THIS IS SO VERY COOL.... CAPTURES THE 1920'S FLAPPER GIRLS AND THE JAZZ CLUBS WORLDWIDE. GREAT DECO STYLE IMAGE OF A SWINGING BLACK AMERICANA COUPLE DANCING UP A STORM AT THE LATE NIGHT GIN JOINT. IT'S HISTORY AND FUN AT THE SAME TIME..... URUGUAYAN WORLD
PLEASE SEE PHOTO FOR DETAILS AND CONDITION OF THIS NEW POSTER
SIZE OF POSTER PRINT - 12 X 18 INCHES
DATE OF ORIGINAL PRINT, POSTER OR ADVERT - 1926
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The Charleston is celebrated on this date. This dance style was influenced by African culture and started during slavery in America.
Some historians assert that the "Ashanti Peoples" of Africa were the originators of the dance, with it being carried on and modified by slaves against the enforced rules of their masters. There are also descriptions and pictures of the dance in the Harper's Weekly Magazine, 1866, which is very similar to the Charleston. Specifically, Blacks living on a small island near Charleston, South Carolina, originated the steps. The Charleston was performed as early as 1903 and evolved into Harlem stage productions by 1913. Also, the Charleston dance established itself (worldwide) during the Ragtime-Jazz period.
In 1922, it was brought to show business and went public at the New Amsterdam Theater in New York when a "Ziegfeld Follies" production featured the Charleston. Noble Sissle and Eubie Blake introduced a young Ned Wayburn. He demonstrated what was to be the signature step of the Charleston. Wayburn (supposedly) choreographed a few more steps, and Sissle and Blake wrote the songs. It was an immediate hit. In the same year, a stage play by the name of "Liza" introduced the dance. Again on October 29, 1923, in the Flournoy Miller and Aubrey Lyles Broadway show "Runnin' Wild," Edith Mae Barnes claimed it was she who introduced the dance in that musical.
During the 1920s, women that did the Charleston were called "Flappers" because of the way they would flap their arms and walk like birds while dancing. Many men wore raccoon coats and straw hats. Not everyone had good luck with the Charleston. Some jobs of the day required employees to be competent to dance or teach the Charleston to get work, such as waiters and waitresses. Others saw the Charleston and flappers as the downfall to many moral issues of the day.
The dance craze known as the “Charleston” achieved world-wide fame nearly a century ago and has endured as the epitome of the carefree exuberance of the “Roaring Twenties.” Although this popular phenomenon shares a name with our home town, it arose from cultural ingredients stewing in the melting pot of New York City at the crest of the Jazz Age. We might not have invented the “Charleston” in Charleston, but evidence suggests that residents of the Palmetto City and of the Lowcountry in general provided the inspiration and key elements that define its iconic rhythm and footwork.
The “Charleston” is a multi-faceted cultural phenomenon that arose during the early 1920s. It’s a dance, it’s a tune, and it’s a set of lyrics (which most people have never heard). All three forms first captured public attention in late October 1923 in a Broadway revue called Runnin’ Wild, which ran for more than seven months at the New Colonial Theater in midtown Manhattan. That African-American production included music by James P. Johnson (1894–1955), lyrics by Cecil Mack (1873–1944), and the talents of a large cast of black singers and dancers. The popular success of Runnin’ Wild catapulted the “Charleston” to national and international fame within a period of less than two years. To this day, the “Charleston” is closely associated with the decade of the 1920s, an era frequently called the “Jazz Age.” Despite the existence of Federal laws prohibiting the sale and consumption of alcoholic beverages, that decade is largely remembered as an era of exuberant parties, superficial glamor, energetic jazz, and hedonistic excess in general. Separately and in tandem, the dance and the tune called “Charleston” epitomize the gay spirit of the “Roaring Twenties.”
So it’s a fair question to ask: What—if anything—does the cultural phenomenon known as the “Charleston” have to do with the city and county of Charleston, South Carolina? Well, that’s not an easy question to answer, but I’m willing to give it a try, as long as we all agree that we cannot plumb the full depth of this topic in one podcast. With that caveat, I’ll try to follow a narrow path through the dense cultural history and lead you to a reasonably satisfactory answer. In short, the connection between the “Charleston” music and dance and the place we call home is indirect, elusive, and difficult to articulate. Nevertheless, I assure you that a connection most definitely exists.
