The Great Gatsby was written in the early 1920s, so the design style of the time was Beaux Arts moving into Art Deco. Here’s a quick look at both styles of architecture and interior design…
Beaux Arts style:
- incorporated elaborate, symmetrical, sculptural decoration with conservative modern lines, inspired by French and Italian Baroque, Rococo (“late Baroque”) and Classicist architecture
- various iterations between 1671-1920, peaking with “The Gilded Age” in the US
- found in cities everywhere, including Paris (of course), Buenos Aires, Hanoi, Shanghai, Melbourne, Perth, Montreal, Toronto, San Francisco, Boston, New York and Chicago
- the style lives on, with Ralph Lauren recently completing a beautiful new Beaux Arts building at 888 Madison Avenue and 72nd streets in New York.
See our Facebook photo gallery for lots more: Beaux Arts architecture and learn more from Wikipedia, as well as this photo gallery:
Suggested reading about Beaux Arts architecture:
- Beaux-Arts Architecture in New York: A Photographic Guide by Edmund V. Gillon Jr and Henry Hope Reed
- Gilded Mansions: Grand Architecture and High Society by Wayne Craven
- The Opulent Interiors of the Gilded Age: All 203 Photographs from Artistic Houses, with New Text by Arnold Lewis, James Turner and Steven McQuillin
- Beaux Arts New York: The City in the Gilded Years by David Garrard Lowe
- Gilded: How Newport Became America’s Richest Resort by Deborah Davis
Art Deco style:
- originated in France in the 1920s and spread internationally into the 1930s, waning during WW2
- the first use of the term “Art Deco” has been attributed to famed architect Le Corbusier
- influenced by Cubism, Constructivism, Functionalism, Modernism and Futurism
- symmetry, glamour and grandeur, celebrating craftsmanship and technological progress
- bold geometrical patterns, including sunbursts, chevron and zig zag, rectangles and spheres
- rich, lush colours, textures and ornamentation including aluminum, stainless steel, Bakelite, chrome, plastics, stained glass, inlay and lacquer, as well as contrasting colours (eg. black armchair with white piping trim)
- all areas of design were affected, including fashion, graphic arts, arc
hitecture, interior decor, cinema and industrial design - many cities around the world have been influenced by the period, including Paris, London, Barcelona, Berlin, Valencia, New York, Chicago, Detroit, Miami, Havana, Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro, Casablanca, Mumbai, Shanghai, Napier, Sydney and Melbourne.
Learn more about Art Deco via this Wikipedia summary, and enjoy our collection of Art Deco poster illustrations in this post, and in the following Art Deco photo gallery:
Suggested reading about Art Deco style:
- Art Deco Complete: The Definitive Guide to the Decorative Arts of the 1920s and 1930s by Alastair Duncan
- New York Deco by Richard Berenholtz
- American Art Deco: Architecture and Regionalism by Carla Breeze
- Architecture & Design Library: Art Deco by Young Mi Kim
- Art Deco Interiors: Decoration and Design Classics of the 1920s and 1930s by Patricia Bayer
- Art Deco Architecture: Design, Decoration, and Detail from the Twenties and Thirties by Patricia Bayer
- Art Deco: 1910-1939 by Charlotte Benton, Tim Benton, Ghislaine Wood
You might also like our posts relating to The Great Gatsby, which embraces Beaux Arts and Art Deco styles, as well as “old money” Georgian-inspired architecture:
See more on these photo gallery index pages:
- Architecture and design: beautiful buildings, gardens and decor
- Historical style: fashion, film, architecture
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Cheers, Natasha
www.myLusciousLife.com
Related posts:
Gatsby style: Mansions of the Gilded Age including Newport, Rhode Island, and New York
Gatsby style: The original houses which inspired F. Scott Fitzgerald, and the new film sets from The Great Gatsby 2013
SHOP THIS LOOK: Gatsby interior style – Daisy Buchanan’s sitting room in The Great Gatsby movie
Gatsby style: Embrace the lifestyle of “The Great Gatsby”
