Art Deco and Streamlining
This was Cert IV essay that was a little more tongue in cheek than usual. Luckily, most of the content stood up, or Kat, our lecturer, might have seen to it that I couldn't.
Since then I've noticed that a French website was hot-linking an image from this website. How's that for karma?
Post World-War-One France was an optimistic country. It was the
‘Roaring Twenties’ and the ‘War to End All Wars’ was over. For
a change, no other European country was occupying its land or
spanking it on the battlefield. It had attracted the likes of
authors Hemingway, Stein and Fitzgerald. It considered itself
the world leaders in style. It was pretty full of itself, but
it wasn’t silly.
The 1900 Paris Exposition had been huge, impressive and lost
more money than they’d care to talk about. In 1925 it was their
turn again. They were jealous of their chic image and America,
physically remote and undamaged by WW1, had impressed the world
in 1893, 1904 and 1915. Art Nouveau had been a good thing but
it had run its course. The whiplash styling had become passé and
France needed to come up with something. French Art Nouveau was
curvilinear; they’d never paid any attention to Charles Rennie
Mackintosh with his persistent right-angles and now was not the
time to start.
Annoyingly, the Bauhaus was flourishing without a compound curve
in sight and the Cubists had grabbed attention the world over.
Outrageously, this was being largely spearheaded by Germans and
Spaniards (with the exception of Georges Braque, the Cubist).
Square, square, square… how could it become a French innovation?
Does ‘Avant Garde’ sound German, for heaven’s sake?
Africa! Maybe it was Josephine Baker or the fact they had been
‘civilising’ natives at gunpoint there for years. Anyway, African
tapestry and carvings were angular, bold and theirs for the taking.
The Exposition could be 'new' and French. On with the show!
Art Deco’s essence was sleekness, geometry, symmetry and repetition.
Three horizontal, parallel, equidistant lines could have almost
become a logo for the movement; it pretty much was, years later,
for Raymond Loewy. Constant radius curves were also part of the
plan.
Newly available materials and processes were important in product
designs to flaunt modernity. Plastics (such as Bakelite) and chrome
plated steel would help put distance from traditional woods and
fabrics. Art Deco wasn’t a product of the soil – it was modern.
It wasn’t grown – it was manufactured.
As with any change for the sake of change, there was someone
ready to pin a tail on the Emperor's New Clothes. Contemporary
design writer, Marie Dormoy had this to say: “Art Deco is superficial,
and merely replaces one decorative vocabulary with another.”
Although America didn’t officially attend the 1925 Exposition,
Art Deco certainly crossed the Atlantic. Sleek parallel lines
worked their way around every diner and filling-station awning
that could afford a city architect. The Zigzag variant of Deco
watched New York from the top of Chrysler Building.
But as the Chrysler building went up, the Wall Street Crash of
1929 stopped America’s progress. The devil-may-care Roaring-Twenties
with electric power in rural homes and Model T Fords making the
distances less forbidding went suddenly, very, quiet. The Great
Depression stunned America no less than anywhere else and the
hunger felt in that time wasn’t easily forgotten. The business
of product marketing became far more serious.
Advances in plastic and metal fabrication techniques had been
significant but existing office and domestic devices looked like
a collection of their components hurriedly bolted together. Surely
aesthetics was for painting and sculpture, not washing machines;
there was no reason it should be any other way. No reason except
market domination and corporate survival.
"Between two products equal in price, function and quality,
the one with the most attractive exterior will win."
Raymond Loewy, Industrial Designer
Rather than (expensively) agonise over every component to make it a free-standing
work of art, the (possibly ugly) working parts could be wrapped in a sleek gleaming
box. Testament to this philosophy is that today, we’re far more
likely to drive a Ford than a Bugatti. Separating the shell from
the works not only made the production of better looking items
cheaper it also provided scope to address the physical and psychological
needs of the customer. Even Moholy-Nagy had to admit that the
new forms could be used to improve the product’s physical strength
and make it easier to manufacture. Conveniently for manufacturers,
you could also camouflage hasty modifications or shortcuts.
Streamlining was born in America and with it came a more contrived
attempt to engender desire in the customer. New is good and fast
is new. So, fast must be good.
“The teardrop swelled, divided and multiplied, became garnished
with ribbons of chrome and elevated on an altar of sales.”
Edgar Kaufmann Jr, Industrial Design Historian
The trademark wind-tunnel look came to the fore and frequently,
the purist Deco uniform curves gave way to the teardrop. Design
itself also underwent change. Of the ‘big four’ Streamlining designers:
Raymond Loewy, Norman Bel Geddes, Walter Dorwin Teague and Henry
Dreyfuss, only the latter had no background in advertising. Fortunately
the worst teardrop-charlatans quickly became unstuck when it got
beyond the concept sketch stage, but the manufacturers were now
on their guard. Businessmen began to expect scale models, presentation
concepts and advertising suggestions.
