| Lancette Arts Journal Founded in 2000 |
Art Reviews From our Archive |
September 2003 |
Art Deco
1910 - 1939
is at the ROM to January 4, 2004
By Alidė Kohlhaas
Art Deco has so many icons that it is hard to pick out just one that will symbolize an era of design and art that lasted almost 40 years. Unlike today, when an art style survives at most a decade, Art Deco evolved slowly, but steadily as can be seen in the outstanding exhibit now at the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM). Perhaps, it was fortunate that the museum staff was unable to install the 1934 McLaughlin Buick Sport Coupe inside the actual display space. This stunning, maroon, two-door coupe, tells it all. It is the embodiment of an era of light-hearted elegance that leaves one hunger for more style in our own lives now. So, it is fitting that it has a space of its own at the entrance to the exhibit and thus becomes the symbol of its time.
Art Deco 1910-1939 arrived at the ROM from the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, where it was a hit earlier this year. Not the entire show could be fitted into the ROM's display space, but what is there, including some items from the ROM's own collection, tells a wonderful tale of the history and development of the art and design that until the 1960s had no specific name.
The exhibit features art works, posters, ceramic and glassware, fashion, jewelry, furniture, architectural designs, textiles, and utilitarian items such as an outboard motor, radios and clocks that have been transformed into quasi objects d'art.
Of all of the items displayed in this exhibit, the textiles designed by various well-known artists are the least successful. In an age when communication was still a new technology, these fabric designs were inspired by what seemed then exotic societies from the ancient Egyptians, Greeks, Aztecs, Mayans . . .
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