Heart Deco

Art Deco, with its exuberant passion for geometry, luxury and shiny chrome, cocooned troubled times in a layer of glitz. A century after the style gained its name, Gavin Plumley surveys one of the 20th century's most all- encompassing movements

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HOWEVER much I love history, I rarely want to live in the past. An exception is the period in which Art Deco gladdened everything in its path. It probably stems from childhood, when I'd often pass the Hoover Building in Perivale, Greater London. Its surging Aztec featherwork and dazzling white façade were fanciful enough, but were made even more outlandish by the contrast with their dreary suburban surroundings. Even now, having been converted into a supermarket and apartments, this former palace of industry conjures thoughts of Josephine Baker in a banana dress, cocktails on Burgh Island or RMS Queen Mary steaming over the horizon. When life proves devoid of brilliance, along comes Art Deco.

Originally called Moderne, the style was later renamed Art Deco after the Exposition internationale des arts décoratifs et indus-triels modernes held in Paris in 1925. Spanning the River Seine and the Grand Palais, with dozens of pavilions, the event featured 15,000 exponents of the movement. There were pleasure gardens, opera and ballet performances and endless opportunities to buy designs. It was, in many ways, the epitome of the interwar years: a celebration of freedom following the mayhem of 1914–18, with everyone blissfully unaware of what was just around the corner. In truth, however, Art Deco was much more than a snapshot in time.