The genesis of the “Charleston” phenomenon in New York City in the early 1920s was a direct result of a large population shift now known as the “Great Migration.” During the first half of the twentieth century, millions of Americans of African descent left their homes in the various Southern states and moved northward in search of economic opportunities and greater civil liberties. This exodus began quietly in the years after the end of slavery in 1865 and increased a bit around the turn of the twentieth century as the so-called “Jim Crow” laws adopted by Southern states generally eroded the already-poor quality of life afforded to non-white citizens here. The stream of African Americans moving northward swelled significantly during World War I and remained strong for several decades. Historians of this phenomenon estimate that more than six million black Americans moved from the largely-agricultural South to the largely-industrial North between 1910 and 1970.
This sustained mass movement of people resulted in significant and long-lasting changes in our national economy and political demographics. It also had powerful cultural implications. People of African descent had been living and working in the Southern states for nearly three centuries before the 1920s, melding and adapting African cultural traditions amongst themselves and interacting with both Native American and European culture. Northern communities like New York weren’t completely devoid of their own African-American culture, of course, but the Great Migration infused communities like Harlem with a flood of new practices and energy. That fertile environment gave rise to a profusion of cultural expression that became known as the Harlem Renaissance in New York and similar phenomena in other Northern cities.
The “Charleston,” meaning both the song and the dance, serves as an excellent example of the cultural effects of the Great Migration. James P. Johnson, whose infectious and original “Charleston” tune is known around the globe, later said he had borrowed its distinctive syncopated rhythm from South Carolina longshoremen who had migrated to New York. Anyone familiar with the traditions of Gullah-Geechee spirituals will recognize that rhythm as an integral part of a Lowcountry shout or “ring shout,” so it’s not difficult to hear some truth in his statement. While working as a pianist in a nightclub frequented by former Charlestonians, Johnson improvised piano music to match their distinctive footwork and handclapping rhythms. Although a native of New Jersey, Johnson also demonstrated his familiarity with the Lowcountry his neighbors left behind in other compositions like his Carolina Shout of 1921 and his extended “Negro Rhapsody” of 1928 called Yamecraw.
Other early descriptions of the footwork associated with the “Charleston” dance mention New Yorkers observing Gullah-Geechee migrants strutting their vernacular stuff in Harlem nightclubs. A century after its birth, it’s now impossible to identify a specific person or event or location that directly inspired the creation of the “Charleston” dance, but contemporary newspaper reports provide useful clues. The success of Runnin’ Wild and its signature dance number caught the attention of local journalists, who in turn tried to describe the new phenomenon to a broader audience. Within a year of the show’s Broadway debut, even the Charleston Evening Post took note of the publicity and joined the growing conversation about the new dance craze.
“Something new in the way of advertising for Charleston is developing quite rapidly in New York,” said the Post in early November 1924, “and, if it follows the usual course, will in due time become the newest rage in the terpsichorean art.” More importantly for our fair city, the local press noted that the new dance sensation will “have the name of ‘Charleston’ on the tongues of thousands throughout the country.” That bold prediction proved to underestimate the dance’s international appeal, of course, but we have to remember that the “Charleston” seemed little more than a passing fad in 1924. Because the new dance was reputed to have authentic roots in the Palmetto City, however, the editors of the Evening Post deemed it necessary to reprint the entire text of a story from the New York World: I’d like to share the text, too, because I think it represents the best contemporary summary of the genesis of the “Charleston” dance:
“‘Can you do the ‘Charleston?’ That is the question generally asked in Harlem among negroes, irrespective of age, size or physical condition. In other sections of New York City the “Charleston” has its enthusiastic devotees, but not so many as in the 135th Street and Lenox Avenue district where they energetically indulge in this terpsichorean specialty on the ball room floor, in cabarets, ratskellers and even in the home.
On the street corners, day and night, crowds assemble to watch urchins ‘do the Charleston’ for voluntary contributions ranging from a penny upward. ‘Charleston’ contests are conducted weekly in North Harlem theaters patronized largely by negroes. On some occasions 30 or more contestants, usually boys, give individual exhibitions.
Danced somewhat indifferently by a few local negroes prior to the engagement of ‘Runnin’ Wild’ in the Colonial theater last season, the ‘Charleston’ began to grow in popularity when 22 girls and three boys in the colored production put it over in spectacular fashion at the close of the first act of a musical number of that name, written by Cecil Mack and Jimmie Johnson. Quick to appreciate something new and novel was being offered in the realm of dancing, white Broadway musical shows immediately made the ‘Charleston’ a feature.
The ‘Charleston,’ apparently of African origin and characterized by [a] tom-tom beat, is described as the wing of the buck and wing dance, only the dancer steps forward and backward instead of sideways. Usually, it is done without musical accompaniment and to the clapping of hands in two-four time. It is said to have been brought to New York by negroes formerly living in Charleston, S.C., having been first danced on the neighboring islands by negroes known as the “Geeche[e].
