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After Guy died in May 1194, his vassals in Cyprus elected Aimery as their lord. He accepted the suzerainty of Holy Roman Emperor Henry VI. With the emperor's authorization, Aimery was crowned king of Cyprus in September 1197. The widowed Aimery soon married Henry of Champagne's widow, Isabella I of Jerusalem. Aimery and Isabella were crowned king and queen of Jerusalem in January 1198. He signed a truce with Al-Adil I, the Ayyubid sultan of Egypt, which secured the Christian possession of the coastline from Acre to Antioch. His rule was a period of peace and stability in both of his realms. Early life. Aimery was born before 1155. He was the fifth son of Hugh VIII of Lusignan and his wife, Burgundia of Rancon. His family had been noted for generations of crusaders in their native Poitou. His great-grandfather, Hugh VI of Lusignan, died in the Battle of Ramla in 1102; Aimery's grandfather, Hugh VII of Lusignan, took part in the Second Crusade. Aimery's father also came to the Holy Land and died in a Muslim prison in the 1160s. Earlier scholarship erroneously referred to him as Amalric (or Amaury, its French form), but evidence from documentaries shows he was actually called "Aimericus", which is a distinct name (although it was sometimes confused with "Amalricus" already in the Middle Ages). Runciman and other modern historians erroneously refer to him as Amalric II of Jerusalem, because they confused his name with that of Amalric "I" of Jerusalem.
Aimery joined a rebellion against Henry II of England (who also ruled Poitou) in 1168, according to Robert of Torigni's chronicle, but Henry crushed the rebellion. Aimery left for the Holy Land and settled in the Kingdom of Jerusalem. He was captured in a battle and held in captivity in Damascus. A popular tradition (which was first recorded by the 13th-century Philip of Novara and John of Ibelin) held, the King of Jerusalem, Amalric, ransomed him personally. Ernoul (whose reliability is questioned) claimed Aimery was a lover of Amalric of Jerusalem's former wife, Agnes of Courtenay. Aimery married Eschiva of Ibelin, a daughter of Baldwin of Ibelin, who was one of the most powerful noblemen in the Kingdom of Jerusalem. Amalric of Jerusalem, who died on 11 July 1174, was succeeded by his thirteen-year-old son by Agnes of Courtenay, Baldwin IV who suffered from leprosy. Aimery became a member of the royal court with his father-in-law's support. Aimery's youngest brother, Guy, married Baldwin IV's widowed sister, Sibylla, in April 1180. Ernoul wrote, it was Aimery who had spoken of his brother to her and her mother, Agnes of Courtenay, describing him as a handsome and charming young man. Aimery, continued Ernoul, hurried back to Poitou and persuaded Guy to come to the kingdom, although Sibylla had promised herself to Aimery's father-in-law. Another source, William of Tyre, did not mention that Aimery had played any role in the marriage of his brother and the King's sister. Consequently, many elements of Ernoul's report (especially Aimery's alleged journey to Poitou) were most probably invented.
Constable of Jerusalem. Aimery was first mentioned as Constable of Jerusalem on 24 February 1182. According to Steven Runciman and Malcolm Barber, he had already been granted the office shortly after his predecessor, Humphrey II of Toron, died in April 1179. Historian Bernard Hamilton writes that Aimery's appointment was the consequence of the growing influence of his brother and he was appointed only around 1181. Saladin, the Ayyubid sultan of Egypt and Syria, launched a campaign against the Kingdom of Jerusalem on 29 September 1183. Aimery defeated the sultan's troops in a minor skirmish with the support of his father-in-law and his brother, Balian of Ibelin. After the victory, the crusaders' main army could advance as far as a spring near Saladin's camp, forcing him to retreat nine days later. During the campaign, it turned out that most barons of the realm were unwilling to cooperate with Aimery's brother, Guy, who was the designated heir to Baldwin IV. The ailing king dismissed Guy and made his five-year-old nephew (Guy's stepson), Baldwin V, his co-ruler on 20 November 1183.
In early 1185, Baldwin IV decreed that the Pope, the Holy Roman Emperor and the Kings of France and England were to be approached to choose between his sister, Sybilla, and their half-sister, Isabella, if Baldwin V died before reaching the age of majority. The leper king died in April or May 1185, his nephew in late summer of 1186. Ignoring Baldwin IV's decree, Sybilla was proclaimed queen by her supporters and she crowned her husband, Guy, king. Aimery was not listed among those who were present at the ceremony, but he obviously supported his brother and sister-in-law, according to Hamilton. As Constable, Aimery organised the army of the Kingdom of Jerusalem into units before the Battle of Hattin, which ended with the decisive victory of Saladin on 4 July 1187. Along with most commanders of the Christian army, Aimery was captured in the battlefield. During the siege of Ascalon, Saladin promised the defenders that he would set free ten persons whom they named if they surrendered. Aimery and Guy were among those whom the defenders named before surrendering on 4 September, but Saladin postponed their release until the spring of 1188.
Most barons of the realm thought that Guy lost his claim to the Kingdom of Jerusalem when Sybilla and their two daughters died in late 1190, but Aimery remained loyal to his brother. Guy's opponents supported Conrad of Montferrat who married Sybilla's half-sister Isabella in late November. An assembly of the noblemen of the realm unanimously declared Conrad the lawful king on 16 April 1192. Although Conrad was murdered twelve days later, his widow soon married Henry II of Champagne, who was elected King of Jerusalem. To compensate Guy for the loss of Jerusalem, Richard I of England authorized him to purchase the island of Cyprus (that Richard had conquered in May 1191) from the Knights Templar. He was also to pay 40,000 bezants to Richard who donated the right to collect the sum from Guy to Henry. Guy settled in Cyprus in early May. Aimery remained in the Kingdom of Jerusalem, which was reduced to a narrow strip of land along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea from Jaffa to Tyre. King Henry ordered the expulsion of the merchants from Pisa from Acre in May, because he accused them of plotting with Guy of Lusignan. After Aimery intervened on behalf of the merchants, Henry had him arrested. Aimery was only released at the demand of the grand masters of the Templars and the Hospitallers. He retired to Jaffa, which King Richard had granted to Aimery's eldest brother, Geoffrey of Lusignan.
Reign. Lord of Cyprus. Guy died in May 1194, and bequeathed Cyprus to his elder brother, Geoffrey. However Geoffrey had already returned to Poitou, thus Guy's vassals elected Aimery their new lord. Henry of Champagne demanded the right to be consulted about the succession in Cyprus, but the Cypriote noblemen ignored him. Around the same time, Henry replaced Aimery with John of Ibelin as constable of Jerusalem. Aimery realized that the treasury of Cyprus was almost empty because his brother had granted most landed property on the island to his supporters, according to Ernoul. He summoned his vassals to an assembly. After emphasizing that each of them owned more land than he had, he persuaded them one by one "either by force, or by friendship, or by agreement" to surrender some of their rents and lands. Aimery dispatched an embassy to Pope Celestine III, asking him to set up Roman Catholic dioceses in Cyprus. He also sent his representative, Rainier of Gibelet, to the Holy Roman Emperor, Henry VI, proposing that he would acknowledge the emperor's suzerainty, if the emperor sent a royal crown to him. Aimery primarily wanted to secure the emperor's assistance against a potential Byzantine invasion of Cyprus, but he also wanted to strengthen his own legitimacy as king. Rainier of Gibelet swore loyalty to Henry VI on behalf of Aimery in Gelnhausen in October 1196. The emperor who had decided to lead a crusade to the Holy Land promised that he would personally crown Aimery king. He dispatched the archbishops of Brindisi and Trani to take a golden sceptre to Aimery as a symbol of his right to rule Cyprus.
