Jennifer D. answered • 11/14/19
Patient and Good-Humored Cornell Grad for Literary Enrichment, SAT/ACT
Art Deco, along with Art Nouveau and the Arts and Crafts Movement, responded to a set of conditions that we generally term Modernity. What makes it special is its unique response to these conditions, and the ideology that such a response implies. I'll explain with some background and comparisons.
In the Arts and Crafts Movement, for example, the rise of industrialization, with its mass-produced products, meant that goods that used to be made by hand - that is, by a particular person's hand - were now made with industrial processes that erase - or at least hide - the work of a hand. The consumer's inability to detect or imagine the presence of an individual's labor in the product makes that product industrial and anonymous. Arts and Crafts sought to restore (or invent) appreciation for the traditional craftsman, a figure whose glory days they imagined in Medieval Europe. The result is an aesthetic full of inventive medieval motifs and images meant to evoke life on a village or small town scale. Everything is made by hand with materials that do not require industrial processes to produce, ie. wood, glass, fabric, etc.
Art Nouveau, by contrast, embraced more industrial techniques but still resisted the aesthetics of modern technology. Its style is defined by curving lines, motifs from the natural world, the evocation of the organic, the natural, the soft and the liberated to redeem the harshness of urbanity.
Art Deco, by contrast, embraces the urban and the modern to an extreme degree. This is the essential shift. While Arts and Crafts pined for an imaginary past in an idyllic Medieval village and Art Nouveau dreamed of perhaps an even more mythical state of man united to a nurturing natural environment, Art Deco dreams of the future. It does not see urbanity as a fall from grace but rather as an achievement that confirms the grand destiny of man to make himself more than what he is. What man makes then (the city, technology, artifice) is celebrated. If you look at Art Deco human figures, they are athletic, idolized, and almost sexless. The perfection and control of the human body is celebrated much like the control of the natural world via technology is celebrated. Art Deco relishes speed and light. It loves cars, trains, machines, skyscrapers, and light bulbs. It imagines cities as radiant beacons signaling that man is ready for the future. That said, Art Deco does draw on the past for symbols and motifs, but it tends to go back to ancient civilizations whose formality and monumentality coincide with its ambition - as well as its love for artifice and the exotic. Egyptian influence seems most common, though Meso-American inspiration also figures spectacularly in American cities like Chicago. Art Deco wants modern man to aspire to be kindred spirits of these great cultures, plus the conveniences of modern technology and socioeconomic freedom. Art Deco is special because it conceives of the city as a place of sleek steel and shining light, not harsh iron and coal smoke and poverty, which brings me to my final point: Art Deco likes to be expensive. It rose to prominence during an economic boom in America (pre-stock-market-crash, pre-some of the horrors of the 20th century) and the faith it expressed in the city, in man, and in the future was also a faith in capitalism and in the pleasures to be attained through wealth. This is why Art Deco design is rich is detail as well as materials - think Great Gatsby.
To sum up, Art Deco is important because it expressed a response to modern urban conditions - including consumer capitalism and cosmopolitanism - that was wildly optimistic and ambitious. It embraces technology, artifice, urbanity, consumerism, wealth, and decadence. It's gorgeous, bright, monumental, and sleek. It's a recklessly optimistic dream of a new kind of man, one that was arguably lost forever just a decade or two later.