On the scent of Art Deco

Abstract

Book synopsis: The definitive book on Art Deco: an elegant large-format hardcover with hundreds of museum-quality color reproductions featuring exquisite examples of Art Deco jewellery, ceramics, laquer, fashion, textiles, graphic design and art work Modern Taste: Art Deco in Paris, 1910-1935 offers readers an opportunity to appreciate, examine, assess and enjoy an artistic movement that defies easy definition but which has been described as last of the total styles: Art Deco. Comprehensive and beautifully designed, Modern Taste includes nearly 400 works in a wide array of media: painting, sculpture, furniture, fashion design, jewelry, film, architecture, glassware and ceramics are all represented, alongside the photography, drawings and advertisements that helped create modern taste. The book aims to question the almost total absence of Art Deco from the history of modern art and from curatorial practice, and to vindicate--as some exemplary cases did in the wake of the Deco revival from the 1970s onwards--not only the evident beauty of Art Deco but also the fascination exerted by this singularly modern phenomenon with all its cultural and artistic complexity. What we know as Art Deco was an alternative style to the avant-garde. It stood for a modernity that was pragmatic and ornamental rather than utopian and functional, and it became the great shaper of modern desire and taste, leaving its characteristic stamp on Western society in the early decades of the 20th century. An elegant and stylish addition to any design library.