In recent months, the ‘Charleston’ has been supplemented with many new steps, the two most popular being the ‘camel walk’ and the ‘black bottom.’ To be a successful and graceful dancer of the ‘Charleston,’ agility and nimbleness of foot are the requisites—avoirdupois [heavy weight] being a decided handicap.”
Although it may be impossible to identify the specific individuals and incidents that catalyzed the “Charleston” phenomenon in early-twentieth-century Harlem, this 1924 newspaper report contains a few clues that appear to support a belief long-held here in Charleston. It mentions that most of the early practitioners of the dance steps were “boys”—specifically, poor boys or “urchins”—who frequently appeared on street corners giving “exhibitions” for pennies and other loose change. For readers familiar with the history of the Jenkins Orphanage Band, these words instantly call to mind the band’s annual migrations in the early twentieth century, during which they played and danced on street corners in Northern cities to raise money for their Charleston home. As the late Jack McCray described in his 2007 book about Charleston Jazz, musicians in the Palmetto City have long believed that it was the young boys of the touring Jenkins Orphanage Band who introduced both the distinctive rhythm and footwork that characterize the “Charleston” dance phenomenon.
For those of you not so familiar with the history of the Jenkins Orphanage Band, I’ll offer a brief synopsis to bring you up to speed. In December 1891, the Reverend Daniel J. Jenkins (1862–1937) established an Orphan Aid Society to assist indigent black children living in the lower wards of urban Charleston. (Rev. John L. Dart’s school, founded in 1895, served black children on the city’s north side). Reverend Jenkins’s work included a day school for boys and girls and an orphanage to house the neediest children. To help raise money for these charitable institutions, the Orphan Aid Society immediately sought to capitalize on one of the most valuable talents within the city’s black community: music. The Society solicited donations of band instruments and recruited some young adult black musicians to instruct some of the school children. By the mid-1890s, the Jenkins Orphanage, as it was commonly called, had a band of more than a dozen young boys who could play ragged versions of popular songs and dance tunes. Many writers have described the Jenkins Orphanage Band as the “cradle of jazz” in Charleston, but the roots of African-American band music in this city extend back nearly two centuries before Reverend Jenkins started his orphanage. That long and complicated story merits its own conversation, so for the present we’ll stick to the early twentieth century.
The youthful Jenkins Orphanage Band was a fixture of the local music scene—not only in Charleston, but in other communities as well. Every year for nearly half a century, the band set out by rail, steamship, and motor bus with adult chaperones to perform from Maine to Miami. They toured Southern cities in the winter months, and headed north every summer. At their peak in the 1920s, there were four Jenkins Orphanage bands on the road at the same time, and, for a while, an all-girl band as well. In communities with large black populations, the bands played indoor concerts and entertained crowds at barbeques and parties. Most of their performances took place on street corners and sidewalks, however, where they gathered pennies and nickels from passing pedestrians.
Surviving descriptions, photographs, moving pictures, and personal recollections all demonstrate that footwork was an integral part of the Jenkins Orphanage band’s routine. While the standing musicians might have been too busy making noise to dance in place, the ubiquitous band leader was often the star of the show. The smallest and perhaps youngest member or members of the troupe—perhaps too young to play an instrument—usually stood in front of the band, dancing and waving his arms in time with the music. Ostensibly “conducting” the performance, he was really putting on a show to entertain the audience. The energy and novelty of the young conductor’s fancy footwork was a key element in the band’s fund-raising success. Did the conductor perform “the” Charleston steps? We may never know for sure, but it seems likely that some Charleston-like moves were part of his physical repertoire.
Back in Charleston, fires at the Jenkins Orphanage headquarters in December 1936 and again in November 1988 destroyed most of the institution’s early records. One sound recording survives from a grainy 1928 newsreel, but the poor quality of its audio provides only a hint of the band’s brassy sound. The paucity of surviving resources now renders it difficult to reconstruct the details of the band’s musical characteristics, the itinerary its annual migrations, and the identity of its youthful participants. Thanks to surviving newspaper reports and oral histories, however, we know that Manhattan and Harlem were regular stops. It’s quite possible, therefore, that New Yorkers, specifically Harlemites, learned the distinctive rhythm and footwork that became known as the “Charleston” not from anonymous dockworkers who had migrated northward from the Palmetto City, but from the energetic boys in the Jenkins Orphanage Band.