Image was not only an important aspect of the design; it also
became important for the designer. They had to present a quality
the manufacturers wanted to be associated with. Design became
a business in its own right.
While Streamlining was applied to the most stubbornly inanimate
items such as refrigerators, it had a far more practical application
in the world of transport.
One of the landmark designs of the 1930’s was the Carl Breer’s
Chrysler Airflow. Before the Airflow cars had a number of problems.
Any veteran of overnight train trips will avoid riding at the
end of the carriage, over the axles. This is the area that deflects
the most over bumps and is the noisiest. With cars still based
on horse-drawn carriages, the natural inclination was to balance
the passenger over what was once the single (now rear) axle. This
styling had largely persisted. The engine was customarily rear
of the front axle because there was so much room available. The
shape of the vehicle was dictated by whatever sized boxes were
thought necessary to house components, or to hang them off of
and there was no attempt at aerodynamics either; early cars were
gently trundling garden sheds.
Chrysler changed the last point by stuffing huge straight-eight
motors into his cars – they could build up a fair pace and aerodynamics
became relevant. Modern Streamline style could help here. Unlike
the brave, radical but ultimately daft-looking effort of R. Buckminster
Fuller, the Dymaxion, Breer wanted modern styling to co-exist
with mundanities as rearward visibility, weight distribution and
selling the thing.
Breer was reputed to have been inspired by contemporary aircraft
and, not one to mess about, sought aid from Orville Wright. This
combination led to the first use of a wind-tunnel in automotive
styling. Breer stuffing models of competitor’s cars into the wind-tunnel
facing backwards happened around the time Prohibition laws were
being repealed - coincidence? Whatever the motivation, Breer discovered
the pointy front and slab back-end was the wrong way around. While
it looked like an (occasionally) road-going sneeze – the Dymaxion
wasn’t entirely silly.
Breer enclosed the Airflow in a radical new shape. The front was
as vertical as possible while permitting visibility over the huge
engine while the back sloped gently down towards the road. The
car body wasn’t a tub bolted onto the traditional ladder frame,
but borrowed more aircraft technology in the shape of the space-frame.
This is a very strong, lightweight, triangulated structure over
which thin steel panels could be fixed. To save on tooling costs,
diagonally opposite doors were stamped on the same press then
trimmed to suit their application. While he was at it, he moved
the heavy engine over the front wheels to help damp suspension
oscillation and brought the occupants forward in-between the axles
for a better ride. Streamlining had been achieved, 21st century
car manufacture predicted and he even had time to throw some Deco
parallel lines at the grille. But there were a few problems.
For all their talk of meeting the future head-on, the car buying
public was conservative at heart and sadly, the Airflow was undeniably
a slab-sided shed of a car. Just as Beta was the superior video
format, VHS had the sexier shape and won the day; the Airflow
rescued generations from crap vehicle design but was ugly and
discontinued.
Far more success was had by the Douglas DC-3. The faster you
go the more important it is to get Streamlining right At the time
of its maiden flight in 1935, things weren’t much faster. Head
of the design team was Arthur E. Raymond who worked for Douglas
though until the DC-8 before moving on to NASA.
The DC-3 (Douglas Commercial-3) was commissioned by American Airlines
to leapfrog their rivals and sponsors of the DC-2 – Trans Western
Airlines. The DC-2 could only carry 14 passengers and had a limited
range. The DC-2’s successor could carry 14 passengers lying down
for overnighters in its DST (Douglas Sleeper Transport) guise
or 21 seated. Economies of scale freed the airline from their
reliance on mail-carrying income so they could plan their routes
more around the lucrative passenger market.
While operational advances such as dual-controls, retractable
landing gear and aeronautic gadgets impressed the pilots, the
designers found plenty to get excited about. It was reputed to
be the pin-up of choice for aspiring designers through to the
1950’s.
“The DC-3 is, to my eyes, the most perfect example of modern
design, and I wouldn’t know where to look to find its equal”
Walter Dorwin Teague, Industrial Designer
The DC-3 was all metal in an age where wood and cloth were customary.
The reason so many were left gleaming in bare metal probably had
nothing to do with the price of paint – it looked good, it looked
modern and it looked fast. The proportions are still something
special, but the ultra-clean appearance was based on Streamline
design and good engineering. Metal fabrication skills had progressed
to where the wings could be made thinner and longer and the body
rounder with no loss of structural integrity. The sleek outer
skin was a stressed-member, earning its keep in structural duties
as well as good looks. Looks alone can’t guarantee longevity in
the commercial world and although the aesthetics were impressive;
it’s a testimony to the plane’s engineering that it was so readily
converted for military duty as the Dakota. That’s good, but to
have the things still in commercial use until 1983 borders on
mind-buggering. It was the choice of airlines around the world
it was said that the only thing you could replace a DC-3 with
was another DC-3.
