Customer Reviews

Art Deco in Australia: Sunrise over the Pacific

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Despite its popularity amongst art loving aussies, for many years a scholarly vacuum has existed in regards to publications on Australian Art Deco. For while we have a wealth of beautiful Deco buildings, art and design from the interwar era that deserved to be celebrated in print... until very recently no books whatsoever have been published on the Australian variant of this well loved style. So you can imagine I had looked forward to the publication of Art Deco in Australia: Sunrise Over the Pacific with considerable relish for some time; unfortunately on purchasing the book it was something of an anticlimax, and I was truly disappointed by its overall lack of quality and superficiality. Let me explain in a little more detail...

Normally I can't be bothered to review a product that I dislike, but as an aussie who is passionate about all things Art Deco I had to make an exception for this shockingly bad book. If you want a good lesson in how not to publish an art book then Sunrise Over the Pacific is it, as it unfortunately has the look and feel of a book that was quickly cobbled together from old articles culled from magazines such as House & Garden or Women's Weekly, and oh dear, even the layout is more like that of a glossy "lifestyle magazine" than a serious art book. Sunrise Over the Pacific is an intellectually lightweight and unrewarding read for there is little or no discussion of the wider cultural context of Art Deco in Australia or of the many competing artistic trends of the period such as Interwar Gothic, Spanish Mission and Functionalist. Even "the great depression" is for the most part glossed over, giving one the impression that life was grand for everybody who lived in Australia during the 1920s and 1930s. Sadly the interwar era cannot be considered an elegant Art Deco playground, at least not for the average person who struggled to make ends meet and feed their families. If you really want to see how a book like this should have been written I suggest that you read Alastair Duncan's seminal classic American Art Deco, or even the wonderful A Spirit of Progress: Art Deco Architecture in Australia. What a great shame it is indeed that Craftsman House and its editors didn't spend a little more time on crafting a better book that might have become a classic title in its field of research, and perhaps, shown a more sophisticated side to Australia than many people overseas are aware of. So if you do decide to buy Art Deco In Australia: Sunrise Over the Pacific; all I can say is that it might be nice for the pretty pictures, but please don't expect to be intellectually enlightened about Australian Art Deco.