"Art deco's success has unwittingly served to conceal the horrors of colonialism"

The term "art deco" is being applied too liberally to architecture built under colonialism, writes Edward Denison as part of our Art Deco Centenary series.

Long cast as the bastard child of modernism, art deco was until relatively recently treated unkindly by Western architectural history, a canon forged from the questionable mix of purism, exceptionalism, and universalism.

Rejected at birth and abandoned as modernism's illegitimate offspring, modernist historiography framed art deco as a vulgar violation of the puritanical precepts and noble ambitions of the "modern movement" – the singular clause betraying its ideological singularity.

The architectural historian Nikolaus Pevsner famously despised the "objectionable vein of jazzy modernism" that was a "perversion or contamination of the modern", while the writer and art critic Raymond Mortimer derisorily described it as the "école des Cocottes" (school for coquettes). John Betjeman, British Poet Laureate and Knight of the Realm, cynically referred to it as the "Awf'lly Modern Movement" that stood for a "period of decoration known as 'jazz' … that did terrific harm".

Sympathy ought to be withheld for this misbegotten modern

As with all dogmas, concealing complexity proved unsustainable, and art deco's subsequent acceptance can be read in the proliferation of international exhibitions, books, documentaries, and organisations devoted to it. It is a remarkable trajectory for a style that was not defined until 1968, when Bevis Hillier published his book, Art Deco, which he described as emerging from a "morbid fascination" with the inter-war years.

Art deco's giddy rise in popularity has transformed not only our understanding of design in the early 20th century, but also the way we understand global architectural histories.

However, sympathy ought to be withheld for this misbegotten modern. There is a growing trend for architectural history to be commodified under the "heritage" banner, and art deco has done so remarkably successfully. More than any other strain of architectural modernity (bar, of course, the now Oscar-worthy brutalism), it has tapped into a rich vein of romantic nostalgia.

No inter-war architect or artist ever claimed to be working in, or an advocate of, an art deco style, yet today it is used to describe virtually anything that looks vaguely modern from this period. As Martin Greif, editor and member of the Art Deco Society of New York, forewarned in his 1981 article "Defining Art Deco": "We have allowed the term to embrace virtually everything that was produced between the two world wars."

However, art deco's success has also unwittingly served to conceal the horrors, iniquities, and inequities of colonialism with which it was and remains inherently, fervently, and often violently entwined. Whether referring to British India, Italian Eritrea, French Morocco, Japanese Manchuria or international Shanghai, art deco is no longer merely a Western term for an exotic inter-war style inspired by others, but a generic language describing exclusively Western experiences and perceptions of its other.

Colonial sites and subjects were, by their very nature, denied a voice when their histories were being written and narrated throughout the 20th century. In the 21st century, art deco's ubiquitous use in describing architectural production at the high tide of colonialism threatens to do the same.

Art deco's liberal deployment undermines our understanding of history

Art deco was not merely born from the West's encounters with others, but these places – Buenos Aires, Cairo, Calcutta, Johannesburg, Havana, Manila, Mumbai, Rio de Janeiro, Shanghai, Singapore, Sydney – were often equally, if not more, prolific as sites of art deco expression than those in Europe and North America.

Obscuring through inaccuracy and simplifying complexity, art deco's liberal deployment undermines our understanding of history and the ability of others to narrate their own history on their own terms. Nowhere is this more evident than in the field of architectural heritage. Since the 1960s, the global heritage industry has become a multi-billion-dollar business fuelled by globalisation, cheap travel, and the commodification of cultural heritage as capitalised assets.

An apt example is Eritrea's capital, Asmara, described by Time magazine as "Africa's Art Deco Capital" and by National Geographic as "African Art Deco". Asmara was designed by Italian colonisers and built with the labour of their Eritrean subjects. Inscribed on UNESCO's World Heritage List in 2017, it is Africa's first (and still only) modernist city – a first for Eritrea and a first for modernism of Africa.

A premise for the city's nomination was that it combined Italian rationalism with local, African, conditions and experiences. Rationalism – Italy's brand of modernism – advocated logic, necessity and rationality. Of five stated aesthetic characteristics, the first was the removal of decoration: art deco's antithesis. Not, however, according to the Western media.

Beyond surprise at the apparent unlikeliness of the existence of such a beautiful city in Africa, Western journalists quickly attributed the city's success to art deco. The day after Asmara's inscription, the New York Times announced that "Art Deco Buildings Make Asmara, Eritrea, a Unesco Heritage Site", echoed later in The Independent: "Eritrea's UNESCO Certified Art-Deco Wonderland".

This misapplication revealed a longer and deeply rooted Western romanticism that reverberates in the description of many former colonial heritage sites. In 2008, a Reuters article titled "Africa's 'Miami' boasts Art Deco trove", eulogised that Asmara was "one of the world's most fascinating centers for art deco", referring to the futuristic Fiat Tagliero Service Station as an "extraordinary piece of Italian Art Deco".

Art deco's legacy should not be a 21st-century version of orientalism

Upon art deco's centenary it is right to celebrate its success, but not at the expense of historical accuracy. Facts matter. Art deco's legacy should not be a 21st-century version of what the scholar and critic Edward Said termed orientalism – a Western tendency for dominating and having authority over others by claiming and narrating stories and histories that are not only factually questionable but also fail to consider the contributions and experiences of others.

A recent example countering this trend was the exhibition at the China Design Museum in Hangzhou, Rediscovering Liu Jipiao Design Art Exhibition, celebrating the brilliant Chinese artist and architect who designed China's pavilion at the 1925 Paris Exposition that introduced art deco to the international community.

From Hangzhou to Asmara, the richness and complexity of the past are at last being recognised on their own terms and as equals to their Western counterparts. Art deco was quite something, but it was not everything.

Edward Denison is a professor of architecture and global modernities at the Bartlett School of Architecture. A longer version of this essay originally appeared in the The Routledge Companion to Art Deco (2019), edited by Bridget Elliott and Michael Windover.

The image, showing Liu's drawing The Marble Ball Room of Paris (1929) is courtesy of the China Design Museum.

Art Deco Centenary

This article is part of Dezeen's Art Deco Centenary series, which explores art deco architecture and design 100 years on from the "arts décoratifs" exposition in Paris that later gave the style its name.

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