In short, the “Charleston” dance phenomenon was a product of various cultural forces originating in Africa and Europe that germinated in the crucible of Charleston and blossomed in Harlem in the early 1920s. It arose from the urban black community and was quickly imitated by white artists who introduced it to broader audiences in New York and around the world. Over the past ninety-odd years, tens of millions of people have enjoyed its rhythm and energy that came to epitomize the Jazz Age. Even if they know nothing about our fair city by the sea, at least they know the name of Charleston.
In fact, the marketing and distribution of the “Charleston” dance represents another chapter in the history of this cultural phenomenon. If you’ve read any book or article about the history of the “Charleston” dance, or searched the vast digital ocean of the Internet for information on this topic, you’ve surely seen an image of a young white female dancing the “Charleston” with the uniformed boys of the Jenkins Orphanage Band standing behind her. That photograph, which has been reproduced thousands of times, was staged here in Charleston in the spring of 1926 as part of a promotional campaign, but few people remember the curious story behind its creation. Next week, we’ll continue this dance theme with the story of Beatrice Adelaide Jackson and her campaign to become the international queen of the “Charleston.”
Flappers were a subculture of young Western women in the 1920s who wore short skirts (knee height was considered short during that period), bobbed their hair, listened to jazz, and flaunted their disdain for what was then considered acceptable behavior. Flappers were seen as brash for wearing excessive makeup, drinking alcohol, smoking cigarettes in public, driving automobiles, treating sex in a casual manner, and otherwise flouting social and sexual norms. As automobiles became available, flappers gained freedom of movement and privacy. Flappers are icons of the Roaring Twenties, the social, political turbulence, and increased transatlantic cultural exchange that followed the end of World War I, as well as the export of American jazz culture to Europe. There was a reaction to this counterculture from more conservative people, who belonged mostly to older generations. They claimed that the flappers' dresses were 'near nakedness', and that flappers were 'flippant', 'reckless', and unintelligent.The slang term "flapper" may derive from an earlier use in northern England to mean "teenage girl", referring to one whose hair is not yet put up and whose plaited pigtail "flapped" on her back or from an older word meaning "prostitute". The slang word "flap" was used for a young prostitute as early as 1631.By the 1890s, the word "flapper" was used in some localities as slang both for a very young prostitute and, in a more general and less derogatory sense, of any lively mid-teenage girl.
The standard non-slang usage appeared in print as early as 1903 in England and 1904 in the United States, when novelist Desmond Coke used it in his college story of Oxford life, Sandford of Merton: "There's a stunning flapper" In 1907, English actor George Graves explained it to Americans as theatrical slang for acrobatic young female stage performers. The flapper was also known as a dancer, who danced like a bird—flapping her arms while doing the Charleston move. This move became quite a competitive dance during this era.
By 1908, newspapers as serious as The Times used the term, although with careful explanation: "A 'flapper', we may explain, is a young lady who has not yet been promoted to long frocks and the wearing of her hair 'up'". In April 1908, the fashion section of London's The Globe and Traveller contained a sketch entitled "The Dress of the Young Girl" with the following explanation:
The sketch is of a girl in a frock with a long skirt, "which has the waistline quite high and semi-Empire, ... quite untrimmed, its plainness being relieved by a sash knotted carelessly around the skirt."
By November 1910, the word was popular enough for A. E. James to begin a series of stories in the London Magazine featuring the misadventures of a pretty fifteen-year-old girl and titled "Her Majesty the Flapper". By 1911, a newspaper review indicates the mischievous and flirtatious "flapper" was an established stage-type.
By 1912, the London theatrical impresario John Tiller, defining the word in an interview he gave to The New York Times, described a "flapper" as belonging to a slightly older age group, a girl who has "just come out". Tiller's use of the phrase "come out" means "to make a formal entry into 'society' on reaching womanhood". In polite society at the time, a teenage girl who had not come out would still be classed as a child. She would be expected to keep a low profile on social occasions and ought not to be the object of male attention. Although the word was still largely understood as referring to high-spirited teenagers, gradually in Britain it was being extended to describe any impetuous immature woman By late 1914, the British magazine Vanity Fair was reporting that the Flapper was beginning to disappear in England, being replaced by the so-called "Little Creatures."
A Times article on the problem of finding jobs for women made unemployed by the return of the male workforce, following the end of World War One, was titled "The Flapper's Future". Under this influence, the meaning of the term changed somewhat, to apply to "independent, pleasure-seeking, khaki-crazy young women".
