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What actually influenced the beginning of Art Deco?


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The name came from the 1925 Exposition Internationale des Arts Decoratifs Industriels et Modernes, held in Paris, which celebrated living in the modern world.

"Primitive" arts of Africa, Egypt, or Aztec Mexico, as well as Machine Age or Streamline technology such as modern aviation, electric lighting, the radio, and the skyscraper influenced Art Deco design. Art Deco was an opulent style, and its lavishness is attributed to reaction to the forced austerity imposed by World War.

Its two forerunners were Charles Rennie Mackintosh of Scotland and Josef Hoffmann of Vienna. These men were reformers of the excesses of the Art Nouveau style, and their works in 1900 were an indication of what was to appear in the next decades.

African sculpture and ancient Egyptian and Southwest American Indian arts all had their influence on Art Deco in the twenties, as did Archaic Greek art. With the influence of the Bauhaus and the International Style after 1925, Art Deco arrived at a final development that reflected the industrial age, thus achieving a reconciliation of the arts and machine production that had troubled artists and designers since the Industrial Revolution began.