RP214 The Art of Optimism

 RP214 The Art of Optimism

In Paris in the 1920s, artists and architects saw the beauty of geometry: straight lines, symmetry, balanced curves, and geometric shapes. This eclectic, elegant, modern style was called Art Deco.

After World War I, people wanted to break with the past. They wanted to forget the horrors of war and embrace a new, modern world. The Art Nouveau style, popular before the war, focused on organic shapes and flowing curves. After the war, however, people wanted stability and modernity. The disorganized, natural curves of the past gave way to the straight, predictable, man-made lines of the future. Art Deco is elegant and controlled rather than fluid and plant-like.

Elegant doesn't have to mean boring or plain. After suffering through years of rationing and poverty, people longed to return to wealth and comfort. Art Deco products, therefore, used shiny, solid, long-lasting materials like aluminum, wood, and chrome. Many Art Deco buildings are highly decorated with sunbursts, fountains, and chevrons: anything that can be made symmetrical and repeating. Art Deco also incorporated styles from past civilizations, like the Aztecs and the Classical Greeks and Romans. Strong. serious Aztec faces decorate doors and windows of Art Deco buildings, as do stylized Greek athletes. It was as though artists wanted to remind the world that human beings could be civilized as well as savage.

Great examples of Art Deco structures can be found around the world, as the 1920s were a period of intense building. New York's Chrysler building is a perfect example. It is tall, streamlined, extremely symmetrical, and decorated with repeating triangles and arches on its top. Miami also has a number of Art Deco buildings in sunny pastel colors that show post-war optimism. The city may have been influenced by Cuban immigrants, whose capital, Havana, is an Art Deco center.

The Great Depression ended the post-war prosperity, but Art Deco survived for another few decades and gave us some of the 20th century's most enduring art.