i

MoDERNISM
BEAUTIFIED?
16

The elegance of the simpli-

MODERNISM
BEAUTIFIED? fied contours, the geometric
One of the most spectacular posters of the proportions of the spatial
1930s boldly depicts the French ocean liner organization, and the deco-
rative layout with its inte-
Normandie (fig.2). Shown in a precipitous grated promotional lettering
form a delicate counterpoint
perspective, the ship heads abruptly to- to this monumentality. Like
wards the viewer. The artist who designed the sleek divine messenger
of a new aesthetic, an aes-
the poster, Adolphe Jean-Marie Mouron, thetic of the machine, the
known under the pseudonym Cassandre, ship’s bow breaches the pic-
ture plane in a monolithical-
also depicted the ship’s hull from an ex- ly stylized, steely precision.
tremely low vantage point, visually enlarg- The interiors of such luxury
liners, reserved for well-
ing the colossus to the point of excess. heeled passengers, were sig-
nificantly less “cool,” howev-
er. In a 1928 edition of the Werkbund journal
Die Form, Bruno Paul, the architect, designer,
and co-founder of the Münchener Vereinigte
Werkstätten für Kunst im Handwerk (Munich
Unified Workshops for Art in Craft), raptur-
ously described the furnishings of another
French ocean colossus, the Île de France.1 He
emphasized the light and open effect of the
interior space and continued, “The extensive
use of mirrored glass and light is calculated
to enhance society’s self-image.” In the ves-
tibule all the walls are composed of “vitrines
... with beautiful objects, well-suited for
arousing the purchasing desire of rich wom-
en and serving to promote the famous shops
along the Rue de la Paix. France’s highly
developed trade in luxury goods celebrates a
triumph here. … In the rooms there are heavy
and sumptuous carpets and soft furniture
with lovely weavings. Everything is modern,
in the newest ‘French Style’.”

1—A.M. Cassandre
L‘Atlantique
1931, lithograph, billboard,
99.5 × 61.5 cm, Collection of
Posters Please, Inc., New York

[right page]
2—A.M. Cassandre
Normandie
1935, lithograph, billboard,
100 × 62 cm, Collection of
Posters Please, Inc., New York
17
19

IC o NS of
ART DECO
The shipping company had
[left page]
enlisted the leading squad
3—Tamara de Lempicka The interior furnishings of the Nor- of French interior architects
Tadeusz de Lempicki
1928, oil on canvas, mandie, whose exterior Cassandre’s and designers: Roger-Henri
130 × 80.5 cm, Centre Georges Expert, Jean Dunand, René
Pompidou, Musée national poster had presented so impressively, Lalique, Jacques-Émile
d’art moderne, Paris
were vastly more lavish even than the Ruhlmann, Louis Süe, An-
dré Mare, Raymond Henri
description just quoted. The luxury Subes, and many others.
4—Dora Kallmus liner—at the time the world’s largest Mirrored glass was framed
Tamara de Lempicka with by gold and silver, precious
Hat and Fox Fur ship—was launched on 29 October, figurative lacquerwork by
c. 1929, photograph
1932 and on its maiden voyage three Dunand served as wall pan-
els and represented some-
years later its magnificent dining what stylized African fish,
rooms and luxury cabins offered the historical galleys, and sea
monsters; in the “grande
rich and beautiful a floating Art Deco salle à manger” lamps
stage. extended like transparent
cascades from the ceiling
to the floor; furniture was resplendently
upholstered with bold floral patterns: to
the present-day eye, a strangely eclectic
mixture of modern/functional and relatively
“plushy” formal elements.
Among the highly fashionable ladies
who strolled, dined, or flirted in these grand
interiors, one or two must surely have
seemed like some luxurious creature that
had alighted from the pages of a glossy
magazine and styled her appearance into
the same kind of fashionable and aesthet-
ically inviolable perfection that the painter
Tamara de Lempicka was portraying for
the world at the time (fig. 4).2 And in the
Normandie’s smoking salon, decorated
by Dunand with reliefs and a great deal of
gold leaf, many passengers may have re-
sembled the distanced and arrogant guise
of a Tadeusz de Lempicki, as depicted by
his wife in 1928 (fig. 3).3 The skyscrapers in
the background of the picture call to mind
the fact that the Normandie’s destination
was New York. If they were interested in
such things travellers could see elegant
jewelry or upholstery fabric—familiar from
the French Style—in the display windows
of the luxurious shops there; but there
were also annoying differences. This may
have tempted one or another progressively
20 minded recent arrival in New York to pass
a verdict like that of the painter Fernand
Léger. He compared the Normandie’s
furnishings to New York’s Radio City Music
Hall and declared the French manner to
MODERNISM be a mindless continuation of floral Art
BEAUTIFIED? Nouveau, in brief: pathetic tastelessness.4
But even when their verdict was more
moderate, many travellers to New York,
upon seeing the Chrysler Building (fig. 6),
will have spontaneously asked themselves
whether this skyscraper belonged to the
same artistic category as the contempo- nacle a twenty-seven-ton “needle” of nickel
rary buildings they had previously seen in stainless steel grows out of the pyramidal,
Paris. The almost 320-meter-high skyscrap- tapered “spire” of white tiles and nickel
er was constructed by William van Alen panels. Even today, the Chrysler Building
between 1928 and 1930 and was essen- is considered one of the most artistically
tially a steel scaffolding hidden beneath a compelling skyscrapers of the twentieth
decorative cladding. Ornamental elements century and an Art Deco architectural icon.
in the form of giant Chrysler radiator hoods It should be borne in mind that in the
as well as a tile frieze of wheel motifs were New York of the late 1920s and 1930s
mounted on the thirty-first floor; at the pin- everyday objects (such as radios) made
of Bakelite, garishly colored plastics, and
other unusual combinations of materials
could be seen and admired en masse (fig.
5), as well as cheap but strikingly styled
consumer goods in aerodynamic forms,
from automobiles to vacuum cleaners,
from hair dryers to the streamlined chairs
of Californian designer Kem Weber. A culti-
vated French globetrotter, in particular, long
accustomed to identify this stylistic move-
ment—which would later become known as
Art Deco—with the sinfully expensive retro
style of a designer like Ruhlmann, would
have had difficulty placing these kinds of
consumer goods on the same stylistic level
as the elite Parisian products. This dilemma
of the extraordinary heterogeneity of forms
and objects attributed to Art Deco still
confronts researchers today.