In his lecture in February 1920 on Britain's surplus of young women caused by the loss of young men in war, Dr. R. Murray-Leslie criticized "the social butterfly type... the frivolous, scantily-clad, jazzing flapper, irresponsible and undisciplined, to whom a dance, a new hat, or a man with a car, were of more importance than the fate of nations". In May of that year, Selznick Pictures released The Flapper, a silent comedy film starring Olive Thomas. It was the first film in the United States to portray the "flapper" lifestyle. By that time, the term had taken on the full meaning of the flapper generation style and attitudes
The use of the term coincided with a fashion among teenage girls in the United States in the early 1920s for wearing unbuckled galoshes, and a widespread false etymology held that they were called "flappers" because they flapped when they walked, as they wore their overshoes or galoshes unfastened, showing that they defied convention in a manner similar to the 21st century fad for untied shoelaces. Another suggestion to the origin of the term, in relation to fashion, comes from a 1920s fashion trend in which young women left their overcoat unbuttoned to allow it to flap back and forth as they walked, appearing more independent and freed from the tight, Victorian Era style clothing.
By the mid-1930s in Britain, although still occasionally used, the word "flapper" had become associated with the past. In 1936, a Times journalist grouped it with terms such as "blotto" as outdated slang: "[blotto] evokes a distant echo of glad rags and flappers ... It recalls a past which is not yet 'period'."
One cause of the change in young women's behavior was World War I, which ended in November 1918. The death of large numbers of young men in the war, and the Spanish flu pandemic which struck in 1918 killing between 20–40 million people, inspired in young people a feeling that life is short and could end at any moment. Therefore, young women wanted to spend their youth enjoying their life and freedom rather than just staying at home and waiting for a man to marry them.
Political changes were another cause of the flapper culture. World War I reduced the grip of the class system on both sides of the Atlantic, encouraging different classes to mingle and share their sense of freedom. Women finally won the right to vote in the United States on August 26, 1920. Women wanted to be men's social equals and were faced with the difficult realization of the larger goals of feminism: individuality, full political participation, economic independence, and 'sex rights'. They wanted to be treated like men and go smoking and drinking. In addition, many women had more opportunities in the workplace and had even taken traditionally male jobs such as doctors, lawyers, engineers and pilots. The rise of consumerism also promoted the ideals of "fulfilment and freedom", which encouraged women to think independently about their garments, careers, social activities.
Society changed quickly after World War I. For example, customs, technology, and manufacturing all moved quickly into the 20th century after the interruption of the war. The rise of the automobile was an important factor in flapper culture, as cars meant a woman could come and go as she pleased, travel to speakeasies and other entertainment venues, and use the large vehicles of the day for their popular activity, petting parties. Also, the economic boom allowed more people the time and money to play golf and tennis and to take vacations, which required clothing adapted to these activities; the flapper's slender silhouette was very suitable for movement.
The first appearance of the flapper style in the United States came from the popular 1920 Frances Marion film The Flapper, starring Olive Thomas. Thomas starred in a similar role in 1917, though it was not until The Flapper that the term was used. In her final movies, she was seen as the flapper image. Other actresses, such as Clara Bow, Louise Brooks, Colleen Moore and Joan Crawford would soon build their careers on the same image, achieving great popularity.
In the United States, popular contempt for Prohibition was a factor in the rise of the flapper. With legal saloons and cabarets closed, back alley speakeasies became prolific and popular. This discrepancy between the law-abiding, religion-based temperance movement and the actual ubiquitous consumption of alcohol led to widespread disdain for authority. Flapper independence was also a response to the Gibson girls of the 1890s. Although that pre-war look does not resemble the flapper style, their independence may have led to the flapper wisecracking tenacity 30 years later.
Writers in the United States such as F. Scott Fitzgerald and Anita Loos and illustrators such as Russell Patterson, John Held, Jr., Ethel Hays and Faith Burrows popularized the flapper look and lifestyle through their works, and flappers came to be seen as attractive, reckless, and independent. Among those who criticized the flapper craze was writer-critic Dorothy Parker, who penned "Flappers: A Hate Song" to poke fun at the fad. The secretary of labor denounced the "flippancy of the cigarette smoking, cocktail-drinking flapper". A Harvard psychologist reported that flappers had "the lowest degree of intelligence" and constituted "a hopeless problem for educators".
Another writer, Lynne Frame, said in her book that a large number of scientists and health professionals have analyzed and reviewed the degree of femininity of flappers' appearance and behavior, given the "boyishness" of the flapper look and behavior. Some gynecologists gave the opinion that women were less "marriageable" if they were less "feminine", as the husband would be unhappy in his marriage. In Frame's book, she also wrote that the appearance of flappers, like the short hair and short dress, distracted attention from feminine curves to the legs and body. These attributes were not only a fashion trend but also the expression of a blurring of gender roles.
