Author: Paul Rhoads

To the Editor,

It is objected that I define Art Deco as a ‘style of design’ rather than, as Sam Wild defines it, ‘a synthesis and integration of the arts suited to a technological and post-industrial society’. I sympathize with and welcome this definition, and if our debate can be compared to a game of poker, and this definition be understood as a bet, I ‘see’ it and ‘raise’ it with the challenge to face up to its implications. In this letter I will try to explain what I think Sam’s definition implies and try to begin to explain what I think living up to it means.

First, however, I will refine and defend my critique of Art Deco. By calling Art Deco a ‘style of design’ I had no denigrating intention. Sam recognizes that aspects of Post-Impressionism, notably Cubism, were not generated by Art Deco but integrated by it. Art Deco was not a painting movement like Impressionism or Abstract Expressionism but a decorative aesthetic. Broadly speaking Art Deco is the application of a Cubism aesthetic to interior and architectural decoration and manufactured goods. And I do not make the error of confounding Art Deco with either Social Realism or persistent academicism.

Of course, and depending upon whom you ask and how you define it, Art Deco is more than the influence of Cubism, but a Cubism aesthetic is Art Deco’s most characteristic feature. Such an aesthetic was popular and fashionable in the 1920s because it signalled modernity at a time when modernity was popular and fashionable. Modernity is no longer popular and fashionable.

An important aspect of Art Deco is how it’s straight lines and simplified shapes lent it to industrial use. Of course Art Deco painting and sculpture was done by hand using traditional procedures, but what really defines Art Deco — the fabrics, furniture, and decorative elements in stamped and cast metal and moulded plastics — were machine made, and the way those things look is partly a consequence of that. I do not say this to invalidate Art Deco but to help us understand what it was. I have nothing against machine made goods — they are here to stay and are good when they are good — and being a designer myself I have nothing against design.

Cubism was an aspect of Post-Impressionism that had far reaching influence, and Art Deco was a style of decoration which was one of the results. This is not a value judgement, it is an observation. What Sam, and Fen also, are really interested in about Art Deco it seems to me is how it feels to them like an aesthetic that penetrated all aspects of art and touched all aspect of life, from architecture to book design, how it is a ‘cultural expression’, an art that reflected the spirit of a time and of a people; the mid-20th century developed western countries. With regard to this western orientation, it is widely believed that the source of Cubism is African art. If that were true Art Deco would be cosmopolitan. In fact the source of Cubism is Cezanne, but Cubism does have things in common with African art, namely jagged forms and earth colours. There was a vogue of African art in the early 20th century which accompanied, if it did not inspire, aspects of Post-Impressionism like Expressionism. It certainly influenced Art Brut. It is therefore not impossible that some Art Deco designers looked to African art, in which case, and to the extent that might be true, Art Deco may be cosmopolitan. I mention this because the question of cultural identity has long been evoked by Fen and is strongly implied by aspects of this debate. “Contemporary art” is a globalist phenomenon which acts like an acid on the western tradition. If Art Deco has a non-western aspect, concern about the possibly debilitating effects of cosmopolitanism may be warranted. I would be glad if Sam or Fen would dispel such doubts.

Art Deco is so important to Sam because he claims it is the last collective style to unite plastic and applied art in a total expression. It might be argued that the Abstract Expressionism of Barnet Newman and Mark Rothko (though not of Franz Klein and Pollack) were part of a post-Deco ‘total expression’ that included Bauhaus inspired architecture and design. But I myself argue that painting and the other fine arts have mostly collapsed and disappeared from our society, so if Sam’s ‘total expression’ is a thing, and if that thing depends on an integration of fine arts with design of usual objects, Art Deco was indeed the last, or at least one of the last such things.

The important question would be the relationship between a ‘total expression’, which would be a cultural phenomenon, and the art of painting. Specifically, was Cubism — which was invented by two painters at the beginning of the 20th century — the trickle-down source of Art Deco which then humidified all of society, or was Art Deco a cultural phenomenon of broad range of which Cubism was but one root? I raise this question because Sam advocates a ‘revival’ of Art Deco itself. If that project is serious it is absolutely essential that we understand what Art Deco is and how it came to be. It is not enough to imitate what we take to be the Art Deco style.

What do we take to be that style? Damian Chavez defines it broadly, including types of illustration and academic painting, while Sam restricts it to aspects of Post-impressionism. Personally I am ready to accept anyone’s definition since I think the term is as loose and approximate as most such labels, and what interests me is not the label but what people are trying to express when they invoke it. So when we talk about reviving Art Deco, if we don’t mean something vague like a total expression, but an actual style of painting and sculpture, I say the project is doomed.

