Happy Birthday Art Deco – from Paris to the World!
The year 2025 marks the centennial that defines the style that defined

the rest of the 20th century and even into the 21st century – Art Deco. It’s the centennial of a world’s fair – an exposition – in a city that has the largest souvenir of any world’s fair – the Eiffel Tower in Paris. The Eiffel Tower is a building that defined the “City of Style” back in 1889. The 1925 World’s Fair isn’t famous for creating just one building in one city – it’s famous for helping to create many buildings around the world in that exposition’s style – the simple and elegant Art Deco style. It’s Paris’ 1925 “Exposition des Art Decoratifs.”
Before we see how simply elegant Art Deco is, let’s visit what it replaced. The last design movement of the 19th century (carrying over to the 20th century just before WWI) was “Art Nouveau.” It “threw a curve” into design in architecture, furniture, etc. In fact, it threw too many curves – never-ending scrolls, floral motifs, and overly ornate sinuous ornamentation. It replaced Beaux Arts – Greek and Roman revival architecture — “Renaissance Architecture on steroids.” Take a look at the Beaux Arts Paris Pavilions for the 1900 Exposition, the Grand and Petit Palais. (FYI: Did you notice all the architecture terms are French or French derived? “Beaux Arts, Art Nouveau and Art Deco – confirming Paris as the “World’s Style Capital.”)
Since Art Deco started in Paris, let’s first look at how Paris is celebrating this great artistic centennial. Art Deco began with the Musee des Arts Decoratifs (which even has “Arts Decoratifs” – “ART DECO” – in its name). Plus, you don’t have to journey far to see it. The museum is literally a building within the Louvre (Pavilion de Marsan). Art Deco isn’t just architecture, it’s elegant art for living including jewelry, furniture, ceramics and textiles. Even radios were encased in Art Deco. Art Deco mostly comprises angles instead of curves resulting in bold geometric shapes such as zigzags, chevrons and stepped patterns. The exhibit is “1925-2025: One Hundred Years of Art Deco” from October 21, 2025, to March 29, 2026. It’s the perfect design for the Roaring 20’s. Can you imagine a woman doing the Charleston wearing a late 19th-century dress with a bustle, kicking up her bustle behind her behind? Art Deco wasn’t a style just for the rich. Both major Paris department stores, the overly ornate Art Nouveau Galleries Lafayette and the merely ornate Art Nouveau Printemps, had elegantly simple and refined Art Deco Pavilions at Paris’ 1925 Art Deco Exposition. (See photo.)
Before we celebrate the influence of French Art Deco around the world, let’s visit nearby towns North of Paris in the Hauts-de-France region during its Printemps Art Deco festival – “Art Deco Spring” a yearly Art Deco celebration for two months ending June 1st. While I’ve visited the capital city, Lille and the great city of Amiens, with its spectacular Gothic cathedral, this Art Deco aficionado has yet to tour this region’s numerous and great Art Deco buildings. (I hope my wonderful Atout France friends, are reading this.)
There will be many exhibitions around the world celebrating Paris’ Art Deco Centennial Exposition. I already visited one in Manhattan at the Museum of the City of New York that already closed February 17th. It consisted of Art Deco NY postcards belonging to Leonard Lauder. The postcard’s photos showed Art Deco buildings – it would have been even more fascinating if both sides of the postcards were exhibited, and we could have known what visitors, in their own hand, thought of Art Deco when it was built.
The Exposition des Arts Decoratifs didn’t change architecture, design, furniture, textiles and fashion just in France, it changed them all over the world – especially in the colonies of France. In fact, if you want to see great French Art Deco – go to Casablanca – a French Protectorate from 1912 to 1956. Casablanca didn’t just have Art Deco buildings; it has entire sections of the city designed in Art Deco. If Williamsburg, Virginia is the embodiment of American Colonial Architecture, then Casablanca is the embodiment of French Art Deco Colonial Architecture.
Since Art Deco is the first and most enduring style of the 20th century, not just between the First and Second World Wars (then morphing into Modernism), it should be the style of choice for a unique 20th-century form of architecture – the movie theater. Casablanca’s gigantic Rialto movie theater looks like an almost exact copy of Paris’ Rex Art Deco movie theatre. However, it isn’t. Casablanca’s Art Deco movie theater opened in 1929, before Paris’ lookalike Rex movie house opened in 1932, the same year and the same month that the world’s most famous Art Deco movie theater opened – the Radio City Music Hall in Manhattan’s Rockefeller Center.
There were Art Deco theaters – traditional theaters for plays, musicals, opera and ballet such as the Paris’ Champs Elysees Theater opened in 1913 just before WW1 in a revolutionary simple building in reinforced concrete by Auguste Perret with magnificent Art Deco sculpted panels by the great Art Deco sculptor Antoine Bourdelle (whose Paris museum, the Antoine Bourdelle Museum in Montparnasse, is a must-see for Art Deco lovers). Yes, French Art Deco existed before 1925, and the Exposition des Arts Decoratifs was postponed by WWI and then postwar shortages. There’s a resemblance of the Art Deco panels on the façade of the Champs Elysees Theater to the large round Art Deco panels on the exterior of the Radio City Music Hall.
Casablanca and its great Art Deco is definitely derived from France – with many French architects contributing to its beauty. After all, Morocco almost borders Europe; Tangiers, Morocco is just across the Strait of Gibraltar from Spain. However, another French colony also has outstanding colonial French Art Deco, in another corner of the world – China. Shanghai’s Bund – a long promenade along the banks of the Huangpu River is largely Art Deco with a touch of Chinese motifs – pagoda-like roofs and Chinese patterns. I was very fortunate to have stayed in the Fairmont Peace Hotel from the late 1920s. It isn’t just Art Deco on the outside, it’s Art Deco through and through. When I was a guest, even the band was playing Art Deco music – the music of Cole Porter and Gershwin. The Grosvenor Hotel doesn’t look like Chinese Art Deco – it’s a skyscraper that looks more like a Manhattan Art Deco building – and not even a highly Art Deco decorated building like one of my favorites – the Chanin Building with its Aztec-like Art Deco reliefs or the famous nearby Chrysler Building, not just the most beautiful Art Deco skyscraper in NYC – the most famous and beautiful skyscraper in the world. If you’re returning from Shanghai to the US via Australia and New Zealand and you’re a fan of Art Deco, stop in Napier, New Zealand – a city totally rebuilt in Art Deco after its devastating 1931 earthquake.
Many major cities in the US from New York to Los Angeles have Art Deco Societies. Los Angeles also has a stunning Art Deco movie theater, the Pantages. and a magnificent (former) department store, Bullocks Wilshire. The Houston Museum of Fine Arts has a centennial Art Deco exhibit featuring the paintings of one of the greatest Art Deco painters, Tamara de Lempicka ending May 26. And it’s not just major American cities that are having Art Deco centennial exhibits – the Nassau County Museum of Art in Roslyn, NY is hosting “Deco at 100” through June 15. While I’ve never sat on the beach in Miami Beach, every visit to Miami ultimately winds up in another “beach” – the Art Deco South Beach.
So, if you want to see great Art Deco this is definitely the year –“DeG0” – to Paris and then the World!