The Gibson Girl
The Gibson Girl was one of the origins of the flapper. The invention of Charles Dana Gibson, the Gibson Girl changed the fashion, patterns, and lifestyles of the 1920s; these were much more progressive than the traditions of women's styles in the past. Before the Gibson Girl movement, women's voices as a group were infrequently heard. While some may see the Gibson Girl as just a fashion statement, it was much more broadly influential than that. "She depicted the modern woman, known popularly as the 'new woman', at a time when more women gained independence, began to work outside the home, and sought the right to vote and other rights.] Gibson's illustrations showed feminist women of all kinds who worried more about themselves than about pleasing the men in their lives. It was the first time a woman could actually concentrate on her own dreams and goals. The Gibson Girl also exemplified the importance of intelligence and learning rather than catering to men's needs
According to a website on Kate Chopin, "The Gibson Girl influenced society in the early 1900s much like Barbie influenced society of the late 1900s. The Gibson Girl crossed many societal lines opening the way for women to participate in things they had never done before. She, like Barbie, portrayed women as strong individuals who could play sports while maintaining perfectly coiffed hair and dress. She was criticized by many, much like Barbie, for creating an unrealistic ideal of what women should look like: perfect proportions and long flowing hair. Despite the criticism she was a trend setter, a model for women in both dress and action, just like Barbie."
The fashion of the Gibson Girl allowed women a much more active lifestyle than previously, in both work and recreation. "Skirts were long and flared, and dresses were tailored with high necks and close-fitting sleeves. The style was considered masculine, and this was sometimes emphasized by wearing a necktie. Though women still wore the restrictive undergarments known as corsets, a new health corset came into style that was said to be better for the spine than earlier corsets. An S-shaped figure became trendy, with a large bust and large hips, separated by a tiny, corseted waist. These styles [were] worn with confidence and poise by modern women. ... She might be pictured at a desk in a tailored shirtwaist or at a tennis party in an informal sports dress. She wore her long hair upswept in an elaborate mass of curls, perhaps topped by a simple straw hat. Though she was capable and independent, the Gibson girl was always beautiful and elegant." According to the Library of Congress, "Gibson's meticulous depiction of their hats accentuates the Gibson Girls' stylish attire and visually reinforces the impression of height, leading the eye to the mountains. ... Gibson shows off the classic Gibson Girl as a figure who embraced outdoor physical activities."
The Gibson Girl was uniquely American compared to European standards of style. She was an ideal: youthful, feminist, strong and a truly modern woman. Gibson emphasized that any women can be represented as a Gibson Girl, both those in the middle and the upper class. Minnie Clark, known as "the original Gibson Girl", was a model for Gibson and could portray any type of women needed for his illustration. Gibson drew with characteristic grace women of all races and classes so that any woman could feel that they, too, could be a graceful GibsoN.
Magazines
In 1922, a small-circulation magazine – The Flapper, located in Chicago – celebrated the flapper's appeal. On the opening page of its first issue, it proudly declared flappers' break with traditional values. Also, flappers defended them by contrasting themselves with earlier generations of women whom they called "clinging vines". They mocked the confining fashions and demure passivitf older women and reveled in their own freedom. They did not even acknowledge that the previous generation of female activists had made the flappers' freedom possible.
In the 1920s, new magazines appealed to young German women with a sensuous image and advertisements for the appropriate clothes and accessories they would want to purchase. The glossy pages of Die Dame and Das Blatt der Hausfrau displayed the "Girl"—the flapper. She was young and fashionable, financially independent, and was an eager consumer of the latest fashions. The magazines kept her up to date on fashion, arts, sports, and modern technology such as automobiles and telephones.
Although many young women in the 1920s saw flappers as the symbol of a brighter future, some also questioned the flappers' more extreme behavior. Therefore, in 1923, the magazine began asking for true stories from its readers for a new column called "Confessions of a Flapper". Some of these were lighthearted stories of girls getting the better of those who underestimated them, but others described girls betraying their own standards of behavior in order to live up to the image of flappers. There were several examples: a newlywed confessed to having cheated on her husband, a college student described being told by a boyfriend that she was not "the marrying kind" because of the sexual liberties she had permitted him, and a minister's daughter recounted the humiliation of being caught in the lie of pretending she was older and more sophisticated than she was. Many readers thought that flappers had gone too far in their quest for adventure. One 23-year-old "ex-vamp" declared: "In my opinion, the average flappers from 15 to 19 were brainless, inconsiderate of others, and easy to get into serious trouble."
