The Art Deco movement of architecture and design appeared in Paris in about 1910–12, and continued until the beginning of World War II in 1939. It took its name from the International Exposition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts held in Paris in 1925. It was characterized by bold geometric forms, bright colors, and highly stylized decoration, and it symbolized modernity and luxury. Art Deco architecture, sculpture, and decoration reached its peak at 1939 Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques dans la Vie Moderne, and in movie theaters, department stores, other public buildings. It also featured in the work of Paris jewelers, graphic artists, furniture craftsmen, and jewelers, and glass and metal design. Many Art Deco landmarks, including the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées and the Palais de Chaillot, can be seen today in Paris.
Origins
Art Deco was the result of a long campaign by French decorative artists to gain equal status with the creators of paintings and sculpture. The term "arts décoratifs" was invented in 1875 to give designers of furniture, textiles, and other decoration official status. The Société des artistes décorateurs (Society of decorative artists), or SAD, was founded in 1901, and decorative artists were given the same rights of authorship as painters and sculptors. Several new magazines devoted to decorative arts were founded in Paris, including Arts et décoration and L'Art décoratif moderne. Decorative arts sections were introduced into the annual salons of the Sociéte des artistes français, and later in the Salon d'automne, which played a major role in popularizing the style.
Parisian department stores and fashion designers also played an important part in the rise of Art Deco. Established firms including the luggage maker Louis Vuitton, silverware firm Christofle, glass designer René Lalique, and the jewelers Louis Cartier and Boucheron, who all began designing products in more modern styles. Beginning in 1900, department stores had recruited decorative artists to work in their design studios. The decoration of the 1912 Salon d'Automne had been entrusted to the department store Printemps. During the same year Printemps created its own workshop called "Primavera". By 1920 Primavera employed more than three hundred artists. The styles ranged from the updated versions of Louis XIV, Louis XVI and especially Louis Philippe furniture made by Louis Süe and the Primavera workshop to more modern forms from the workshop of the Au Louvre department store. Other designers, including Émile-Jacques Ruhlmann and Paul Follot refused to use mass production, and insisted that each piece be made individually by hand.
The early Art Deco style featured luxurious and exotic materials such as ebony, and ivory and silk, very bright colors and stylized motifs, particularly baskets and bouquets of flowers of all colors, giving a modernist look.
In 1911, the SAD proposed the holding of a major new international exposition of decorative arts in 1912. No copies of old styles were to be permitted; only modern works. The exhibit was postponed until 1914, then, because of the war, postponed until 1925, when it gave its name to the whole family of styles known as Déco.
Art Deco in architecture was particularly the result of a new technology, the use of reinforced concrete, which allowed buildings to be taller, stronger, and with fewer supporting beams and columns, and to take almost any possible shape. The first reinforced concrete house had been built by François Coignet in 1853. In 1877, another Frenchman, Joseph Monier, received a patent for a system of strengthening concrete with a mesh of iron rods in a grid pattern. Two French architects, Auguste Perret made very innovative use of the new system. Perret used it to construct the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées (1911–1913), with its vast space without supporting columns; and later, Henri Sauvage used it to construct the first apartment building built like a staircase, each apartment with its own terrace, and another major project, the new building of the La Samaritaine department store.