It would be churlish to exclude the ‘poster boys’ of Streamlining.
They epitomised the style others may simply have been associated
with. So what was it about?
Henry Dreyfuss was born into a family known for its theatrical
sets and continued in this vein under Norman Bel Geddes before
focusing on product design. The work of his that interests me
the most is the 20th Century Train. Not only is the loco terrifically
photogenic but he took on the whole job; loco, cabins, hardware,
cutlery, the works.
The scene at the time (1938, post-Depression America) was of competition
between Century and Broadway Railway companies and a huge commission
like that was justifiable to trump the opposition. The DC-3 was
luring passengers away and trains needed something extra to stay
in the chase.
The train was basically a styling exercise as the engineering
was out of Dreyfuss’ hands. He wasn’t the first to work the Streamline
treatment on trains, on which, his old mentor Geddes had already
snapped up some patents. Loewy had pushed things along as well.
He had advocated welding the steel plates together rather than
riveting them for the sleek look of the day. Curves were easier,
too, now that pressing steel had been mastered by the car industry.
So what was left for Dreyfuss? He had made a point on his earlier
‘Mercury’ of making a feature of the bits he couldn’t hide – in
this case the driving wheels. He had drawn on his earlier experience
and aimed spotlights at them, but hadn’t Loewy gone to town on
the boiler of the Pennsylvania locos?
I’ve almost become obsessed with finding something genuinely
significant in Dreyfuss’ design other than the almost unfeasibly
broad scope of the job. The fact that I‘m struggling suggests
two things to me. He was working in an era where there was some
seriously sharp competition and also that I’m so taken by his
drive in attacking the project that I don’t want to dismiss him
as ‘the guy that did the telephone’. Unfortunately, in the company
of Carl Breer and Arthur Raymond he’s looking like a busy bloke
with a knack for dramatic visuals.
I believe Streamlining contributed more than a different set of
shapes to play with. Without function to back up the form Marie
Dormoy’s early pronouncement on Art Deco skewers it neatly next
to any other useless beauty. You can have fun with a pencil-sharpener
design; slap your thigh chuckling over what a great visual gag
it made (for seconds on end) then promptly fail to get it into
production, but it’s still just superficial decoration. Those
who simply rearranged motifs were not, in my opinion, designers
any more than their modern counterparts who ingest and regurgitate
Cote Sud, Domus (and the like) so rapidly that their clients can
still see the teeth-marks.
Breaking the links between the user’s requirements and accepted
forms allowed designers to start with a similar clean slate to
earlier Modernists at the Bauhaus. While it’s easy to dismiss
the novelty items as kitsch, the grandstanding of the more theatrical
exponents was important in raising the profile of the designer
as well as the design. Loewy did a great deal of good PR in this
regard, almost enough to forgive him the Studebakers. Or being
French.
References
de Noblet, J. 1993, Industrial Design – Reflections of a Century.
Flammarion Press, Paris.
Pulos, A. 1986. American Design Ethic – A History of Industrial
Design. MIT Press, Massachusetts.
No author credited. 2005. ‘Georges Braque’. Wikipedia. Retrieved
30/10/05 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Braque
Chandler, A. 2000. ‘Post War Paris’. Retropolis. Retrieved 30/10/05
from http://www.retropolis.net/exposition/postwarparis.html
No author credited. Undated. ‘Artists by Movement: Art Deco’.
Artcyclopedia. Retrieved 28/10/05 from http://www.artcyclopedia.com/history/art-deco.html
Powell, P. 2005. ‘A Driving Tour of the Art Deco Era’. About.
Retrieved 25/10/05 from http://vintagecars.about.com/od/timeline1/ss/artdeco_era_2.htm
No author credited. 2005. ‘History – World’s Greatest Cars – Chrysler Airflow’. Autoswalk.com. Retrieved 31/10/05 from http://www.autoswalk.com/chrysair.html
No author credited. 2005. ‘Douglas DC-3 ’. Wikipedia. Retrieved
31/10/5 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_C-47
Rumerman, J. Undated. ‘The DC-3’. U.S. Centennial of Flight Commission. Retrieved from http://www.centennialofflight.gov/essay/Aerospace/DC-3/Aero29.htm
Leeuw, R. 2005. ‘The Douglas DC-3 – Historical Background’. Aviation History and Photography. Retrieved 30/10/05 from http://www.ruudleeuw.com/index.html
No author credited. Undated. ‘Douglas DC-3 Cockpit Section’ Science
Museum London – Science Museum – History of Flight. Retrieved
1/11/05 from http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/on-line/flight/flight/dc3.asp
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