Word: deco
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...patterned rugs and lacquered sideboards mother threw out daughter eagerly buys in thrift shops. The tubular lamps and muscular lobby murals that embarrassed board chairmen ten years ago are now sought by youthful cultists and even a few museums. Somewhere along the way, the style acquired a name: Art Deco...
...heyday, the style was simply called "modernist" or "Moderne." But Clothes Designer Lewis Winter, one of the style's leading collectors, makes a distinction between Deco and Moderne. From 1918 to 1925, when Paris held a mammoth International Exposition of Decorative Arts, the style was more Deco, which he defines as graceful, rococo and curvilinear. From 1925 until 1939, the look modified into Moderne, which was chunkier and more geometric, as in a silver tea service designed by Britain's Charles Boyton. In Winter's living room, a black and gold painted panel for a post-office...
...modish nymphet in an affected pose, which were popular as a decoration atop the family radio console. In his current show at Manhattan's Guggenheim Museum, Lichtenstein displays a series of what he calls "modern sculptures," whose source he proudly admits is his own extensive library of Art Deco. Done in sleek brass, they look as if they should be holding back the crowds at Radio City Music Hall. Another indication of the era's popularity is the Smithsonian Institution's traveling exhibition of the twenties' top cartoonist, John Held...
...interest in Art Deco grows, some collectors are beginning to worry that prices for vintage items will soar. In some respects, they have less to worry about than did fanciers of Art Nouveau. Because so many of its designs were originally intended for mass production, Art Deco has proved singularly easy to copy. Manhattan's fashion industry has already begun to produce chunky, silver-and-jade Art Deco earrings, belts and pins. Some of the best Art Deco can be enjoyed by any devotee, without cost, simply by contemplating the elevator doors, grilles and mailboxes of such structures...
Like camp, Art Deco is an acquired taste-and not everyone wants to acquire it. Part fad, part cultivated eccentricity, it will survive in a scattering of artifacts. But not even its greatest admirers would commend it as a model of form for the future...