieth century, nurtured by a small group of avant-garde designers who, in an attempt to achieve a new visual honesty in their work, discarded all traditional European forms of decoration and the opulence and clutter associated with the Belle Epoque. Europeans were tiring of the curvilinear shapes and pastel colors of the Art Nouveau style. By the end of the first decade of the twentieth century, society began to embrace the uncluttered shapes and angular forms of Art Deco design.
It was an art that echoed the machine aesthetic of the age and was quickly favored by new members of the haute monde. The new Art Deco style was promoted throughout the Western world by a number of illustrated deluxe magazines, albums, portfolios, books, and periodicals. These publications both reflected and influenced the rapid changes that were taking place in the design of furniture, textiles, carpets, glassware, jewelry, ceramics, women's clothing, and a huge variety of other fashionable artifacts and objets d'art. The publications also contained articles about other aspects of fashionable life--recent developments in theatre, painting, music, motor cars, cinema, exhibitions, dance, and so on.
The main attraction of these exclusive publications was undoubtedly their new-style Art Deco illustrations, designed by leading avant-garde artists of the period. Their inventive and resplendent images brilliantly captured the essence of the changing times. Each illustration was conceived by an individual artist as an attempt to capture the spirit of the design rather than its surface detail. Some of the resulting images may appear a little strange, or even bizarre today. However, it is Art Deco illustrations that endowed twentieth century commercial illustration with previously unknown artistic integrity.
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