King of Cyprus. Henry VI's two envoys landed in Cyprus in April or May 1196. Aimery may have adopted the title of king around that time, because Pope Celestine styled him as king already in a letter in December 1196. In the same month, the Pope set up a Roman Catholic archdiocese in Nicosia with three suffragan bishops in Famagusta, Limassol and Paphos. The Greek Orthodox bishops were not expelled, but their property and income were seized by the new Catholic prelates. Henry VI's chancellor, Conrad, Bishop of Hildesheim, crowned Aimery king in Nicosia in September 1197. Aimery did homage to the chancellor. The noblemen who owned fiefs in both Cyprus and the Kingdom of Jerusalem wanted to bring about a reconciliation between Aimery and Henry of Champagne. One of them, Baldwin of Beisan, Constable of Cyprus, persuaded King Henry to visit Cyprus in early 1197. The two kings made peace, agreeing that Aimery's three sons were to marry Henry's three daughters. Henry also renounced the debt that Aimery still owed to him for Cyprus and allowed Aimery to garrison his troops at Jaffa. Aimery sent Reynald Barlais to take possession of Jaffa. Aimery again used the title of Constable of Jerusalem in November 1197, which suggests that he had also recovered that office as a consequence of his treaty with Henry.
King of two realms. Henry of Champagne fell from the window in his palace and died in Acre on 10 September 1197. The aristocratic-yet-impoverished Raoul of Saint Omer was one of the possible candidates to succeed him, but the grand masters of the military orders opposed him vehemently. A few days later, Al-Adil I, the Ayyubid sultan of Egypt, occupied Jaffa. Conrad of Wittelsbach, Archbishop of Mainz, who arrived to Acre on 20 September, was the first to propose that the crown should be offered to Aimery. Since Aimery's first wife had died, he could marry the widowed queen of Jerusalem, Isabella I. Although Aymar, Patriarch of Jerusalem, stated that the marriage would be uncanonical, Joscius, Archbishop of Tyre, started negotiations with Aimery who accepted the offer. The patriarch also withdrew his objections and crowned Aimery and Isabella in Tyre in January 1198. The Cypriot Army fought for the Kingdom of Jerusalem during Aimery's rule, but otherwise, he administered his two realms separately. Even before his coronation, Aimery united his forces with the German crusaders who were under the command of Duke Henry I of Brabant to launch a campaign against the Ayyubid troops. They forced Al-Adil to withdraw and captured Beirut on 21 October. He laid siege to Toron, but he had to lift the siege on 2 February, because the German crusaders decided to return to the Holy Roman Empire after learning that Emperor Henry VI had died.
Aimery was riding at Tyre when four German knights attacked him in March 1198. His retainers rescued him and captured the four knights. Aimery accused Raoul of Saint Omer of hiring the assailants and sentenced him to banishment without a trial by his peers. At Raoul's demand, the case was submitted to the High Court of Jerusalem which held that Aimery had unlawfully banished Raoul. Nevertheless, Raoul voluntarily left the kingdom and settled in Tripoli, because he knew that he had lost Aimery's goodwill. Aimery signed a truce with Al-Adil on 1 July 1198, securing the possession of the coast from Acre as far as to Antioch for the crusaders for five years and eight months. The Byzantine emperor, Alexios III Angelos, did not abandon the idea of recovering Cyprus. He promised that he would help a new crusade if Pope Innocent III excommunicated Aimery to enable a Byzantine invasion in 1201, but Innocent refused him, stating that the Byzantines had lost their right to Cyprus when Richard I conquered the island in 1191.
Aimery kept the peace with the Muslims, even when Reynald II of Dampierre, who arrived at the head of 300 French crusaders, demanded that he launch a campaign against the Muslims in early 1202. After Aimery reminded him that more than 300 soldiers were needed to wage war against the Ayyubids, Reynald left the Kingdom of Jerusalem for the Principality of Antioch. An Egyptian emir seized a fortress near Sidon and made plundering raids against the neighbouring territory. As Al-Adil failed to force the emir to respect the truce, Aimery's fleet seized 20 Egyptian ships and he invaded Al-Adil's realm. In retaliation, Al-Adil's son, Al-Mu'azzam Isa plundered the region of Acre. In May 1204, Aimery's fleet sacked a small town in the Nile Delta in Egypt. The envoys of Aimery and Al-Adil signed a new truce for six years in September 1204. Al-Adil ceded Jaffa and Ramleh to the Kingdom of Jerusalem and simplified the Christian pilgrims' visits to Jerusalem and Nazareth. After eating an excess of white mullet, Aimery fell seriously ill. He died after a short illness on 1 April 1205. His six-year-old son, Hugh I, succeeded him in Cyprus; and Queen Isabella ruled the Kingdom of Jerusalem until her own death four days later.
Legacy. Historian Mary Nickerson Hardwicke described Aimery as a "self-assured, politically astute, sometimes hard, seldom sentimentally indulgent" ruler. His rule was a period of peace and consolidation. He initiated the revision of the laws of the Kingdom of Jerusalem to specify royal prerogatives. The lawyers of the Kingdom of Jerusalem held him in high esteem. One of them, John of Ibelin emphasized that Aimery had governed both Cyprus and Jerusalem "well and wisely" until his death. Family. Aimery's first wife, Eschiva of Ibelin, was the elder daughter of Baldwin of Ibelin, Lord of Mirabel and Ramleh, and Richelda of Beisan. They had five children Aimery's second wife, Isabella I of Jerusalem, was the only daughter of Amalric I of Jerusalem and Maria Komnene. They had three children
Anthemius of Tralles Anthemius of Tralles (, Medieval Greek: , "Anthémios o Trallianós"; – 533 558) was a Byzantine Greek from Tralles who worked as a geometer and architect in Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine Empire. With Isidore of Miletus, he designed the Hagia Sophia for Justinian I. Life. Anthemius was one of the five sons of Stephanus of Tralles, a physician. His brothers were Dioscorus, Alexander, Olympius, and Metrodorus. Dioscorus followed his father's profession in Tralles; Alexander did so in Rome and became one of the most celebrated medical men of his time; Olympius became a noted lawyer; and Metrodorus worked as a grammarian in Constantinople. Anthemius was said to have annoyed his neighbor Zeno in two ways: first, by engineering a miniature earthquake by sending steam through leather tubes he had fixed among the joists and flooring of Zeno's parlor while he was entertaining friends and, second, by simulating thunder and lightning and flashing intolerable light into Zeno's eyes from a slightly hollowed mirror. In addition to his familiarity with steam, some dubious authorities credited Anthemius with a knowledge of gunpowder or other explosive compound.
Mathematics. Anthemius was a capable mathematician. In the course of his treatise "On Burning Mirrors", he intended to facilitate the construction of surfaces to reflect light to a single point, he described the string construction of the ellipse and assumed a property of ellipses not found in Apollonius of Perga's "Conics": the equality of the angles subtended at a focus by two tangents drawn from a point. His work also includes the first practical use of the directrix: having given the focus and a double ordinate, he used the focus and directrix to obtain any number of points on a parabola. This work was later known to Arab mathematicians such as Alhazen. Eutocius of Ascalon's commentary on Apollonius's "Conics" was dedicated to Anthemius. Architecture. As an architect, Anthemius is best known for his work designing the Hagia Sophia. He was commissioned with Isidore of Miletus by Justinian I shortly after the earlier church on the site burned down in 532 but died early on in the project. He is also said to have repaired the flood defenses at Daras.
Absalon Absalon (21 March 1201) was a Danish statesman and prelate of the Catholic Church who served as the bishop of Roskilde from 1158 to 1192 and archbishop of Lund from 1178 until his death. He was the foremost politician and church father of Denmark in the second half of the 12th century, and was the closest advisor of King Valdemar I of Denmark. He was a key figure in the Danish policies of territorial expansion in the Baltic Sea, Europeanization in close relationship with the Holy See, and reform in the relation between the Church and the public. He combined the ideals of Gregorian Reform with loyal support of a strong monarchical power. Absalon was born into the powerful "Hvide" clan, and owned great land possessions. He endowed several church institutions, most prominently his family's Sorø Abbey. He was granted lands by the crown, and built the first fortification of the city that evolved into modern-day Copenhagen. His titles were passed on to his nephews Anders Sunesen and Peder Sunesen. He died in 1201, and was interred at Sorø Abbey.
