Prizzi’s Honour 1985 - Robert McGregor - Cha Txa Cornell, Education online - Tate online
Charlie: So er how’s the decorating business?
Maerose: Oh it’s just great, Charlie. We’re always busy. Everything is art deco now.
Charlie: Art who? Prizzi’s Honor 1985 starring Jack Nicholson & Kathleen Turner & Anjelica Huston & Robert Loggia & John Randolph & William Hickey & Lee Richardson & Michael Lombard & C C H Pounder & Stanley Tucci & Lawrence Tierney et al, director John Huston
There was going to be no more poverty, no more ignorance, no more disease. Art Deco reflected that confidence, vigour and optimism by using symbols of progress, speed and power. Robert McGregor
The Art Deco movement, architecture from that period and sort of the industrial aesthetic from that period. Art Deco meets tribal kind of thing. All that is my primal inspiration. Pamela Love
Art Deco is a decorative style that is essentially an extension of the French Art Nouveau and English Aesthetic styles, but also includes elements of Arts and Crafts form. Some historians claim that because of its eclectic borrowing from so many sources, it should not be identified as a distinct style. Yet it has enjoyed recurrent popularity, and has contributed to later stylistic developments. The term Art Deco is used to describe a design style that originates around World War I, and runs through to World War II (c. 1915-1945).
The style emphasizes surface embellishment, drawing heavily on the colors and styles of some of the early modern art movements, from Impressionism through Cubism. Like many of the modern art styles, it was inspired by Chinese and Japanese art, both of which were popular during this period.
Art Deco furnishings frequently used marquetry, enamelling and other techniques to create surface interest. During the 1920s vivid color was often used. Both furniture and textiles tended to use decorative designs that exhibited a strong painterly quality reminiscent of Impressionist, and post-Impressionist, Fauve, and Cubist techniques. The forms of furniture and interiors combined sleek curves with angularity, the forms often quoting earlier decorative styles in a simplified form. Cha Txa Cornell, Education online
Named after the International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts held in Paris in 1925, Art Deco can be seen as successor to and a reaction against art nouveau. Seen in furniture, pottery, textiles, jewellery, glass etc. it was also a notable style of cinema and hotel architecture.
Its chief difference from art nouveau is the influence of cubism which gives art deco design generally a more fragmented, geometric character. However, imagery based on plant forms, and sinuous curves remained in some art deco design, for example that of Clarice Cliff in Britain. Tate online