There have been very few design revolutions which, I believe, have so totally permeated all aspects of design in the 20th Century as the beautiful but rather short lived Art Deco revolution in design in the early 20th Century. It impacted all aspects of design from the fine arts ( cubism) to poster and glass design, to architecture ( railroad stations, skyscrapers such as the Empire State and Chrysler building in New York, and all the hotels of South Beach Miami), automobile and train design ( the Chrysler Air Flow, the 20th Century), furniture, household items, and interior design, artisitic design in film ( Fritz Laing"s Metropolis), fabric and clothing design and even shoe design. We admire it's decorative flavour combined with clean angular lines as it embodied a modern direction with futuristic intentions, versus the insular curves of the Art Nouveau movement which preceded it. I recall an exhibition I attended in Montreal last year at the Musee des Beaux Arts where the focus was on the evolution of Art Deco ( or as some call it, the Deco Moderne movement ) as it grew and developed in France in the 20's and then impacted Western Europe and North America well into the late 1930's. It's breadth of impact was staggering and it still impresses me today wherever I travel in Europe or North America to see it survive and mix well with other later periods of design. What other trends in design have had this pervasive impact on all aspects of modern cultural life? Bauhaus Modernism perhaps?