Early life. Absalon was born around 1128 near Sorø, Zealand. Due to his name being unusual in Denmark, it is speculated that he was baptized on the Danish "Absalon" name day, 30 October. He was the son of Asser Rig, a magnate of the "Hvide" clan from Fjenneslev on Zealand, and Inger Eriksdotter. He was also a kinsman of Archbishop Eskil of Lund. He grew up at the castle of his father, and was brought up alongside his older brother Esbern Snare and the young prince Valdemar, who later became King Valdemar I of Denmark. During the civil war following the death of Eric III of Denmark in 1146, Absalon travelled abroad to study theology in Paris, while Esbern fought for Valdemar's ascension to the throne. In Paris, he was influenced by the Gregorian Reform ideals of churchly independence from monarchical rule. He also befriended the canon William of Æbelholt at the Abbey of St Genevieve, whom he later made abbot of Eskilsø Abbey. Absalon first appears in Saxo Grammaticus's contemporary chronicle "Gesta Danorum" at the end of the civil war, in the brokering of the peace agreement between Sweyn III and Valdemar at St. Alban's Priory in Odense. He was a guest at the subsequent Roskilde banquet given in 1157 by Sweyn for his rivals Canute V and Valdemar. Both Absalon and Valdemar narrowly escaped assassination by Sweyn on this occasion, and escaped to Jutland, whither Sweyn followed them. Absalon probably did not take part in the following battle of Grathe Heath in 1157, where Sweyn was defeated and slain. This led to Valdemar ascending to the Danish throne. On Good Friday 1158, bishop died, and Absalon was eventually elected bishop of Roskilde on Zealand with the help of Valdemar, as the king's reward for "Hvide" family support.
Bishop and advisor. Absalon was a close counsellor of Valdemar, and chief promoter of the Danish crusades against the Wends. During the Danish civil war, Denmark had been open to coastal raids by the Wends. It was Absalon's intention to clear the Baltic Sea of the Wendish pirates who inhabited its southern littoral zone, which was later called Pomerania. The pirates had raided the Danish coasts during the civil war of Sweyn III, Canute V, and Valdemar, to the point where at the accession of Valdemar one-third of Denmark lay wasted and depopulated. Absalon formed a guardian fleet, built coastal defenses, and led several campaigns against the Wends. He even advocated forgiving the earlier enemies of Valdemar, which helped stabilize Denmark internally. Wendish campaigns. The first expedition against the Wends conducted by Absalon in person, set out in 1160. These expeditions were successful, but brought no lasting victories. What started out as mere retribution, eventually evolved into full-fledged campaigns of expansion with religious motives. In 1164 began twenty years of crusades against the Wends, sometimes with the help of German duke Henry the Lion, sometimes in opposition to him.
In 1168 the chief Wendish fortress at Arkona in Rügen, containing the sanctuary of their god Svantevit, was conquered. The Wends agreed to accept Danish suzerainty and the Christian religion at the same time. From Arkona, Absalon proceeded by sea to Charenza, in the midst of Rügen, the political capital of the Wends and an all but impregnable stronghold. But the unexpected fall of Arkona had terrified the garrison, which surrendered unconditionally at the first appearance of the Danish ships. Absalon, with only Bishop Sweyn of Aarhus and twelve "housecarls", thereupon disembarked, passed between a double row of Wendish warriors, 6000 strong, along the narrow path winding among the morasses, to the gates of the fortress, and, proceeding to the temple of the seven-headed god Rugievit, caused the idol to be hewn down, dragged forth and burnt. The whole population of Garz was then baptized, and Absalon laid the foundations of twelve churches in the isle of Rügen. Rügen was then subjected to Absalon's Bishopric of Roskilde.
The destruction of this chief sally-port of the Wendish pirates enabled Absalon to considerably reduce the Danish fleet. But he continued to keep a watchful eye over the Baltic, and in 1170 destroyed another pirate stronghold, farther eastward, at Dziwnów on the isle of Wolin. Absalon's last military exploit came in 1184, off Stralsund at Whitsun, when he soundly defeated a Pomeranian fleet that had attacked Denmark's vassal, Jaromar of Rügen. Policies. Absalon's main political goal was to free Denmark from entanglements with the Holy Roman Empire. Absalon reformed the Danish church organisation to closer match Holy See praxis, and worked to keep Denmark a close ally of the Holy See. However, during the schism between Pope Alexander III and Antipope Victor IV, Absalon stayed loyal to Valdemar even as he joined the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick Barbarossa in supporting Victor IV. This caused a split within the Danish church, as it possibly forced Eskil of Lund into exile around 1161, despite Abaslon's attempts to keep the Danish church united. It was contrary to Absalon's advice and warnings that Valdemar I rendered fealty to the emperor Frederick Barbarossa at Dole in 1162. When Valdemar returned to Denmark, he was convinced to strengthen the Danevirke fortifications at the German border, with the support of Absalon.
Absalon built churches and monasteries, supporting international religious orders like the Cistercians and Augustinians, founding schools and doing his utmost to promote civilization and enlightenment. In 1162, Absalon transformed the Sorø Abbey of his family from Benedictine to Cistercian, granting it lands from his personal holdings. In 1167, Absalon was granted the land around the city of Havn (English: "Harbour"), and built there a castle for coastal defense against the Wends. Havn quickly expanded into one of Scandinavia's most important centers of trade, and eventually evolved into modern-day Copenhagen. It was also Absalon who held the first Danish Synod at Lund in 1167. He was interested in history and culture, and commissioned Saxo Grammaticus to write "Gesta Danorum", a comprehensive chronicle of the history of the Danes. In 1171, Absalon issued the "Zealand church law" (), which reduced the number of Canonical Law offenses for which the church could fine the public, while instituting the tithe payment system. Violation of the law was specified as subject to a secular legal process.
Archbishop of Lund. Archbishop Eskil returned from exile in 1167. Eskil agreed on canonizing Valdemar's father Knud Lavard in 1170, with Absalon assisting him at the feast. When Eskil stepped down as Archbishop of Lund in 1177, he chose Absalon as his successor. Absalon initially resisted the new position, as he did not want to lose his power position on Zealand, but complied with Papal orders to do so in 1178. By a unique Papal dispensation, Absalon was allowed to simultaneously maintain his post as Bishop of Roskilde. As the Archbishop of Lund, Absalon utilized ombudsmen from Zealand, demanded unfree labour from the peasantry, and instituted tithes. He was a harsh and effective ruler, who cleared all Orthodox Christian liturgical remnants in favour of Papal standards. A rebellion in the Scanian peasantry forced him to flee to Zealand in 1180, but he returned and subdued the Scanians with the help of Valdemar. Valdemar died in 1182 and was succeeded by his son, Canute VI, whom Absalon also served as counsellor. Under Canute VI, Absalon was the chief policymaker in Danish politics. Absalon kept his hostile attitude to the Holy Roman Empire. On the accession of Canute VI in 1182, an imperial ambassador arrived at Roskilde to get the new king to swear fealty to Frederick Barbarossa, but Absalon resolutely withstood him.
Death. When Absalon retired from military service in 1184 at the age of fifty-seven, he resigned the command of fleets and armies to younger men, like Duke Valdemar, the later king Valdemar II. He instead confined himself to the administration of the Danish empire. In 1192, Absalon made his nephew his successor as Bishop of Roskilde, while his other nephew Anders Sunesen was named the chancellor of Canute VI. Absalon died at Sorø Abbey on 21 March 1201, 73 years old, with his last will granting his personal holdings to the Abbey, apart from Fjenneslev which went to Esbern Snarre. He had already given Copenhagen to the Bishopric of Roskilde. Absalon was interred at Sorø Abbey, and was succeeded as Archbishop of Lund by Anders Sunesen. Legacy. Saxo Grammaticus' "Gesta Danorum" was not finished until after the death of Absalon, but Absalon was one of the chief heroic figures of the chronicle, which was to be the main source of knowledge about early Danish history. Absalon left a legacy as the foremost politician and churchfather of Denmark in the 12th century. Absalon was equally great as churchman, statesman, and warrior. His policy of expansion was to give Denmark the dominion of the Baltic for three generations. That he enjoyed warfare there can be no doubt; yet he was not like the ordinary fighting bishops of the Middle Ages, whose sole indication of their religious role was to avoid the "shedding of blood" by using a mace in battle instead of a sword. Absalon never neglected his ecclesiastical duties. In the 2000s, "Absalon" was adopted as the name for a class of Royal Danish Navy vessels, and the lead vessel of the class. HDMS Absalon (L16) and "Esbern Snare" (L17) were launched and commissioned by Denmark in 2004 and 2005.
