Customer Reviews

Art Deco New York

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Art Deco New York by cultural historian and author David Garrard Lowe (who is also President of the Beaux Arts Alliance and lectures in such noted forums as the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, the American Academy in Rome, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York) offers a superbly organized and presented tour of seminal decorative designs during the transformative decades of the 20s and 30s when the art style known as "art deco" was affecting architecture, fashion, furniture, textiles, graphics, trains, automobiles, even Hollywood movie and Broadway theater stage sets. Profusely illustrated with period photography and artifacts, Art Deco New York is an impressive, "reader friendly", coffee-table book that would significantly enhance any personal, professional, academic, or community library architectural studies, art history, or American popular culture collection.

Garrard revives the restless, utopian, sensationalistic mood of the 1920s and '30s giving rise to the inimitable Art Deco style not only by pointing to buildings and their design features representing the style, but also by including posters, advertising, architectural drawings, furniture, and varied aspects of popular culture. The author evokes an understanding of Art Deco not mainly by discussion of aesthetics or art criticism, but by immersion in the spirit of the time between the World Wars, frequently with bountiful and in many cases, unfamiliar visual matter. The Empire State Building and Paul Manship's sculpture of Prometheus ringed by signs of the zodiac in Rockefeller Center are familiar Art Deco images, if often taken for granted. But designs of rooms, architectural details of buildings, trains and cars, and magazine covers and clothing fashion are often overlooked. Garrard demonstrates how deeply--thoroughly--Art Deco pervaded the culture; and points to elements of this vibrant, short-lived cultural period which continue.

For lovers of the 1920s and 1930s this is a fabulous book. From New York's stunning architecture to the social lives of the rich and famous, everything associated with New York when Gotham was truly the center of it all, this book is a trip back in time. Historically rich and a visual treat! New York in its finest hour.

If you love Art Deco, you will enjoy this book. The photos are excellent(you can frame them!), as is the text.
A great coffee table book and an engaging read.