It is true that the sort of Post-impressionism characteristic of Art Deco, like any manner of painting, can be imitated superficially, and its three underlying and animating qualities can be understood. They are:

1 – The painting education characteristic of the late 19th century which included academic and so-called modernist aspects, all of which are now completely lost (except to the extent I, and perhaps others, have personally revived them).

2 – Hopeful enthusiasm about technological progress.

3 – Happy optimism about a coming socialist paradise of prosperity, freedom, and justice, characteristic of the cultural elites between the wars.

If artists might regain some of the training enjoyed by the Art Deco painters (by studying with me or another such person) no one today authentically feels the hopeful enthusiasm about technology and happy optimism about socialism which characterized the cultural elites of the 1920s and 30s and is so clearly expressed in Art Deco. We can understand and sympathize with those feelings but who is seriously motivated by attitudes we cannot help seeing as naively innocent and childishly wide-eyed?

But Sam seems less concerned with style than with the spiritual well-being of our civilization. He recounts the shift in painting from representation to abstraction. His version of the story, which emphasizes Manet, is confused but abandonment of representation did occur, and I endorse the implication that non-objective painting is inhuman and that the fakery of “contemporary art” fails to fulfil our spiritual needs. Sam fears we are menaced by a deadening machine spirit. He dreams of a human art that penetrates all aspects of our life. He gives specific examples of what this would mean: our buildings should have sculptural decorations, our interiors should have murals and all the objects of our daily life should be beautifully artistic, the way Cellini made not only monumental sculpture but salt shakers.

I not only endorse this idea with enthusiasm, I have actually done my best to live it! I have not merely painted, etched, and sculpted, I have made buildings and decorated them inside and out with sculptures and murals. Furthermore I have designed furniture, books, and fonts. There are others painters and sculptors who are also designers of various kinds. But my life, like everyone’s life today, and my art, like all art today, is personal, even more or less solipsistic. But Sam dreams of a collective life nourished by a humanizing and totalizing art. My painting, sculpture, and design do not speak to him. But the sculptures of Fen de Villiers do. Why does Fen’s work interest Sam while mine does not? Sam wants to be carried on a great cultural wave, and Fen’s work seems to revive Cubism, the last manifestation of such a thing, while mine seems to revive something less modern. Furthermore, Sam is charmed by Fen’s enthusiastic cultural discourse which I denounce as vulgar heideggerianism.

I have been aware of Fen’s work for years, and have always been supportive of it. I did warn him that restarting the rusty motor of Futurism cannot be done, except on a personal basis. Fen is now rebranding his work Art Deco and to that extent Sam’s dream is coming true: there now exists a triumvirate — Fen, Sam, and Damian — reviving Art Deco in 2025! But artistically and intellectually these three guys are as far from each other as they are from me.

If not Art Deco but the spirit of a ‘total expression’ is the ideal, among Sam, Fen and Damian, I would seem to be the best model because of the variety of things I do. But I wager that Sam is less interested in that I design furniture than the unsatisfactory quality of its style. My architectural decoration does not say “modern!” to him the way he can see Art Deco said “modern!” to everyone in 1930. Sam is willing to have a revival of something, but he wants that something to speak to him where he is now, in a post-industrial, technological, agnostic, and modern society. Art Deco, the last artistic ‘total expression’, corresponds most closely to that society. It’s revival is the only human path forward. Sam denounces machine-like modernity but insists on an aesthetic calculated for manufacture by machines now out of date. He denounces the abstraction he says began with Manet but champions a sort of painting even more abstract. He calls for a human art but wants it to conform to a technological and agnostic society. He doesn’t like the art that our agnostic and technological society is actually giving him but thinks it will give him something better if it larps Art Deco.

It is for these reasons that I find the term ‘larp’ helpful. ‘Imitation’ can be exact or inexact, but larpery is superficial, fake, and unserious. Sam contrasts larping with “having the resources and skills to make something happen”. I have learned a great deal from Boucher but I make no effort to paint like him if only because I am influenced by other painters also. What I actually do is what I can manage to do with the resources and skills I have. In other words, like everyone else, I do my best. Art Deco is not going to be revived any more than rococo is going to be revived, not because we couldn’t eventually manage it, but because we don’t want to! We are not artisans working for aristocrats living in Versailles, or early 20th century bohemians and industrialist enthusiastic about the very abstraction Sam denounces. We may love and learn from rococo and Art Deco. They have aspects we can understand and with which we may sympathize, but we don’t want to share them. We have our own preoccupations; we are members of a failing middle class being swallowed up by globalism.

What art looks like is a consequence of artistic capacities and orientation. We can only do our best, and once we face up to that we can get serious about the problem this Art Deco debate really ought to raise: what is possible, what is ideal, what orientation should we share and how we should proceed, not to revive Art Deco, but to revive art itself, in a properly human and poetic form.

Regards,

Paul Rhoads

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