Art Deco

As we get into the twentieth century, events reveal themselves that show just how important a role blacks begin to play in popular culture and the arts. Josephine Baker and American jazz musicians wowed 1920s Paris, and Europeans enthusiastically swayed to the beat from across the Atlantic. From zoot suits to hip hop, we owe black musicians, entertainers, and artists a debt for their contributions to contemporary cool.

Fortunately, scholarship since the 1980s has been at work to rectify the omissions of the first major publications on Art Deco. Just as we’ve learned how African tribal art animated the works of the early Modernist painters and sculptors, so do we now get more information on the people who helped make it the Jazz Age. In 2006, the one-hundredth anniversary of her birth, an exhibition, Josephine Baker: image and icon, paid homage to her legendary career.
 
 
 
 
 

The Library is home to the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers. Every year, a new group comes in with fascinating projects, and work extensively with the Research Library’s collections. This year, we were privileged to have well-known art critic and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Mark Stevens as a fellow. Mark, who has written about Willem De Kooning, is working on a biography of the famous twentieth century English painter Francis Bacon.

During my research into the Art Deco years, I ran across the fact that Bacon was a furniture and rug designer from 1929 to 1933, and had been influenced by travel to Berlin (1926) and Paris (1927). He lived and breathed the artistic atmosphere of that fascinating era, only to break off his design work and turn to figurative oil painting fulltime. Knowing that Mark has been working away downstairs, I couldn’t resist the opportunity to question him about Bacon’s early years. The next several posts, on April 29 and May 1, brief interviews with Mark Stevens, will recount what I learned from him.

After a delay necessitated by my jaunt to the Southwest, I can turn my attention now to the latest fashion summaries. I usually find that the New York Times Style Magazine serves as an excellent bellwether for the latest word on fashion musts, pop culture, and targeted consumerism. The February 24 “Women’s Fashion Spring 2008” offers a wrap-up of all the trends in the recent round of spring fashion shows. The results are actually fairly agreeable and promising. First of all, the colors on view are great. Red is one, already foreseen in all the glamorous gowns worn by attendees of the Academy Awards. But I was also struck by the effusive hues of blue, yellow, and mint green that appeared in ads.

To my great pleasure, articles in the magazine offered many takes on everything old is new again, including mentions of Pre-Raphaelitism, Art Nouveau, Art Deco, and retro modernism. Textile designs seemed to be tributes to ornamentation from those periods. An American actress from the 1920s was treated to a flapper evaluation. Big cuff bracelets were in evidence, a satisfying sign to me! Accessories were sensible and attractive, with one huge exception. The platform and stiletto shoes shown in spreads were among the most obscene styles I’ve ever encountered; the milder versions of this footwear had “dominatrix” stamped all over them.

Two exhibition footnotes that appeared must be shared. The Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) is having an exhibition on that enigmatic designer, Madame Grès, maker of divine draped and sensual dresses, through April 19; and “Wiener Werkstätte Jewelry” will show at the Neue Galerie here in NYC starting March 27. Got to see that one: the Wiener Werkstätte contributed greatly to Art Deco’s liveliness.

The archetype of the brash young Flapper woman hovers around our consciousnesses. Some of us remember a delightfully out-of-place Julie Andrews in the fluffy film, Thoroughly Modern Millie. Our post-1970s feminism doesn’t allow us to take in the indignation that the flapper of the 1920s provoked. She smoked cigarettes, drank whisky, drove cars, and most unnerving of all – wore short skirts! Yet even that last fact was less shocking than it sounds. 1920s hemlines went up and down, staying mostly around the mid calf. They reached their highest point in 1926, and that was just below the knee.

A boyish figure worked best for the flapper style. Bobbed hair, dropped waistlines that rested on the hips, strapped and chunky heels, a string of pearls – you were in full mode. The Art Deco makers of figurines took up this body type with a vengeance. Many a slim Diana and Atalanta, straining for the race, can be found poised in ceramic and bronze. My grandfather Louis, who worked for the Thomas Edison Company, had one of these lithe figurines on his living room cocktail table, She wore a grass skirt and a string of pearls that failed to successfully cover her petite bosom. I didn’t realize until I was much older that the model for this outré (to a little girl) design was Josephine Baker.

F. Scott Fitzgerald provides the best portrait of the woman behind the flapper. His short stories, Flappers and Philosophers, tell us much about the sensitivities of men and women in the 1920s and 30s.

As a decorative style, Art Deco has its masculine and feminine elements. Yet the style doesn't so much embrace womanly attributes as shows off women as subject matter. The 1920s were a decade that allowed women to enjoy a new kind of physical and social freedom after the rigors of the first world war. Even the colors used for Art Deco design have a new freedom in their tints.

Part of the visual appeal of Art Deco design at this time is in the use of pochoir, or color stencil printing. Have a look in the Library's Digital Gallery at the illustrations of Jean Saude, done for his book, Traite d'enluminure d'art au pochoir. Women were entering a period when their gender could reap the benefits of modernity. Consider the fact that two of the most fascinating women of 1920s pop culture were Josephine Baker and Clara Bow!

Over the next five months, I will be working on the storyline (case labels and object labels) for the Art Deco Design: Rhythm and Verve exhibition here at the 42nd Street Library's Wachenheim Gallery. The exhibition will run from September 8, 2008, through January 9, 2009. While the items on display are not numerous, 40 images from the Art Division's collection, one fine book binding from the Spencer Collection, and an original cartoon from Prints,they are highly expressive of the energy that permeates Art Deco as a decorative style. In pursuing the premise that Art Deco is a visually moving aspect of Modernism, I've begun to make connections with dress and other design of the period. Significant innovations in men's and women's clothing, undergarments, shoes and related adornment occured during the 1920s and 1930s.

Using images from the Library's collections, I'll start tracking some of the ideas and inspirations for fashion change that happened in those fast-moving decades. I think it will be eye-opening for many...
The design by Madeleine Vionnet below is typical. She was one of Art Deco's first patrons, along with other haute couture designers.

Speaking of eye-opening, I was searching AOL this weekend and discovered another piece of evidence that everything old is new again. If you look for the term Padded Butt Boxer Brief online, available also on eBAY, you'll find a male enhancement corsetry item that was originally used back in the 18th and 19th century by men who wanted to fill their skintight breeches better.