5—Walter Dorwin Teague

Sparton “Bluebird" radio
1933, Die Neue Sammlung,
Munich

[right page]
6—William van Alen
Chrysler Building, New York
1928–30
22

MODERNISM
BEAUTIFIED?

STYLE or
FASHION?
arts: modernistic, the mod-
Bevis Hillier and Stephen Escritt have ern age/modernity, the Jazz
modern, the zigzag style.10
claimed that there has never been a set Whereas these catchwords
of guidelines, accepted by experts and are more descriptive of a
zeitgeist, or in the case of
of proven value, for interpreting Art Deco zigzag allude to a fashion-
with any kind of authority.5 This seems to able ornamental form, the
term “Art Deco,” meanwhile
be substantiated by the very fact that— established, concentrates
in contrast to Art Nouveau (Jugendstil)6 on the dominance of deco-
rative design intentions, and
—the term “Art Deco” first emerged in thus first and foremost on
literature ex post facto: it was initially the category of the applied
arts and the decorative
limited to the retrospective discussion of ornament applied to build-
a historical exhibition, and spread more ings.
widely only later.
the CULT of the
The exhibition in question took place in
Paris in 1925 and bore the title Exposition DECoRATIVE
internationale des Arts décoratifs et indus-
triels modernes. Around forty years later, in Starting in the late 1960s the name Art
1966 to be exact, many of the objects from Deco rapidly gained a foothold in the art
the earlier exhibition were reunited in Paris and antiquities trade. Under its auspices
in the retrospective exhibition Les Années specific objects from the 1920s and 1930s
25 at the Musée des arts décoratifs. The were delineated from the preceding crea-
accompanying catalogue stimulated a sty- tions of Jugendstil, especially from its more
listic discourse on the subject.7 The curators “flowery” variant. These were generally
loaded both exhibitions with examples of pieces of furniture and other furnishings
works that at the time were referred to as and objects of everyday use distinguished
Style Moderne, French Style, and Style 25. by their sophisticated design or their use
In the same year, Hilary Gelson employed of exotic and/or exquisite materials, but
the term “Art Deco” in the title of his article also objects—formerly economically priced,
in the Times and the following year Osbert mass-produced goods (made of plastic,
Lancaster used the term for the first time in chrome-plated metal, etc.)—derived from
a published book.8 With Bevis Hillier’s 1968 industrial design. Their common denomina-
book the term “Art Deco” took firm root in tor was frequently an abstracting ornamen-
the English-language countries, “although tation.
Martin Battersby and the American authors In Art Deco’s early years, this ornament
David Gebhard and Harriette von Breton often made use of a historicizing vocabu-
mounted a rearguard action in favor of ‘the lary, which, however, was soon simplified
Jazz Age’ and ‘Modern Style’. The word is and adapted to a functional elegance,
used in English as both a noun and adjec- which was seen as modern. And when the
tive. Today the term Art Deco can be found objects dispensed with surface ornament,
in the Oxford English Dictionary.”9 they adopted the decorative aspect as
In the 1920s and 1930s various words an intrinsic feature of their design. This is
were thus used to designate contemporary exemplified by the streamlined automobile
innovations predominantly in the applied of the 1930s and the “aerodynamic” kitch-
en appliances, in which the aerodynamic 23
curves have sacrificed their genetic logic in
favor of pure expressive form.
But, as the following chapters attempt
to show, it would by no means do justice the avant-gardes questioned the validity
to the morphology of Art Deco to reduce of the beautiful in art, indeed destroyed it,
its attitude towards the decorative to a this dethronement was answered equally
penchant for secondary accessories rather by the “affirmation of the beautiful in the
than comprehending it as a fundamental fashions of everyday aesthetics, in design,
aesthetic. In the creative process dec- advertising, and cosmetics.”12 While, since
orative form refers to the relationships the early twentieth century, “great” art
between individual forms or complexes of expressly favored the ugly, the obscene,
forms through which a visually rhythmicized the experimental shock, the myth of the
unity comes about: a unity that is aesthet- beautiful claimed its place in everyday cul-
ically sufficient unto itself and not legiti- ture, in fact even more than this: “Behind
mized primarily by an iconographic (in the design and elegance, style and glamour,
sense of narrative content) or constructive attractiveness and fitness, fashion and flair
meaning. The options for decorative design it is not difficult to discern the ingredients
vary from case to case but always derive of a cult of beauty whose essential formal
their effect from the relationship of formal language, despite all its desire to be mod-
details to an overall form, and the relation- ern, reaches back at times even to classical
ship of a partial form to an entire com- antiquity.”13
position. Theoretically any form or formal Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso were
amalgamation can become a decorative the most important originators of a rev-
entity precisely when it dispenses with the
iconographic and constructive characteris-
tics just mentioned, either because it never
possessed them at all or because it has
relinquished such qualities that were origi-
nally present.11
The decorative element is almost never
absent from the visual arts and architec-
ture, but through the succession of epochs
a different value has been attached to it. At
times it has served as an “inferior” contrast
to forms that define themselves as icono-
graphic carriers of meaning or as construc-
tive substrata; at other times it pushes into
the foreground, seeking to become the pri-
mary visual pleasure, mirroring a narcissistic
self-love on the part of adornment, of orna-
ment, becoming a “stylistic mask”—modeled
out of unfettered decoration.
If the decorative stands in inherent op-
position to narrative content this does not
mean that it becomes inoperative as a sig-
nifier. The decorative is, after all, capable
of providing a “service” to the “beautiful.”
In early modernism it assumed a corre-
sponding compensatory function. For while

