Streamlining America

HE TERM “Art Deco” comes from the French part of the title of an industrial design exposition held in Paris in 1925. But it came to encompass far more than industrial design and interior decoration; painting, sculpture, photography, and architecture from the period between the two world wars fell into certain styles that, at least in retrospect, are classed under the heading of Art Deco. It could be argued that the works are so diverse that it’s meaningless to lump them together under one heading, and indeed, many, if not most, of their creators never saw themselves as participating in a movement—or if they did, the movement was simply Modernism, full stop. Nonetheless, to our eyes almost a century later, there certainly is an