Adhemar of Le Puy Adhemar (also known as Adémar, Aimar, or Aelarz) de Monteil (died 1 August 1098) was one of the principal figures of the First Crusade and was bishop of Puy-en-Velay from before 1087. He was the chosen representative of Pope Urban II for the expedition to the Holy Land. Remembered for his martial prowess, he led knights and men into battle and fought beside them, particularly at the Battle of Dorylaeum and Siege of Antioch. Adhemar is said to have carried the Holy Lance in the Crusaders’ desperate breakout at Antioch on 28 June 1098, in which superior Islamic forces under the atabeg Kerbogha were routed, securing the city for the Crusaders. He died in 1098 due to illness. Life. Born around 1045 into the family of the Counts of Valentinois and elected Bishop of Le Puy around 1080, he was an advocate of the Gregorian Reform. Among his supporters were the future Pope Urban II and Raymond of Saint-Gilles, Count of Toulouse and the richest, most powerful nobleman in France. He was also said to have gone on pilgrimage to Jerusalem around 1086. He was the brother of William Hugh of Monteil, who was also a Crusader in the First Crusade. Adhemar most likely met Pope Urban II, when he visited Puy in August 1095.
At the Council of Clermont in 1095, Adhemar showed great zeal for the crusade (there is evidence that Urban II had conferred with Adhemar before the council). Adhemar was named apostolic legate and appointed to lead the crusade by Pope Urban II on 27 November 1095. In part, Adhemar was selected to lead because he had already undertaken a pilgrimage to Jerusalem in 1086 and 1087. Following the announcement of the Crusade Adhemar spent the next year raising money and recruiting men. Departing on 15 August 1096, he accompanied Raymond of Toulouse and his army to the east. Whilst Raymond and the other leaders often quarrelled with each other over the leadership of the crusade, Adhemar was always recognized as the spiritual leader of the crusade and was widely respected by the majority of the Crusaders. During the leg of the trip from Durazzo to Constantinople, in the Valley of Pelagonia, Adhemar was set upon by a group of Pecheneg mercenaries, when he had wandered too far from the majority of the Crusader forces. The Pechenegs beat and robbed Adhemar, but began to fight among themselves over his belongings; Adhemar was saved by Crusader forces who had noticed the disturbance. Once the army had reached Thessalonica, Adhemar decided to stay there for some time, due to sickness, whilst the Crusader forces moved onward. Adhemar eventually was able to rejoin the Crusaders.
Adhemar negotiated with Alexius I Comnenus at Constantinople, reestablished some discipline among the crusaders at Nicaea, fought a crucial role at the Battle of Dorylaeum and was largely responsible for sustaining morale during the siege of Antioch through various religious rites including fasting and special observances of holy days. One such time he did this, was after an earthquake during the siege of Antioch, he had the Crusaders fast for three days and had the priests and clergy perform mass and prayers. Adhemar also ordered the Crusaders to shave and wear a cross in an attempt to stop Crusaders from attacking one another by accident. After the capture of the city in June 1098 and the subsequent siege led by Kerbogha, Adhemar organized a procession through the streets and had the gates locked so that the Crusaders, many of whom had begun to panic, would be unable to leave the city. He was extremely skeptical of Peter Bartholomew's discovery in Antioch of the Holy Lance, especially because he knew such a relic already existed in Constantinople; however, he was willing to let the Crusader army believe it was real if it raised their morale. Adhemar was protected by a band of Crusaders led by Henry of Esch to preserve the (albeit suspect) relic. In June 1098 Adhemar fell prey to sickness and in the following months his condition would deteriorate.
When Kerbogha was defeated, Adhemar organized a council in an attempt to settle the leadership disputes, but died on 1 August 1098, probably of typhus. Adhemar was buried in Antioch within the Basilica of St Peter. The disputes among the higher nobles went unsolved and the march to Jerusalem was delayed for months. However, the lower-class soldiers continued to think of Adhemar as a leader. Following his death, Adhemar reportedly appeared in several visions of various Crusaders. One of the first was reported by Peter Bartholomew who stated that Adhemar appeared to him stating that, due to his skepticism of the Holy Lance, he had spent a few days in hell and was only rescued because a candle had been burned in his memory, he had given a gift to the Shrine where the Holy Lance was kept, and due to the prayers of Bohemond. At the siege of Jerusalem, Peter Desiderius claimed that to have received a vision from Adhemar himself. Peter also claimed that, in this vision, Adhemar had instructed him to have the Crusaders fast and lead a procession around the Walls of Jerusalem. This was done and Jerusalem was taken by the Crusaders in 1099. Later, Stephen of Valence also claimed to have had visions featuring Adhemar in which Adhemar spoke to Stephen of several relics. Adhemar told Stephen great reverence should be given to the cross Adhemar had taken with him on the crusade. He also told Stephen how the Holy Lance should be treated and told Stephen to give Stephen's ring to Count Raymond. He told Stephen that, through this ring, Count Raymond would be able to call upon the power of Mary.
Alphonse, Count of Poitiers Alphonse (11 November 122021 August 1271) was the Count of Poitou from 1225 and Count of Toulouse (as such called Alphonse II) from 1249. As count of Toulouse, he also governed the Marquisate of Provence. Birth and early life. Born at Poissy, Alphonse was a son of King Louis VIII of France and Blanche of Castile. He was a younger brother of King Louis IX of France and an older brother of Count Charles I of Anjou. In 1229, his mother, who was regent of France, forced the Treaty of Paris on Count Raymond VII of Toulouse after his rebellion. It stipulated that a brother of King Louis was to marry Joan, daughter of Raymond VII of Toulouse, and so in 1237 Alphonse married her. Since she was Raymond's only child, they became rulers of Toulouse at Raymond's death in 1249. By the terms of his father's will Alphonse received an "appanage" of Poitou and Auvergne. To enforce this Louis IX won the battle of Taillebourg in the Saintonge War together with Alphonse against a revolt allied with King Henry III of England, who also participated in the battle.
Crusades. Alphonse took part in two crusades with his brother, Louis IX, in 1248 (the Seventh Crusade) and in 1270 (the Eighth Crusade). For the first of these, he raised a large sum and a substantial force, arriving in Damietta on 24 October 1249, after the town had already been captured. He sailed for home on 10 August 1250. His father-in-law had died while he was away, and he went directly to Toulouse to take possession. There was some resistance to his accession as count, which was suppressed with the help of his mother Blanche of Castile who was acting as regent in the absence of Louis IX. Later life. In 1252, on the death of his mother, Blanche of Castile, Alphonse was joint regent with Charles of Anjou until the return of Louis IX. During that time he took a great part in the campaigns and negotiations which led to the Treaty of Paris in 1259, under which King Henry III of England recognized his loss of continental territory to France (including Normandy, Maine, Anjou, and Poitou) in exchange for France withdrawing its support for English rebels.
Aside from the crusades, Alphonse stayed primarily in Paris, governing his estates by officials, inspectors who reviewed the officials' work, and a constant stream of messages. His main work was on his own estates. There he repaired the effects of the Albigensian war and made a first attempt at administrative centralization, thus preparing the way for union with the crown. On 8 October 1268, Alphonse had all Jews throughout his lands arrested and their property confiscated. When Louis IX formed the Eighth Crusade, Alphonse again raised a large sum of money and accompanied his brother. This time, however, he did not return to France, dying while on his way back, at Savona in Italy, on 21 August 1271. Death and legacy. Alphonse's death without heirs raised some questions as to the succession to his lands. One possibility was that they should revert to the crown, another that they should be redistributed to his family. The latter was claimed by Charles of Anjou, but in 1283 Parlement decided that the County of Toulouse should revert to the crown, if there were no male heirs. Alphonse's wife Joan (who died four days after Alphonse) had attempted to dispose of her lands in a will to her nearest female relative Philippa de Lomagne. However, Joan was the only surviving child and heiress of Raymond VII, Count of Toulouse, Duke of Narbonne, and Marquis of Provence, so under Provençal and French law, the lands should have gone to her nearest male relative. Her will was invalidated by Parlement in 1274. One specific bequest in Alphonse's will, giving his wife's lands in the Comtat Venaissin to the Holy See, was allowed, and it became a papal territory, a status which it retained until 1791.
