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Characteristics Of Art Deco

Decent Essays

Art Deco was showcased in the 1925 Paris Exhibition and was shaped by France’s ambitions in the years immediately after the First World War and that established a new international style. Art Deco motifs were especially popular in the exteriors and interiors of distinct twentieth century building types such as the cinema and the skyscraper. It evoked emotion through vivid decorative elements of no particular function, such as stylized floral elements, stepped forms, sunbursts, and zigzags, popularising geometric, semi-abstract decoration. Art Deco was revelling in the the stimulating and dynamic machine age through steel and reinforced concrete used to achieve large spans. Characteristics of straight lines, often three in parallel, used horizontally, vertically and diagonally coupled with geometric curves and low relief sculpture symbolic of speed, power, industry or progress. (Apperly, Irving and Reynolds, 1995, p. 188)
Film, the most powerful medium of the modern age, established Art Deco as mass style. California, the land of film, was portraying everything the natural environment around it was not, artificial, manipulated and a world of fantasy. Transportation also influenced Art Deco in California through seaports, aircraft manufacturers and automobiles. In a review of the 1925 Paris Exhibition where Art deco began, it was stated that “Speed is not only expressed in movement, it produces a state of mind, and since curves are expressive of repose and languor they no

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