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Jazz
The gramophone and the radio brought American jazz music to all in the late 1920s and this music, together with the films from Hollywood, ensured an ever-increasing American influence, not just in music but also throughout the visual arts. In particular the work of the American architects Raymond Hood and Bertram Goodhue exercised considerable influence. The huge impact made upon decorative art by the 1925 Exposition Des Arts Decoratifs in Paris (Art-Deco) combined with these American influences and, of course, with our own traditions, produced the Jazz style of the period in this country. The dominant contribution was undoubtedly made by the French Art-Deco movement, which drew upon Cubism, Egypt and Art Negre for inspiration and which was a geometric style, in reaction to the more flowing lines of the preceding Art Nouveau period. The early Jazz buildings, built before the depression, became associated with a period of prosperous activity and they epitomised the aspirations to wealth and leisure of this time. The style tended to be one of ostentation and luxury, with rich materials often being utilised for largely commercial reasons. The most appropriate applications were thus found to be for building types connected with new industry, modern transport and the pursuit of leisure. Theatres, cinemas, garages, ocean liners and factories for machine age products were garbed in the Jazz style and it became almost an architectural language for advertisement and business promotion. Some contemporary architects from both the Traditional and Modernist factions denigrated the Jazz style for an absence of purity but, in retrospect and in the best examples, it can now be seen to have been a most appropriate one for these buildings of commerce and pleasure. |
 Catalogue no 2 |