Alfonso Jordan Alfonso Jordan, also spelled Alfons Jordan or Alphonse Jourdain (1103–1148), was the Count of Tripoli (1105–09), Count of Rouergue (1109–48) and Count of Toulouse, Margrave of Provence and Duke of Narbonne (1112–48). Life. Alfonso was the son of Raymond IV of Toulouse by his third wife, Elvira of Castile. He was born in the castle of Mont Pèlerin in Tripoli while his father was on the First Crusade. He was given the name "Jourdain" after being baptised in the Jordan River. Alfonso's father died when he was two years old and he remained under the guardianship of his cousin, William Jordan, Count of Cerdagne, until he was five. He was then taken to Europe, where his half-brother Bertrand had given him the county of Rouergue. Upon Bertrand's death in 1112, Alfonso succeeded to the county of Toulouse and marquisate of Provence. In 1114, Duke William IX of Aquitaine, who claimed Toulouse by right of his wife Philippa, daughter of Count William IV, invaded the county and conquered it. Alfonso recovered a part in 1119, but he was not in full control until 1123. When at last successful, he was excommunicated by Pope Callixtus II for having damaged the abbey of Saint-Gilles and assaulting the monks.
Alfonso next had to fight for his rights in Provence against Count Raymond Berengar III of Barcelona. Not until September 1125 did their war end in "peace and concord" ("pax et concordia"). At this stage, Alfonso was master of the regions lying between the Pyrenees and the Alps, the Auvergne and the sea. His ascendancy was, according to one commentator, an unmixed good to the country, for during a period of fourteen years art and industry flourished. In March 1126, Alfonso was at the court of King Alfonso VII of León when he acceded to the throne. According to the "Chronica Adefonsi imperatoris", Alfonso and Suero Vermúdez took the city of León from opposition magnates and handed it over to Alfonso VII. Among those who may have accompanied Alfonso on one of his many extended stays in Spain was the troubadour Marcabru. By 1132, Alfonso was embroiled in a succession war over the county of Melgueil against Count Berengar Raymond of Provence. This brief conflict was resolved with Alfonso's defeat and Berengar marrying Beatrice, heiress of Melgueil.
Alfonso seized the viscounty of Narbonne in 1134, and ruled it during the minority of Viscountess Ermengarde, only restoring it to her in 1143. In 1141 King Louis VII of France pressed the claim of his wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine, granddaughter of Philippa, even besieging Toulouse, but without result. That same year Alfonso Jordan was again in Spain, making a pilgrimage to Saint James of Compostela, when he proposed a peace between the king of León and García Ramírez of Navarre, which became the basis for subsequent negotiations. In 1144, Alfonso again incurred the displeasure of the church by siding with the citizens of Montpellier against their lord. In 1145, Bernard of Clairvaux addressed a letter to him full of concern about a heretic named Henry in the diocese of Toulouse. Bernard even went there to preach against the heresy, an early expression of Catharism. A second time he was excommunicated; but in 1146 he took the cross (i.e., vowed to go on crusade) at a meeting in Vézelay called by Louis VII. In August 1147, he embarked for the near east on the Second Crusade.
He lingered on the way in Italy and probably in Constantinople, where he may have met Emperor Manuel I. Alfonso finally arrived at Acre in 1148. He died at Caesarea, which was followed by accusations of poisoning, levelled against either Eleanor of Aquitaine or Melisende of Jerusalem, who may have wanted to eliminate him as a rival to her brother-in-law Count Raymond II of Tripoli. Alfonso and Faydiva d'Uzès had: He also had an illegitimate son, Bertrand. Sources.
Ambroise Ambroise, sometimes Ambroise of Normandy, (flourished ) was a Norman poet and chronicler of the Third Crusade, author of a work called "", which describes in rhyming Old French verse the adventures of as a crusader. Life. The credit for detecting its value belongs to Gaston Paris, although his edition (1897) was partially anticipated by the editors of the "", who published some selections in the twenty-seventh volume of their Scriptores (1885). Ambroise followed Richard I as a noncombatant, and not improbably as a court-minstrel. He speaks as an eyewitness of the king's doings at Messina, in Cyprus, at the siege of Acre, and in the abortive campaign which followed the capture of that city. Commentary on his work. Ambroise is surprisingly accurate in his chronology; though he did not complete his work before 1195, it is evidently founded upon notes which he had taken in the course of his pilgrimage. He shows no greater political insight than we should expect from his position; but relates what he had seen and heard with a naïve vivacity which compels attention. He is by no means an impartial source: he is prejudiced against the Saracens, against the French, and against all the rivals or enemies of his master, including the "Polein" party which supported Conrad of Montferrat against Guy of Lusignan. He is rather to be treated as a biographer than as a historian of the Crusade in its broader aspects. Nonetheless, he is an interesting primary source for the events of the years 1190–1192 in the Kingdom of Jerusalem.
Books 2–6 of the "Itinerarium Regis Ricardi", a Latin prose narrative of the same events apparently compiled by Richard, a canon of Holy Trinity, London, are closely related to Ambroise's poem. They were formerly sometimes regarded as the first-hand narrative on which Ambroise based his work, but that can no longer be maintained. History of the poem. The poem is known to us only through one Vatican manuscript, and long escaped the notice of historians.
Art Deco Art Deco, short for the French (), is a style of visual arts, architecture, and product design, that first appeared in Paris in the 1910s just before World War I, and flourished in the United States and Europe during the 1920s to early 1930s. Through styling and design of the exterior and interior of anything from large structures to small objects, including how people look (clothing, fashion, and jewelry), Art Deco has influenced buildings (from skyscrapers to cinemas), bridges, ships, ocean liners, trains, cars, trucks, buses, furniture, and everyday objects including radios and vacuum cleaners. The name Art Deco came into use after the 1925 (International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts) held in Paris. Art Deco has its origins in the bold geometric forms of the Vienna Secession and Cubism. From the outset, Art Deco was influenced by the bright colors of Fauvism and the Ballets Russes, and the exoticized styles of art from China, Japan, India, Persia, ancient Egypt, and Maya. In its time, Art Deco was tagged with other names, like style moderne, "Moderne", modernistic or "style contemporain", and was not recognized as a distinct and homogenous style.
During its heyday, Art Deco represented luxury, glamour, exuberance and faith in social and technological progress. The movement featured rare and expensive materials, such as ebony and ivory, and exquisite craftsmanship. It also introduced new materials such as chrome plating, stainless steel and plastic. In New York, the Empire State Building, Chrysler Building, and other buildings from the 1920s and 1930s are monuments to the style. The largest concentration of art deco architecture in the world is in Miami Beach, Florida. In the 1930s, during the Great Depression, Art Deco became more subdued. A sleeker form of the style, called Streamline Moderne, appeared in the 1930s, featuring curving forms and smooth, polished surfaces. Art Deco was an international style, but after the outbreak of World War II, it lost its dominance to the functional and unadorned styles of modern architecture and the International Style. Terminology. Art Deco took its name, short for , from the International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts held in Paris in 1925, though the diverse styles that characterised it had already appeared in Paris and Brussels before World War I.
"Arts décoratifs" was first used in France in 1858 in the "Bulletin de la Société française de photographie". In 1868, the "Le Figaro" newspaper used the term "objets d'art décoratifs" for objects for stage scenery created for the Théâtre de l'Opéra. In 1875, furniture designers, textile, jewellers, glass-workers, and other craftsmen were officially given the status of artists by the French government. In response, the "École royale gratuite de dessin" (Royal Free School of Design), founded in 1766 under King Louis XVI to train artists and artisans in crafts relating to the fine arts, was renamed the "École nationale des arts décoratifs ("National School of Decorative Arts). It took its present name, ENSAD ("École nationale supérieure des arts décoratifs"), in 1920. The actual term "art déco" did not appear in print until 1966, in the title of the first modern exhibition on the subject, held by the Museum of Decorative Arts in Paris, "Les Années 25 : Art déco, Bauhaus, Stijl, Esprit nouveau", which covered a variety of major styles in the 1920s and 1930s. The term was then used in a 1966 newspaper article by Hillary Gelson in "The Times" (London, 12 November), describing the different styles at the exhibit.
