ABOUT BEAUTY
Why Art Deco?
After spending some time with Greece and beauty in the last article, one is left with a curious impression.
Socrates asks what beauty is and never quite finds an answer. Sappho observes beauty in fleeting moments and seems perfectly content to leave it there. More than two thousand years later, we remain in much the same position. We recognise beauty when we encounter it, yet defining it remains surprisingly difficult. And perhaps that is precisely why human beings have continued searching for it through architecture, art, literature, music, travel and design. Every generation seems to ask the same question in its own way.
What makes certain things beautiful?
Among the many answers proposed over the centuries, few have proved as enduring as Art Deco.
This may seem surprising as Art Deco emerged during a very specific moment in history. Its golden age lasted only a few decades. The famed golden age of travel.
It belonged to the world of ocean liners, grand hotels, railway stations, transatlantic travel, jazz,
aviation and modernity.
One might reasonably expect it to feel dated today. And yet it does not.
Walk through the streets of Miami, Casablanca, Buenos Aires, Paris or New York and many Art Deco buildings still possess a remarkable freshness.
Their silhouettes remain elegant. Their proportions feel balanced. Their geometry continues to appear contemporary despite the passing of nearly a century.
One begins to wonder why.
Perhaps the answer lies in the relationship between geometry and time. Fashion often depends upon novelty. What appears modern today may seem outdated tomorrow. Geometry follows a different rhythm. A well-proportioned façade, a balanced composition or a harmonious structure possesses a curious ability to transcend trends. Didn’t the Greeks noticed this long ago ?
Aristotle wrote about order and proportion. Architects explored harmony. Artists searched for balance. Different cultures arrived at similar conclusions through different paths.
Beauty and proportion often seem to walk together like in...Art Deco.
Its designers embraced modernity, certainly, yet they did not abandon harmony in the process. Their buildings were innovative without becoming chaotic. Their furniture was contemporary without becoming ephemeral. Their objects possessed character without sacrificing coherence. In many ways, Art Deco achieved something rather delicate.
It managed to balance avant-garde creativity with timeless elegance.
This balance remains one of its most attractive qualities. Too much emphasis on novelty and an object risks becoming a curiosity of its era. Too much emphasis on tradition and it risks becoming static. Somewhere between these two extremes lies a territory where innovation and permanence coexist. Art Deco often occupied that territory. Perhaps this is why it continues to inspire architects, designers and travellers today.
At Maison Philippe Montagne, Art Deco is not viewed primarily as a historical style.
Nor is it approached as a decorative vocabulary to be copied. Rather, it serves as a guide. A way of thinking about beauty. A way of approaching proportion, structure, geometry and harmony. The objective is never Art Deco itself.
The objective remains beauty.
Art Deco simply provides one of the paths towards it and this distinction matters. The geometric lines that appear in architecture, travel objects and design are not ends in themselves. They are tools. Means rather than destinations. Their purpose is to create balance, coherence and, ultimately, a sense of timelessness.
Indeed, one could almost describe the process as a small circle. One could almost say, like a circle of life, like an acorn growing into an oak, and this is more than an exaggerated analogy, because as often the case, the seed of this ArtDeco choice was love, the love and passion, the designer of this brand had always had for the ArtDeco era since he was a teenager. The movies, the social revolution of that time, the paintings, the interior design, the architecture, all was an enchantment for young Philippe, and the choice of this unique era and style was not a marketing ploy, but a dream come true.
Ah, yes, coming back to the concept, Art Deco, inspires geometric lines. Geometric lines create harmony. Harmony encourages timelessness. And timelessness, perhaps, brings us a little closer to beauty.
The circle is never entirely complete, of course. Beauty continues to resist definitive explanations just as it resisted Socrates all those centuries ago. Yet certain paths seem to lead towards it more reliably than others.
For Maison Philippe Montagne, Art Deco has always been one of those paths.
Not because it belongs to the past. But because it continues to speak to the present.
And perhaps because, in its own elegant way, it reminds us that beauty and modernity need not be opposites.
The most enduring forms of beauty rarely are.
further readings :
What makes a bag beautiful. ArtDeco and the pursuit of beauty.
What is a luxury nomad ?