Art Deco
Art Deco
The
Tate describes Art Deco as ‘a design style from the 1920s and 1930s in
furniture, decorative arts and architecture characterised by its geometric
character’. This style came after WW1 as the war brought an end to the Art
Nouveau style. Art Deco affected fashion, art, decorative arts and graphics.
The three things commonly seen in Art Deco are nature, the female form and a
relation to machines as they became more popular due to the cheaper goods being
produced. This movement also embraced other new inventions like fabric,
including nylon and rayon.
Characteristics of Art Deco
 |
| Common Shapes in Art Deco |
-Geometric
-Cultural Influences
o Egyptian
o Chinese
o Japanese
o Aztec
o Mexican
o African
-Highly Commercial
-Industrial Design
-Lack
of perspective- flat
Art Deco
massively impacted fashion. Before the 1920s, the main item of clothing women
wore was a ‘Mutten Dress’. This consisted of a corset (but not as tight as the
Victorian Era) undergarments, narrow sleeves to the elbow, elaborate shoulders
and lots of jewellery, all in an hour glass shape. However, this changed during
the 1920s, with the dresses having no waist suppression or a dropped waist
line, no corset, little shape, Aztec, geometric patterns and shapes and an
overall simplicity as it was paired with gloves, beads and feathers. The look
was very androgynous and became cheaper because it was the start of ‘Off the
Peg Fashion’. The 1930s brought back more shape and made the bust more
prominent. This period also brought in the influence from Hollywood/ Movie
stars.
Who
Designers
- Coco Chanel
- Clarice
Cliff
- Susie Cooper
Artists
- Cubism (Picasso/ Braque)
- Futurism (Marinetti)
- Surrealism
(Duchamp/ Meret Oppenheim)
Coco
Chanel
“Fashion is not something that exists in dresses only. Fashion is in the
sky, in the street. Fashion has to do with the ideas, the way we live, what is
happening."
Coco Chanel grew up in an orphanage which is why her designs are usually
in black and white. Her idea of the ‘Little Black Dress’ was simplicity and to
be non-discriminating. She hated corsets and embraced flapper dress and liked
to take influence from men’s clothing as she thought it was practical. Chanel
was the first to use jersey as it is flexible, durable, has lots of movement
and absorptive. She used it for everyday wear which was shocking as silk and
lustrous, expensive materials were commonly used for these types of designs. Coco
Chanel was the first designer to create a Fashion House as she didn’t only
focus on one aspect of fashion, which made her designs accessible for most
people. She also created bracelets, earrings, watches, rings, perfume, make up
and handbags.
Susie
Cooper
Cooper
was the first woman maker and designer in pottery. She hand-painted her pottery
with geometric shapes then factory produced them using slip in cast which meant
that her work could be brought by the masses.
Clarice
Cliff
Cliff
used basic pottery shapes which were clean yet angular in appearance and then
decorated them in vibrant colours along largely geometric patterns. She was
influenced by Mexican art but mainly Japanese art due to the flat perspective
which was easier to mass produce and standardise. Cliff didn’t make the pottery
but used spares to design on until her boss, who she had a relationship with,
allowed them to be sold.
All these definitions are from the
Tate:
“Futurism
was an Italian art movement of the early twentieth century that aimed to
capture in art the dynamism and energy of the modern world”
“Cubism was a revolutionary new approach to representing reality
invented in around 1907–08 by artists Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque. They
brought different views of subjects (usually objects or figures) together in
the same picture, resulting in paintings that appear fragmented and abstracted”
Surrealism was “a twentieth-century literary, philosophical and
artistic movement that explored the workings of the mind, championing the
irrational, the poetic and the revolutionary”