Art Deco gained currency as a broadly applied stylistic label in 1968 when historian Bevis Hillier published the first major academic book on it, "Art Deco of the 20s and 30s". He noted that the term was already being used by art dealers, and cites "The Times" (2 November 1966) and an essay named "Les Arts Déco" in "Elle" magazine (November 1967) as examples. In 1971, he organized an exhibition at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, which he details in his book "The World of Art Deco". Mike Hope lists many other labels that were used for Art Deco architecture: Odeon Style (after the style used by Odeon Cinemas in the 1930s), Liberty style, [Style] Moderne, Jazz Moderne, Zigzag Moderne, British Moderne, Nautical Moderne, Modern Ship Style, Pacqueboat Style, Ocean Liner Style, White Modern, Futurist Art Deco, Streamline Beaux Arts, Streamline Moderne, PWA Moderne, PWA/WPA Moderne, Federal Moderne, Depression Moderne, Classical Moderne, Classical Modernism, Modernist Classical, Chicago School, Czech Architectural Cubism, Italian Futurism, Prairie School, Atmospheric Theatre, Med Deco, Amsterdam School, "Nieuwe Zakelijkheid" (also "Neue Sachlichkeit", "Neues Bauen", New Sobriety, New Objectivity), Mayan Revival, Japanese Secession, Spanish Pueblo Style, Pueblo Deco, Finnish National Romanticism; Neo-Gothic, Neo-Byzantine, Neo-Egyptian, Spanish Mission, International School, European International Style, Wiener Werkstätte, Free Classicism; Stripped Neo-Classicism, Deco Free Classicism, Stripped Classicism, Transitional Modern, Vogue Regency.
Origins. New materials and technologies. New materials and technologies, especially reinforced concrete, were key to the development and appearance of Art Deco. The first concrete house was built in 1853 in the Paris suburbs by François Coignet. In 1877 Joseph Monier introduced the idea of strengthening the concrete with a mesh of iron rods in a grill pattern. In 1893, Auguste Perret built the first concrete garage in Paris, then an apartment building, house, then, in 1913, the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées. The theatre was denounced by one critic as the "Zeppelin of Avenue Montaigne", an alleged Germanic influence, copied from the Vienna Secession. Thereafter, the majority of Art Deco buildings were made of reinforced concrete, which gave greater freedom of form and less need for reinforcing pillars and columns. Perret was also a pioneer in covering the concrete with ceramic tiles, both for protection and decoration. The architect Le Corbusier first learned the uses of reinforced concrete working as a draftsman in Perret's studio.
Other new technologies that were important to Art Deco were new methods in producing plate glass, which was less expensive and allowed much larger and stronger windows, and for mass-producing aluminium, which was used for building and window frames and later, by Corbusier, Warren McArthur, and others, for lightweight furniture. Vienna Secession and Wiener Werkstätte (1897–1912). The architects of the Vienna Secession (formed 1897), especially Josef Hoffmann, had a notable influence on Art Deco. His Stoclet Palace, in Brussels (1905–1911), was a prototype of the Art Deco style, featuring geometric volumes, symmetry, straight lines, concrete covered with marble plaques, finely-sculpted ornament, and lavish interiors, including mosaic friezes by Gustav Klimt. Hoffmann was also a founder of the Wiener Werkstätte (1903–1932), an association of craftsmen and interior designers working in the new style. This became the model for the "Compagnie des arts français", created in 1919, which brought together André Mare and Louis Süe, the first leading French Art Deco designers and decorators.
Society of Decorative Artists (1901–1945). The emergence of Art Deco was closely connected with the rise in status of decorative artists, who until late in the 19th century were considered simply artisans. The term had been invented in 1875, giving the designers of furniture, textiles, and other decoration official status. The "Société des artistes décorateurs" (Society of Decorative Artists), or SAD, was founded in 1901, and decorative artists were given the same rights of authorship as painters and sculptors. A similar movement developed in Italy. The first international exhibition devoted entirely to the decorative arts, the "Esposizione Internazionale d'Arte Decorativa Moderna", was held in Turin in 1902. Several new magazines devoted to decorative arts were founded in Paris, including "Arts et décoration" and "L'Art décoratif moderne". Decorative arts sections were introduced into the annual salons of the "Sociéte des artistes français", and later in the . French nationalism also played a part in the resurgence of decorative arts, as French designers felt challenged by the increasing exports of less expensive German furnishings. In 1911, SAD proposed a major new international exposition of decorative arts in 1912. No copies of old styles would be permitted, only modern works. The exhibit was postponed until 1914; and then, because of the war, until 1925, when it gave its name to the whole family of styles known as "Déco".
Parisian department stores and fashion designers also played an important part in the rise of Art Deco. Prominent businesses such as silverware firm Christofle, glass designer René Lalique, and the jewellers Louis Cartier and Boucheron began designing products in more modern styles. Beginning in 1900, department stores recruited decorative artists to work in their design studios. The decoration of the 1912 "Salon d'Automne" was entrusted to the department store "Printemps", and that year it created its own workshop, "Primavera". By 1920 "Primavera" employed more than 300 artists, whose styles ranged from updated versions of Louis XIV, Louis XVI, and especially Louis Philippe furniture made by Louis Süe and the "Primavera" workshop, to more modern forms from the workshop of the "Au Louvre" department store. Other designers, including Émile-Jacques Ruhlmann and Paul Follot, refused to use mass production, insisting that each piece be made individually. The early Art Deco style featured luxurious and exotic materials such as ebony, ivory and silk, very bright colours and stylized motifs, particularly baskets and bouquets of flowers of all colours, giving a modernist look.
Salon d'Automne (1903–1914). At its birth between 1910 and 1914, Art Deco was an explosion of colours, featuring bright and often clashing hues, frequently in floral designs, presented in furniture upholstery, carpets, screens, wallpaper and fabrics. Many colourful works, including chairs and a table by Maurice Dufrêne and a bright Gobelin carpet by Paul Follot were presented at the 1912 Salon des artistes décorateurs. In 1912–1913 designer Adrien Karbowsky made a floral chair with a parrot design for the hunting lodge of art collector Jacques Doucet. The furniture designers Louis Süe and André Mare made their first appearance at the 1912 exhibit, under the name of the "Atelier français", combining polychromatic fabrics with exotic and expensive materials, including ebony and ivory. After World War I, they became one of the most prominent French interior design firms, producing the furniture for the first-class salons and cabins of the French transatlantic ocean liners. The vivid hues of Art Deco came from many sources, including the exotic set designs by Léon Bakst for the Ballets Russes, which caused a sensation in Paris just before World War I. Some of the colours were inspired by the earlier Fauvism movement led by Henri Matisse; others by the Orphism of painters such as Sonia Delaunay; others by the movement known as Les Nabis, and in the work of symbolist painter Odilon Redon, who designed fireplace screens and other decorative objects. Bright shades were a feature of the work of fashion designer Paul Poiret, whose work influenced both Art Deco fashion and interior design.
Théâtre des Champs-Élysées (1910–1913). The Théâtre des Champs-Élysées (1910–1913), by Auguste Perret, was the first landmark Art Deco building completed in Paris. Previously, reinforced concrete had been used only for industrial and apartment buildings, Perret had built the first modern reinforced-concrete apartment building in Paris on rue Benjamin Franklin in 1903–04. Henri Sauvage, another important future Art Deco architect, built another in 1904 at 7, rue Trétaigne (1904). From 1908 to 1910, the 21-year-old Le Corbusier worked as a draftsman in Perret's office, learning the techniques of concrete construction. Perret's building had clean rectangular form, geometric decoration and straight lines, the future trademarks of Art Deco. The décor of the theatre was also revolutionary; the façade was decorated with high reliefs by Antoine Bourdelle, a dome by Maurice Denis, paintings by Édouard Vuillard, and an Art Deco curtain by Ker-Xavier Roussel. The theatre became the venue for many of the first performances of the Ballets Russes. Perret and Sauvage became the leading Art Deco architects in Paris in the 1920s.