So, among the readers of The Flapper, parts of them were celebrated for flappers' spirit and appropriation of male privilege, while parts of them acknowledged the dangers of emulating flappers too faithfully, with some even confessing to violating their own codes of ethics so as to live up to all the hype.
Art Deco, short for the French Arts Décoratifs, and sometimes just called Deco, is a style of visual arts, architecture, and product design, that first appeared in France in the 1910s (just before World War I), and flourished in the United States and Europe during the 1920s and 1930s. Through styling and design of the exterior and interior of anything from large structures to small objects, including how people look (clothing, fashion and jewelry), Art Deco has influenced bridges, buildings (from skyscrapers to cinemas), ships, ocean liners, trains, cars, trucks, buses, furniture, and everyday objects like radios and vacuum cleaners.
It got its name after the 1925 Exposition internationale des arts décoratifs et industriels modernes (International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts) held in Paris.
Art Deco combined modern styles with fine craftsmanship and rich materials. During its heyday, it represented luxury, glamour, exuberance, and faith in social and technological progress.
From its outset, Art Deco was influenced by the bold geometric forms of Cubism and the Vienna Secession; the bright colours of Fauvism and of the Ballets Russes; the updated craftsmanship of the furniture of the eras of Louis Philippe I and Louis XVI; and the exoticized styles of China, Japan, India, Persia, ancient Egypt and Maya art. It featured rare and expensive materials, such as ebony and ivory, and exquisite craftsmanship. The Empire State Building, Chrysler Building, and other skyscrapers of New York City built during the 1920s and 1930s are monuments to the style.
In the 1930s, during the Great Depression, Art Deco became more subdued. New materials arrived, including chrome plating, stainless steel and plastic. A sleeker form of the style, called Streamline Moderne, appeared in the 1930s, featuring curving forms and smooth, polished surfaces. Art Deco is one of the first truly international styles, but its dominance ended with the beginning of World War II and the rise of the strictly functional and unadorned styles of modern architecture and the International Style of architecture that followed.
Art Deco took its name, short for arts décoratifs, from the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes held in Paris in 1925, though the diverse styles that characterised it had already appeared in Paris and Brussels before World War I.
Arts décoratifs was first used in France in 1858 in the Bulletin de la Société française de photographie. In 1868, the Le Figaro newspaper used the term objets d'art décoratifs for objects for stage scenery created for the Théâtre de l'Opéra. In 1875, furniture designers, textile, jewellers, glass-workers, and other craftsmen were officially given the status of artists by the French government. In response, the École royale gratuite de dessin (Royal Free School of Design), founded in 1766 under King Louis XVI to train artists and artisans in crafts relating to the fine arts, was renamed the École nationale des arts décoratifs (National School of Decorative Arts). It took its present name, ENSAD (École nationale supérieure des arts décoratifs), in 1927.
At the 1925 Exposition, architect Le Corbusier wrote a series of articles about the exhibition for his magazine L'Esprit Nouveau, under the title "1925 EXPO. ARTS. DÉCO.", which were combined into a book, L'art décoratif d'aujourd'hui (Decorative Art Today). The book was a spirited attack on the excesses of the colourful, lavish objects at the Exposition, and on the idea that practical objects such as furniture should not have any decoration at all; his conclusion was that "Modern decoration has no decoration".
The actual term art déco did not appear in print until 1966, in the title of the first modern exhibition on the subject, held by the Museum of Decorative Arts in Paris, Les Années 25 : Art déco, Bauhaus, Stijl, Esprit nouveau, which covered the variety of major styles in the 1920s and 1930s. The term was then used in a 1966 newspaper article by Hillary Gelson in The Times (London, 12 November), describing the different styles at the exhibit.
Art Deco gained currency as a broadly applied stylistic label in 1968 when historian Bevis Hillier published the first major academic book on it, Art Deco of the 20s and 30s. He noted that the term was already being used by art dealers, and cites The Times (2 November 1966) and an essay named Les Arts Déco in Elle magazine (November 1967) as examples. In 1971, he organized an exhibition at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, which he details in his book The World of Art Deco.
