Art deco

The world is waking up after years plagued by the First World War, society wants to have fun and celebrate the new century and its achievements - general development, modernity, dynamism and progress. In its day, Art Deco was called Style Moderne, but it was not until the 1960s that it was given its current name.

A style that did not emerge programmatically, but responded to society's need to beautify and aestheticize the surrounding environment. Its influence also extended to small sculpture and painting, but it was most markedly

in the form of interiors and interior furnishings, in the development of fashion and luxury accessories. In the 1920s, it was seen almost all over Europe and later in the United States. The epicentre of Art Deco was undoubtedly Paris, where the new style built on the ornamentalism of the Art Nouveau style that had taken root there. However, Art Deco also cited historical styles such as Rococo and Classicism, or drew inspiration from distant exotic cultures such as Egypt and India. On the other hand, machines, industrial objects and electricity were also sources of inspiration, especially in the United States, where decors composed of repeating geometric shapes, lightning bolts and zigzag patterns were applied.

Fashion and interior accessories were characterized by precise workmanship, using both classic luxury materials such as ivory, gold, precious stones and exotic wood, as well as modern materials such as stainless steel, chrome, coloured glass or even Bakelite.

Art Deco was originally a luxury style for the most affluent classes, but it soon gained great popularity with the general public and became very popular and widespread, whereupon its typical features began to be reproduced on a mass scale. It came to prominence largely thanks to the International Exhibition of Decorative Arts and Industry, which took place in Paris in 1925.

Barbora Kovářová

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In the Czech environment, the Art Deco tradition is based on the cubist forms developed by artists in the period before the First World War. These influences are combined with more traditional motifs (in architecture it is mainly columns, pilasters, arches and other classicizing compositional principles), and especially with the tendency to soften the rough cubist morphology and highlight it in colour. The full development of this expression is due to the post-war situation, when not only the public sector but also private investors (especially banks and insurance companies) want to make their connection with the idea of the new state explicit in architecture and design. The Legio banka building in Prague's Na Poříčí district, designed by Josef Gočár, is probably the most famous building to this day, combining red and grey shades, and the style of the period is often referred to as the Legiobanka style. Other representatives include Janák's Palác Adria, the Radiopalác building by Alois Dryák and, outside of Prague, the Anglo Bank in Pardubice and Hradec Králové, both by Josef Gočár.

With the passage of time in the first half of the 1920s, the radical use of arches and circles disappeared from rondocubism and it became possible to use the term Art Deco more generally, which in the Prague environment is represented, for example, by the Central Building at Ořechovka by Jaroslav Vondrák or the Intercity Telephone Exchange by Bohumír Kozák. This decorative architecture is already more clearly returning to the influence of decorative geometric Art Nouveau, which was very popular around 1910, but at the same time it is more widely used for new types of buildings, whether schools or completely modern social achievements such as cinemas, which is also true in an international context.

Overall, Art Deco design is intrinsically linked to the phenomenon of new objects of everyday use. Dynamic rounded shapes are thus applied, for example, in the design of radios. However, traditional materials (wood veneer, glass, ceramics, stone) are used in both these and ordinary furniture, which are generally intended to evoke luxury, although industrial production allows for much greater availability than similar objects had in earlier periods. In particular, this is made possible by the easy reproduction of decorative patterns in textiles or wallpapers, which are once again becoming integral parts of the interior. The design of the products and the interiors are intended to evoke a certain type of carefree, even playfulness that represents post-war optimism and the emerging boom.

Art Deco was presented as a single, accessible international style at the International Exhibition of Decorative Arts in Paris in 1925. However, even then it met with criticism, which accused it of its simple forms and understatement, and tried to create a new, decoration-free style. This was represented by the pavilion L'Esprit noveau by Le Corbusier, which was executed in simple geometric forms. In this sense, the exhibition is also the swan song of Art Deco, as it soon begins to be replaced, particularly in the European environment, by a simpler, if initially critically accepted, functionalism.

In non-European settings, however, the style's popularity persisted well into the 1930s and is best reflected in the style of American skyscrapers such as the Chrysler Building, the Empire State Building and the American Radiator Building in New York.

Josef Holeček

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