Cubism. The art movement known as Cubism appeared in France between 1907 and 1912, influencing the development of Art Deco. In "Art Deco Complete: The Definitive Guide to the Decorative Arts of the 1920s and 1930s" Alastair Duncan writes "Cubism, in some bastardized form or other, became the lingua franca of the era's decorative artists." The Cubists, themselves under the influence of Paul Cézanne, were interested in the simplification of forms to their geometric essentials: the cylinder, the sphere, the cone. In 1912, the artists of the Section d'Or exhibited works considerably more accessible to the general public than the analytical Cubism of Picasso and Braque. The Cubist vocabulary was poised to attract fashion, furniture and interior designers. In the "Art Décoratif" section of the 1912 Salon d'Automne, an architectural installation was exhibited known as "La Maison Cubiste". The façade was designed by Raymond Duchamp-Villon. The décor of the house was by André Mare. "La Maison Cubiste" was a furnished installation with a façade, a staircase, wrought iron banisters, a bedroom, a living room—the "Salon Bourgeois", where paintings by Albert Gleizes, Jean Metzinger, Marie Laurencin, Marcel Duchamp, Fernand Léger and Roger de La Fresnaye were hung. Thousands of spectators at the salon passed through the full-scale model.
The façade of the house, designed by Duchamp-Villon, was not very radical by modern standards; the lintels and pediments had prismatic shapes, but otherwise the façade resembled an ordinary house of the period. For the two rooms, Mare designed the wallpaper, which featured stylized roses and floral patterns, along with upholstery, furniture and carpets, all with flamboyant and colourful motifs. It was a distinct break from traditional décor. The critic Emile Sedeyn described Mare's work in the magazine "Art et Décoration": "He does not embarrass himself with simplicity, for he multiplies flowers wherever they can be put. The effect he seeks is obviously one of picturesqueness and gaiety. He achieves it." The Cubist element was provided by the paintings. The installation was attacked by some critics as extremely radical, which helped make for its success. This architectural installation was subsequently exhibited at the 1913 Armory Show, New York City, Chicago and Boston. Thanks largely to the exhibition, the term "Cubist" began to be applied to anything modern, from women's haircuts to clothing to theater performances."
The Cubist influence continued within Art Deco, even as Deco branched out in many other directions. Cubism's adumbrated geometry became coin of the realm in the 1920s. Art Deco's development of Cubism's selective geometry into a wider array of shapes carried Cubism as a pictorial taxonomy to a much broader audience and wider appeal. (Richard Harrison Martin, Metropolitan Museum of Art) Influences. Pre-World War I European styles. Art Deco was not a single style, but a collection of different and sometimes contradictory styles. In architecture, Art Deco was the successor to (and reaction against) Art Nouveau, a style which flourished in Europe between 1895 and 1900, and coexisted with the Beaux-Arts and neoclassical that were predominant in European and American architecture. In 1905 Eugène Grasset wrote and published "Méthode de Composition Ornementale, Éléments Rectilignes," in which he systematically explored the decorative (ornamental) aspects of geometric elements, forms, motifs and their variations, in contrast with (and as a departure from) the undulating Art Nouveau style of Hector Guimard, so popular in Paris a few years earlier. Grasset stressed the principle that various simple geometric shapes like triangles and squares are the basis of all compositional arrangements. The reinforced-concrete buildings of Auguste Perret and Henri Sauvage, and particularly the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, offered a new form of construction and decoration which was copied worldwide.
Ancient and non-European civilizations. In decoration, many different styles were borrowed and used by Art Deco. They included pre-modern art from around the world and observable at the , Musée de l'Homme and the Musée national des Arts d'Afrique et d'Océanie. There was also popular interest in archaeology due to excavations at Pompeii, Troy, and the tomb of the 18th dynasty Pharaoh Tutankhamun. Artists and designers integrated motifs from ancient Egypt, Africa, Mesopotamia, Greece, Rome, Asia, Mesoamerica and Oceania with Machine Age elements. Early 20th-century avant-garde movements. Other styles borrowed included Futurism, Orphism, Functionalism, and Modernism in general. Cubism discovers its decorative potential within the Art Deco aesthetic, when transposed from the canvas onto a textile material or wallpaper. Sonia Delaunay conceives her dress models in an abstract and geometric style, "as live paintings or sculptures of living forms". Cubist-like designs are created by Louis Barrilet in the stained-glass windows of the American bar at the Atrium Casino in Dax (1926), but also including names of fashionable cocktails.
Sonia Delaunay conceives her dress models in an abstract and geometric style, "as live paintings or sculptures of living forms". Cubist-like designs are created by Louis Barrilet in the stained-glass windows of the American bar at the Atrium Casino in Dax (1926), but also including names of fashionable cocktails. In architecture, the clear contrast between horizontal and vertical volumes, specific both to Russian Constructivism and the Frank Lloyd Wright-Willem Marinus Dudok line, becomes a common device in articulating Art Deco façades, from individual homes and tenement buildings to cinemas or oil stations. Art Deco also used the clashing colours and designs of Fauvism, notably in the work of Henri Matisse and André Derain, inspired the designs of Art Deco textiles, wallpaper, and painted ceramics. It took ideas from the high fashion vocabulary of the period, which featured geometric designs, chevrons, zigzags, and stylized bouquets of flowers. It was influenced by discoveries in Egyptology, and growing interest in the Orient and in African art. It was influenced by discoveries in Egyptology, and growing interest in the Orient and in African art. From 1925 onwards, it was often inspired by a passion for new machines, such as airships, automobiles and ocean liners, and by 1930 this influence resulted in the style called Streamline Moderne.
International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts (1925). The event that marked the zenith of the style and gave it its name was the International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts which took place in Paris from April to October in 1925. This was officially sponsored by the French government, and covered a site in Paris of 55 acres, running from the Grand Palais on the right bank to Les Invalides on the left bank, and along the banks of the Seine. The Grand Palais, the largest hall in the city, was filled with exhibits of decorative arts from the participating countries. There were 15,000 exhibitors from twenty different countries, including Austria, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, Great Britain, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Sweden, and the new Soviet Union. Germany was not invited because of tensions after the war; the United States, misunderstanding the purpose of the exhibit, declined to participate. The event was visited by sixteen million people during its seven-month run. The rules of the exhibition required that all work be modern; no historical styles were allowed. The main purpose of the Exhibit was to promote the French manufacturers of luxury furniture, porcelain, glass, metalwork, textiles, and other decorative products. To further promote the products, all the major Paris department stores, and major designers had their own pavilions. The Exposition had a secondary purpose in promoting products from French colonies in Africa and Asia, including ivory and exotic woods.
The Hôtel du Collectionneur was a popular attraction at the Exposition; it displayed the new furniture designs of Emile-Jacques Ruhlmann, as well as Art Deco fabrics, carpets, and a painting by Jean Dupas. The interior design followed the same principles of symmetry and geometric forms which set it apart from Art Nouveau, and bright colours, fine craftsmanship rare and expensive materials which set it apart from the strict functionality of the Modernist style. While most of the pavilions were lavishly decorated and filled with hand-made luxury furniture, two pavilions, those of the Soviet Union and Pavilion de L'Esprit Nouveau, built by the magazine of that name run by Le Corbusier, were built in an austere style with plain white walls and no decoration; they were among the earliest examples of modernist architecture. Late Art Deco.