Origins
Society of Decorative Artists (1901–1945)
The emergence of Art Deco was closely connected with the rise in status of decorative artists, who until late in the 19th century were considered simply as artisans. The term arts décoratifs had been invented in 1875, giving the designers of furniture, textiles, and other decoration official status. The Société des artistes décorateurs (Society of Decorative Artists), or SAD, was founded in 1901, and decorative artists were given the same rights of authorship as painters and sculptors. A similar movement developed in Italy. The first international exhibition devoted entirely to the decorative arts, the Esposizione Internazionale d'Arte Decorativa Moderna, was held in Turin in 1902. Several new magazines devoted to decorative arts were founded in Paris, including Arts et décoration and L'Art décoratif moderne. Decorative arts sections were introduced into the annual salons of the Sociéte des artistes français, and later in the Salon d'Automne. French nationalism also played a part in the resurgence of decorative arts, as French designers felt challenged by the increasing exports of less expensive German furnishings. In 1911, SAD proposed a major new international exposition of decorative arts in 1912. No copies of old styles would be permitted, only modern works. The exhibit was postponed until 1914; and then, because of the war, until 1925, when it gave its name to the whole family of styles known as "Déco".
Art Deco was not a single style, but a collection of different and sometimes contradictory styles. In architecture, Art Deco was the successor to and reaction against Art Nouveau, a style which flourished in Europe between 1895 and 1900, and also gradually replaced the Beaux-Arts and neoclassical that were predominant in European and American architecture. In 1905 Eugène Grasset wrote and published Méthode de Composition Ornementale, Éléments Rectilignes, in which he systematically explored the decorative (ornamental) aspects of geometric elements, forms, motifs and their variations, in contrast with (and as a departure from) the undulating Art Nouveau style of Hector Guimard, so popular in Paris a few years earlier. Grasset stressed the principle that various simple geometric shapes like triangles and squares are the basis of all compositional arrangements. The reinforced-concrete buildings of Auguste Perret and Henri Sauvage, and particularly the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, offered a new form of construction and decoration which was copied worldwide.
In decoration, many different styles were borrowed and used by Art Deco. They included pre-modern art from around the world and observable at the Musée du Louvre, Musée de l'Homme and the Musée national des Arts d'Afrique et d'Océanie. There was also popular interest in archaeology due to excavations at Pompeii, Troy, and the tomb of the 18th dynasty Pharaoh Tutankhamun. Artists and designers integrated motifs from ancient Egypt, Africa, Mesopotamia, Greece, Rome, Asia, Mesoamerica and Oceania with Machine Age elements.
Other styles borrowed included Russian Constructivism and Italian Futurism, as well as Orphism, Functionalism, and Modernism in general. Art Deco also used the clashing colours and designs of Fauvism, notably in the work of Henri Matisse and André Derain, inspired the designs of art deco textiles, wallpaper, and painted ceramics. It took ideas from the high fashion vocabulary of the period, which featured geometric designs, chevrons, zigzags, and stylized bouquets of flowers. It was influenced by discoveries in Egyptology, and growing interest in the Orient and in African art. From 1925 onwards, it was often inspired by a passion for new machines, such as airships, automobiles and ocean liners, and by 1930 this influence resulted in the style called Streamline Moderne.
Art Deco was associated with both luxury and modernity; it combined very expensive materials and exquisite craftsmanship put into modernistic forms. Nothing was cheap about Art Deco: pieces of furniture included ivory and silver inlays, and pieces of Art Deco jewellery combined diamonds with platinum, jade, coral and other precious materials. The style was used to decorate the first-class salons of ocean liners, deluxe trains, and skyscrapers. It was used around the world to decorate the great movie palaces of the late 1920s and 1930s. Later, after the Great Depression, the style changed and became more sober.
A good example of the luxury style of Art Deco is the boudoir of the fashion designer Jeanne Lanvin, designed by Armand-Albert Rateau (1882–1938) made between 1922 and 1925. It was located in her house at 16 rue Barbet de Jouy, in Paris, which was demolished in 1965. The room was reconstructed in the Museum of Decorative Arts in Paris. The walls are covered with moulded lambris below sculpted bas-reliefs in stucco. The alcove is framed with columns of marble on bases and a plinth of sculpted wood. The floor is of white and black marble, and in the cabinets decorative objects are displayed against a background of blue silk. Her bathroom had a tub and washstand made of sienna marble, with a wall of carved stucco and bronze fittings.
By 1928 the style had become more comfortable, with deep leather club chairs. The study designed by the Paris firm of Alavoine for an American businessman in 1928–30, is now in the Brooklyn Museum.
By the 1930s, the style had been somewhat simplified, but it was still extravagant. In 1932 the decorator Paul Ruaud made the Glass Salon for Suzanne Talbot. It featured a serpentine armchair and two tubular armchairs by Eileen Gray, a floor of mat silvered glass slabs, a panel of abstract patterns in silver and black lacquer, and an assortment of animal skins.
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