Cultural Background of Art Deco

One of the things that drew me to Art Deco was how steeped in historic and cultural context it is. It is truly a product of it's times. The brilliant people of the 1920's put the most cherished elements of their culture into their buildings. Here's an exert from my paper in which I discuss this in more detail. 

Art Deco cannot be properly understood without knowledge of the time period that incubated it. The nineteen-twenties were a time of social change; a new worldview began in the cities and spread across the country, causing people to reconsider traditional attitudes, morals, and ways of life. Electric lights made it possible for factories to work day and night, churning out more and more uniform goods. Gone were the days of homespun fabric; everything was produced on the assembly line. Transportation became more accessible , and mass media (i.e. the radio) united people across regional, cultural, racial, and socioeconomic boundaries, encouraging them to live out the traditional American dream in a consumer society. More and more people poured into cities, lured by their excitement, glamour, and the hope of making a fortune. However, this new mechanized consumer culture did not thrill everyone. 

      Art Deco was a conscious reaction against Art Nouveau, a style commonly used in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. While Art Nouveau focused on the curves and other organic shapes of nature, Art Deco emphasized the clean, simple lines of the machine. Art Nouveau was a rejection of the uniformity and materialism of the Machine Age; Art Deco was a celebration of the future it brought. The latter, which was very different from most of the genres preceding it, was a perfect fit for an age that characterized itself by breaking tradition