7—Cover of the magazine

L’Illustration
June 1925
25
olutionary new image that was based on
formal experiments without as a result
completely losing sight of the figurative/
thematic conditions. These two geniuses
complemented one another in the search
for an autonomous structure: Where the
Spanish artist Picasso shattered forms,
in order to construct a new order from
the respective “chaos,” the French artist
Matisse built up his innovative pictorial culture, not least under the auspices of the
textures from beautifully decorative colors decorative, frequently becomes “a design
and rhythms. For this reason critics long feature for at times the most highly complex
accused Matisse of settling comfortably symbolic systems by means of which people
down in the realm of decorative beauty. He communicate about their ideals, questions
himself said, after all, “I dream of an art of of status, social affiliation, erotic offerings,
balance, of purity, of serenity ... of an art or feelings of self-worth. That something
that is soothing to the mind ... rather like a should be beautiful is not the ultimate goal
good armchair.”14 But Matisse’s decorative of design, but beauty can often prevail as a
flattening of the figurative and the intrinsi- favored means of expression.”16 Here, the
cally valuable quality of the coloration by no decorative and ornamental ennobled to the
means rest in the soporific “fauteuil” of an status of design converge with the idea of
art geared towards fashionable superficial- decorum in antique art theory, which linked
ity; he did not make use of the decorative the beautifully ornamental to the idea of the
arabesque for its own sake, but rather hid socially appropriate, the proper and decent,
ambiguous strategies behind it (fig.9). It is and viewed the internal ethical component
for this reason that Bouillon sees in Matis- along with the appearance based on it as an
se’s “decorative” pictures an anticipation expression of social distinction.
of Art Deco painting as well as many de- The synthesis with the decorative lends
signs by Parisian couturiers. “For Matisse, design its persuasiveness. It is testimony to
the costumes are not luxuriant decorative the consumer’s good taste and a signal of
elements, pulled over the figures. For him his cultural superiority. But often enough a
ornament is the extension of the body that product’s or company’s image reveals itself
is present, and the living sensuality of the to be a manufactured illusion, a beautified
body is enhanced by it.”15 scam. The apparently anti-establishment
A cult of beauty must by no means dynamic of a specific lifestyle promised by
remain mired in superficial formalism, as an ornament or a decorative form, turns out
the example of Matisse shows. The beau- to be nothing other than a pure commercial-
ty aspired to in the practice of everyday ized cliché.

[left page]
8—Erté
Emerald Vase II
1986 (after a design of 1928),
silkscreen, 11.2 × 8.1 cm

9—Henri Matisse
Harmony in Red
1908, oil on canvas,
180 × 200 cm, Hermitage,
Saint Petersburg