London museum exhibit features Art Deco items

London museum exhibitfeatures Art Deco items
The decades before World War II gave us something far more delightful than Prohibition, the Great Depression and the rise of Fascism. They brought forth Art Deco, one of the most popular, pervasive and aesthetically pleasing artistic and decorative styles ever to grace a civilization.
London's Victoria and Albert Museum recently opened a lavish exhibition exploring this most "modern" of movements in spectacular fashion, displaying fully 300 examples of the paintings, sculpture, architecture, furniture, textiles, glass products, metalwork, jewelry, graphic art, fashion styles, film and photography it inspired.
Among the pleasures of "Art Deco 1910-1939" are works by Fernand Leger and Constantin Brancusi and fashions of Coco Chanel and Elsa Schiaperelli.
Curiously, the movement in its own time was known as "Jazz Moderne," "Streamline Moderne" or "Moderne." The term "Art Deco" came from the title of a 1925 Paris exhibition dedicated to the movement, and it was not applied to the entire epoch until 1966.
The V & amp;A also organized the "Art Nouveau" exhibition two years ago, devoted to the art movement that immediately preceded "Art Deco."
The show closes July 20.
For more information, visit www.vam.ac.uk on the Web.