‘Art Deco’ posters reveal dreams of the future at Sarasota Art Museum

Sarasota Art Museum’s “Art Deco: The Golden Age of Illustration” marks the movement’s centennial with 100 Deco posters. It’s easy to view these lithographs through nostalgia’s rose-colored glasses. Curator Yangsook Roon reveals them through the eyes of the target audience. These images captured the machine age – a fast-paced era of airplanes, ocean liners, roadsters, and electrification. It was a brave new world. And it was all brand new.

Art Deco artists rejoiced in the shock of the new and rejected ornate expression. Where Art Nouveau artists had reveled in curvy organic forms, their art was geometric, stylized, streamlined and shiny. Deco artists welcomed the machine age. They weren’t alone.

Constructivist and Futurist artists shared their technophilia. But Deco was, shall we say, a bit more upper-class. It celebrated the high-priced goodies that the nouveau riche might enjoy and social climbers aspired to.

Bottom line? These Art Deco posters are art – but not art for art’s sake. With a few exceptions, they’re advertisements. Not propaganda or a cry from some artist’s soul. They’re selling you something. Artfully.

Planes, trains and automobiles

Mechanical horsepower had replaced actual horses in the Deco days. As Richard Scarry knew, kids of all ages love things that go, especially the rich kids who can afford them.

Umberto di Lazzaro’s “Italian Aerial Lines” (1935) evokes the soaring sensation of flight. Red and white biplanes flash across a starless night. Stylized motion blurs streak behind the two planes. The red plane carries mail, the white one carries passengers. It’s a stylish, diagonal composition. On the nitty-gritty level of technical drawing, Lazzaro’s planes are lovingly accurate.

Machiel Wilmink’s “Lloyd Rapide” (1927) depicts a high-speed express line. The locomotive’s coming right at you, motion lines radiating from it like spikes. The artist’s angular geometry transforms steam power into prismatic energy. If you take this train to Paris, you know you’ll go in style.

Roger de Valerio’s “Chrysler” (1930) grips you with the need for speed. An orange DeSoto CK-6 roadster hugs a curve while its metallic driver melts into a blur. It’s a dream of escape, forward motion, and the freedom of the open road. Not a car race – but the closest that upper-middle-class motorists could get. That’s the poster’s promise. And what Chrysler was selling.

Back in the high life, again …

Life is good. If you can afford the good life, it’s very good. Mass production and high-end consumerism were taking off in the 1920s and ’30s. Posters tout everything from jewelry to rubber tires. The leisure class also loved the sporting life.

N. Weber’s “Trage Schmuck du Gewinnst” (1927) has zero subtlety, sincerity or subtext. The message? The text translates to: “Wear Jewelry, You Win.” You don’t need a critic to interpret it. The image? A pretty lady draped in baubles, bangles and beads. Her hand is coiled and snakelike. Her eyes are closed. She’s won! Thanks to the jewelry, she knows it. Evidently, diamonds really are a girl’s best friend.

In “Sables d’Or les Pins” (1926), an unknown artist distills a golfer to sharp planes of color against a background of golden dunes and an azure sea. The angular, cubist figure conveys speed and vitality. It’s leisure reimagined as modern spectacle – sport as streamlined geometry.

Power to the people

While many posters exude snob appeal, they’re not all putting on the ritz. Some celebrate the democratizing power of the press – and the literal power of electricity.

In the New Deal era, the Rural Electrification Act was a push to plug rural America into the electrical grid. Lester T. Beall’s six posters (1937) were part of that push. Bold arrows, simplified forms, and radiant icons wordlessly translated electricity’s promise of light, water, radio, and labor-saving gadgets. An elitist hint that simpleminded hicks needed pictures to get the point? Maybe. But it worked. The electricity came to Arkansas – and every other state.

“L’Intransigeant” was a cranky left-wing French newspaper that turned into a cranky right-wing newspaper. “Le plus fort” (“The strongest”) was its motto. A.M. Cassandre’s “L’Intransigeant” (1925) turns that slogan into a modernist shout. A stylized profile proclaims the paper’s name in radiant beams of bold typography. Politics aside, it’s a white-hot fusion of text and image.

Art Deco 3-D

Along with its iconic lithographs, the show enters the third Deco dimension with cocktail shakers and sculpture from the Crouse collection, and furniture on loan from the Wolfsonian Museum at Florida International University. Franz Hagenauer’s “Romeo and Juliet” (1925) depicts the star-crossed lovers in profiles of chrome-plated brass. They face each other – serene and fearlessly loving. Their love story is about to end. They just don’t know it yet. Like the Art Deco artists, they’re blissfully optimistic.

Creators like A. M. Cassandre, Lester Beall and Roger de Valerio looked forward to a Brave New World of upscale technology. Their machine dreams glittered with hope. But history had other plans. Tanks, flying fortresses and V-2 rockets took the stage in World War II. Art Deco optimism fell out of style. Cold War paranoia envisioned a much darker tomorrow. 21st-century paranoia still does.

But in these images, the future still looks bright.

This show is organized by Sarasota Art Museum and curated by Rangsook Yoon, Sarasota Art Museum’s senior curator. This exhibition draws on Art Deco posters and pieces from the Crouse Collection and The Wolfsonian-Florida International University in Miami.