Grand Salon of the Hôtel d’un Collectionneur, Emile-Jacques Ruhlmann, 1925
Rarely has the cover of a book conveyed so vividly the function for which it’s intended. Against a gold background, a stylized green man lifts a glass to his lips. A jagged silver lightning bolt leaps from the glass to his heart. A panel down the outer edge explodes in an avalanche of silver, black and gold. Pow!
After such an illustration, the title—The Savoy Cocktail Book—comes as an anticlimax. Of course, it’s about alcohol. This is 1930, and the cocktail—in its celebration of variety, its concern for style over function, its striving for instant effect—has become the sign in which the 20th century conquers. From the cover of this recipe book of booze, the jazz age shouts at the only volume it knows—fortissimo—and in its visual language of choice, Art Déco.
Throughout the spring and summer of 1925, a new white city grew along the banks of the Seine. The largest buildings of that area, the 17th-century Hôtel des Invalides and the massive Grand Palais, built in 1900, were outshone, literally, by scores of low white plaster “pavilions,” many as fancifully detailed as wedding cakes in silver and gold. A British visitor called it “a Cubist dream city, or the projection of a possible city on Mars.”
Paris specialized in international exhibitions. The layout of the city, with its numerous parks and open spaces along the Seine, made it ideal for such shows, and they had proved a spectacular success in promoting exports. But the Exposition Internationale des Arts Decoratifs Modernes of 1925 was something new. Intended as a rebuke to a Germany increasingly aggressive in the world of design, it would be a reminder to the world that French art and workmanship remained supreme.
However, in presenting a summary of everything artistically original developed in France since the end of World War I, the organizers faced a problem. There was no agreement among artists of what constituted a truly modern style. While they admired the slickness and machine finish of automobiles, aircraft and motorcycles, and the functionalism and avoidance of decoration that was already appearing in such personal accessories as cameras, wristwatches, cigarette cases and lighters, they were loath to discard entirely the femininity of prewar Art Nouveau, which adapted well to almost every use of design from architecture to jewelry.
Surprisingly for a nation not known for consensus, the design community took relatively little time to agree. Essentially, they compromised on the classicism in which all of them had been educated, and for which the French public since the time of Napoleon I had showed such affection. The new synthesis of classicism and modernism became so instantly recognizable that nobody named it. Not until the 1960s would scholars agree on the title “Art Déco.”
An architect from ancient Greece touring the 1925 Exposition would have felt right at home. The smooth cylindrical columns of many pavilions would have been familiar, even though they lacked the classical bases and capitals. He would have approved the many fountains, gardens, courtyards, decorative friezes and statuary groups, while wondering, not being acquainted with Modigliani and the Cubists, at the way figures were elongated and stylized.
Unlike earlier trade expositions at which the state had been the main exhibitor, there were no massive halls crammed with examples of the national imagination. The Grande Palais housed a range of work from the most distinguished of contemporary designers. Otherwise, pavilions were sponsored by department stores or individual manufacturers, both French and foreign, interspersed with those of guest nations.
Emile-Jacques Ruhlmann, France’s leading designer of luxury furniture and interiors, had the task of making sure the interiors lived up to the high ideals of the exposition. Guest countries were accepted only if they agreed to toe the line. Most acquiesced, since they wanted the French market. A journalist assessing the national displays noted that “almost everywhere the will to modernism dominates the craftsman [in] an almost total suppression of ornament.” Both Germany and the United States declined to participate.
Aside from the pavilions of the Galleries Lafayette and other department stores, manufacturers created the biggest splash. Car maker Citroën paid for a modernist display of lights on the Eiffel Tower. René Lalique designed a towering glass fountain that lit up at night. The challenge of modernism defeated some designers, who created pavilions of alarming knobbiness but no particular style. One critic compared the Czech building to a grain silo or cold storage warehouse. Others, such as the garden designed by colonial architect Joseph Marrast and realized by the Moser horticultural company, achieved a timeless tranquility. The British magazine The Studio, journal of record for the applied arts, couldn’t find much to praise in its own national pavilion, but acclaimed French invention. “The new ideas seemed to have come like a flood, carrying all along in its course.”
Most agreed that the star of the show was the Hôtel d’un Collectionneur (Private Home of a Collector). Planned by Ruhlmann and housed in a pavilion by architect Pierre Patout, it offered a vision of how a modern collector of discriminating taste and bottomless pockets might furnish his ideal home. It included wall paintings by Jean Dunand and Jean Dupas, sculpture by Antoine Bourdelle and ironwork by Edgar Brandt.
The exposition didn’t stop at the Seine. Shops with innovative window displays lined the Alexandre III bridge. Couturier Paul Poiret, hopeful of retrieving his prewar reputation, sold his collection of modern art to buy three barges. Christening them Amour, Delices and Orgues—Love, Delights and Organs—names which, he said, represented “women, always women”—he moored them alongside the exhibition and turned them into showrooms for his gowns, as well as textiles, furniture and accessories from his Atelier Marine workshops. An esplanade ran along their roofs, descending in wide steps to the waterline, where visitors arriving by boat were invited to alight.
Poiret’s effort failed. Any improvement in his fortunes was wiped out by the crash of 1929. Forced to sell Atelier Marine and its chain of shops, he closed down permanently—an experience shared by many other designers. In proving French design and craftsmanship remained supreme, the Exposition of 1925 achieved its aims. However, 1929 killed the market for luxury goods. At the same time, American manufacturers duplicated French designs using cheap imitations of the silk, wood, leather and precious metals that enriched the products of French artistry.
Paradoxically, however, synthetic fibers, metal plating and plastics made the style of Ruhlmann and other designers universal. René Lalique had already created packaging for François Coty’s toiletries, duplicating his molded glass in paper. Edgar Brandt, the master of artisan ironwork, adopted new welding and soldering techniques to create the lifts for Selfridge’s department store in London. Lee Lawne’s reliefs on the exterior of Rockefeller Center in New York are straight from the Art Déco handbook. Cinemas and theaters all over the world adopted the so-called Streamline Moderne style, a scaled-up adaptation of work by such French architects as André Granet.
Chromed steel, originally a substitute for silver in the detailing of automobiles, emerged as a material in its own right. Bakelite and other resins brought the look of ebony, ivory and tortoiseshell to hair brushes, picture frames, radio sets. With rayon, women could wear dresses as vivid as anything seen in a Paris defilé. The modern look invaded typography, signage, publishing, advertising but, above all, movies, which carried Art Déco into the furthest corners of the world. The style reigned until the Second World War introduced a new and, initially, bracing realism.
Considering Art Déco was born in Paris, there are few examples on the scale of New York’s Rockefeller Center and its Chrysler Building. Respect for Haussmann’s reconstruction of the city in the 1860s discouraged 1920s builders from disturbing his grand design. Art Déco most often turns up in shopfronts, the facades of public buildings, and domestic interiors. An exception is the Palais de Chaillot at Trocadero. Built for yet another Exposition in 1937, the imposing wings of the Palais itself and the cascade of statues and fountains tumbling down to the Seine and the Eiffel Tower beyond create a striking effect.
One of the best examples of domestic Art Déco is rue Mallet-Stevens. This short street contains six houses designed by Robert Mallet-Stevens, one of the most innovative of French architects. They were completed in July 1927 and, despite some later additions, remain impressive. Nearby, on Square du Docteur-Blanche, two houses designed by Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret, Villa Jeanneret and Villa La Roche, have been combined as the Fondation Le Corbusier museum and archives. The Mallet-Stevens buildings are not open to the public, but one can tour Fondation Corbusier (all addresses 16th).
