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| Clement Rosseau (French, 1872–1950). Table, 1924. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Fletcher Fund, 1972 (1972.283.2). |
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More about this Exhibition
The Metropolitan Museum of Art presents "Art Deco Paris," an exhibition highlighting Art Deco masterworks in the Museum's collection, through February 27, 2005. It serves as a complement to the major exhibition "Ruhlmann: Genius of Art Deco," also at the Metropolitan and on view concurrently.
"Art Deco Paris" features approximately fifty outstanding works by leading Parisian designers, all contemporaries (and in some cases competitors) of Émile-Jacques Ruhlmann. The exhibition includes furniture by Armand Albert Rateau and Clement Rousseau; silver by Puiforcat; glass by René Lalique; and costumes by Jeanne Lanvin.
The Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes, 1925
Art Deco in The Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Art Deco Style
Exhibition Organizers and Credits
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The Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes, 1925
In 1912, the French government proposed an international decorative arts exhibition to reestablish France as an arbiter of good taste and modern style, producing luxury goods of a quality unmatched by any other country. The exhibition, planned for 1915 but postponed by the onset of World War I, finally took place in 1925, at the height of what was later dubbed the Art Deco period.
Joseph Breck, curator of the Department of Decorative Arts at the Metropolitan Museum in the 1920s, visited the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes, and among his most important purchases were a monumental ebony and gilt-bronze desk and chair, which formed the centerpiece of the highly influential Suë et Mare pavilion. This desk and chair, together with a Suë et Mare-designed carpet later commissioned by the Museum to be shown with them, are featured in the exhibition. Breck's acquisitions were among the earliest of any by a public institution of objects in the Art Deco style and provided the foundation for the Metropolitan's outstanding collection.
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Art Deco in The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Since the landmark Exposition, the Museum has continued to build its collection of Art Deco design and decorative art. In 1976, it received an important gift of works made for the French ocean liner Normandie, perhaps the last great expression of Art Deco taste. Many of the best-known Art Deco designers, such as Jean Dunand, Lalique, and Ruhlmann, as well as notable French manufacturers such as Christofle and Daum, created settings for the ship, which was designed to seduce the most sophisticated traveler. The verre églomisé (reverse painted and gilded glass) panels by Jean Dupas depicting the history of navigation, made for the Normandie's first-class salon, are on view as well as a tapestry-upholstered armchair and examples of silver designed for the first-class dining room.
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The Art Deco Style
The use of precious materials—ivory, shagreen, rare woods, and gold and platinum leaf—were often employed by Art Deco designers, using the highly refined techniques seen in eighteenth-century aristocratic interiors. Elaborate inlays, gilding, lacquer work techniques from China and Japan, and other embellishments were used to impart luxury and modernity at the same time. Taken together, the objects displayed in "Art Deco Paris" provide an overview of the Art Deco style at its best.
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Exhibition Organizers and Credits
"Art Deco Paris" is organized by J. Stewart Johnson, consultant for Modern Design and Architecture, and Jane Adlin, assistant curator, of the Metropolitan's Department of Modern Art. Exhibition design is by Daniel Kershaw, exhibition designer; graphics are by Sophia Geronimus, senior graphic designer; and lighting is by Clint Ross Coller and Rich Lichte, lighting designers, all of the Museum's Design Department.
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