The Art Deco interior designer Paul Follot defended Art Deco in this way: "We know that man is never content with the indispensable and that the superfluous is always needed...If not, we would have to get rid of music, flowers, and perfumes..!" However, Le Corbusier was a brilliant publicist for modernist architecture; he stated that a house was simply "a machine to live in", and tirelessly promoted the idea that Art Deco was the past and modernism was the future. Le Corbusier's ideas were gradually adopted by architecture schools, and the aesthetics of Art Deco were abandoned. The same features that made Art Deco popular in the beginning, its craftsmanship, rich materials and ornament, led to its decline. The Great Depression that began in the United States in 1929, and reached Europe shortly afterwards, greatly reduced the number of wealthy clients who could pay for the furnishings and art objects. In the Depression economic climate, few companies were ready to build new skyscrapers. Even the Ruhlmann firm resorted to producing pieces of furniture in series, rather than individual hand-made items. The last buildings built in Paris in the new style were the Museum of Public Works by Auguste Perret (now the French Economic, Social and Environmental Council), the Palais de Chaillot by Louis-Hippolyte Boileau, Jacques Carlu and Léon Azéma, and the Palais de Tokyo of the 1937 Paris International Exposition; they looked out at the grandiose pavilion of Nazi Germany, designed by Albert Speer, which faced the equally grandiose socialist-realist pavilion of Stalin's Soviet Union.
After World War II, the dominant architectural style became the International Style pioneered by Le Corbusier, and Mies van der Rohe. A handful of Art Deco hotels were built in Miami Beach after World War II, but elsewhere the style largely vanished, except in industrial design, where it continued to be used in automobile styling and products such as jukeboxes. In the 1960s, it experienced a modest academic revival, thanks in part to the writings of architectural historians such as Bevis Hillier. In the 1970s efforts were made in the United States and Europe to preserve the best examples of Art Deco architecture, and many buildings were restored and repurposed. Postmodern architecture, which first appeared in the 1980s, like Art Deco, often includes purely decorative features. Deco continues to inspire designers, and is often used in contemporary fashion, jewellery, and toiletries. Painting. There was no section set aside for painting at the 1925 Exposition. Art deco painting was by definition decorative, designed to decorate a room or work of architecture, so few painters worked exclusively in the style, but two painters are closely associated with Art Deco. Jean Dupas painted Art Deco murals for the Bordeaux Pavilion at the 1925 Decorative Arts Exposition in Paris, and also painted the picture over the fireplace in the Maison du Collectionneur exhibit at the 1925 Exposition, which featured furniture by Ruhlmann and other prominent Art Deco designers. His murals were also prominent in the décor of the French ocean liner SS "Normandie". His work was purely decorative, designed as a background or accompaniment to other elements of the décor.
The other painter closely associated with the style is Tamara de Lempicka. Born in Poland, she emigrated to Paris after the Russian Revolution. She studied under Maurice Denis and André Lhote, and borrowed many elements from their styles. She painted portraits in a realistic, dynamic and colourful Art Deco style. In the 1930s, a dramatic new form of Art Deco painting appeared in the United States. During the Great Depression, the Federal Art Project of the Works Progress Administration was created to give work to unemployed artists. Many were given the task of decorating government buildings, hospitals and schools. There was no specific Art Deco style used in the murals; artists engaged to paint murals in government buildings came from many different schools, from American regionalism to social realism; they included Reginald Marsh, Rockwell Kent and the Mexican painter Diego Rivera. The murals were Art Deco because they were all decorative and related to the activities in the building or city where they were painted: Reginald Marsh and Rockwell Kent both decorated U.S. postal buildings, and showed postal employees at work while Diego Rivera depicted automobile factory workers for the Detroit Institute of Arts. Diego Rivera's mural "Man at the Crossroads" (1933) for 30 Rockefeller Plaza featured an unauthorized portrait of Lenin. When Rivera refused to remove Lenin, the painting was destroyed and a new mural was painted by the Spanish artist Josep Maria Sert.
Sculpture. Monumental and public sculpture. Sculpture was a very common and integral feature of Art Deco architecture. In France, allegorical bas-reliefs representing dance and music by Antoine Bourdelle decorated the earliest Art Deco landmark in Paris, the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, in 1912. The 1925 Exposition had major sculptural works placed around the site, pavilions were decorated with sculptural friezes, and several pavilions devoted to smaller studio sculpture. In the 1930s, a large group of prominent sculptors made works for the 1937 at Chaillot. Alfred Janniot made the relief sculptures on the façade of the Palais de Tokyo. The Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, and the esplanade in front of the Palais de Chaillot, facing the Eiffel Tower, was crowded with new statuary by Charles Malfray, Henry Arnold, and many others. Public Art Deco sculpture was almost always representational, usually of heroic or allegorical figures related to the purpose of the building or room. The themes were usually selected by the patrons, not the artist. Abstract sculpture for decoration was extremely rare.
In the United States, the most prominent Art Deco sculptor for public art was Paul Manship, who updated classical and mythological subjects and themes in an Art Deco style. His most famous work was the statue of Prometheus at Rockefeller Center in New York City, a 20th-century adaptation of a classical subject. Other important works for Rockefeller Center were made by Lee Lawrie, including the sculptural façade and the Atlas statue. During the Great Depression in the United States, many sculptors were commissioned to make works for the decoration of federal government buildings, with funds provided by the WPA, or Works Progress Administration. They included sculptor Sidney Biehler Waugh, who created stylized and idealized images of workers and their tasks for federal government office buildings. In San Francisco, Ralph Stackpole provided sculpture for the façade of the new San Francisco Stock Exchange building. In Washington D.C., Michael Lantz made works for the Federal Trade Commission building. In Britain, Deco public statuary was made by Eric Gill for the BBC Broadcasting House, while Ronald Atkinson decorated the lobby of the former Daily Express Building in London (1932).
One of the best known and certainly the largest public Art Deco sculpture is the "Christ the Redeemer" by the French sculptor Paul Landowski, completed between 1922 and 1931, located on a mountain top overlooking Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Studio sculpture. Many early Art Deco sculptures were small, designed to decorate salons. One genre of this sculpture was called the Chryselephantine statuette, named for a style of ancient Greek temple statues made of gold and ivory. They were sometimes made of bronze, or sometimes with much more lavish materials, such as ivory, onyx, alabaster, and gold leaf. One of the best-known Art Deco salon sculptors was the Romanian-born Demétre Chiparus, who produced colourful small sculptures of dancers. Other notable salon sculptors included Ferdinand Preiss, Josef Lorenzl, Alexander Kelety, Dorothea Charol and Gustav Schmidtcassel. Another important American sculptor in the studio format was Harriet Whitney Frishmuth, who had studied with Auguste Rodin in Paris. Pierre Le Paguays was a prominent Art Deco studio sculptor, whose work was shown at the 1925 Exposition. He worked with bronze, marble, ivory, onyx, gold, alabaster and other precious materials.
François Pompon was a pioneer of modern stylised animalier sculpture. He was not fully recognised for his artistic accomplishments until the age of 67 at the Salon d'Automne of 1922 with the work "Ours blanc", also known as "The White Bear", now in the Musée d'Orsay in Paris. Parallel with these Art Deco sculptors, more avant-garde and abstract modernist sculptors were at work in Paris and New York City. The most prominent were Constantin Brâncuși, Joseph Csaky, Alexander Archipenko, Henri Laurens, Jacques Lipchitz, Gustave Miklos, Jean Lambert-Rucki, Jan et Joël Martel, Chana Orloff and Pablo Gargallo. Graphic arts. The Art Deco style appeared early in the graphic arts, in the years just before World War I. It appeared in Paris in the posters and the costume designs of Léon Bakst for the Ballets Russes, and in the catalogues of the fashion designers Paul Poiret. The illustrations of Georges Barbier, and Georges Lepape and the images in the fashion magazine "La Gazette du bon ton" perfectly captured the elegance and sensuality of the style. In the 1920s, the look changed; the fashions stressed were more casual, sportive and daring, with the woman models usually smoking cigarettes. American fashion magazines such as "Vogue", "Vanity Fair" and "Harper's Bazaar" quickly picked up the new style and popularized it in the United States. It also influenced the work of American book illustrators such as Rockwell Kent. In Germany, the most famous poster artist of the period was Ludwig Hohlwein, who created colourful and dramatic posters for music festivals, beers, and, late in his career, for the Nazi Party.
During the Art Nouveau period, posters usually advertised theatrical products or cabarets. In the 1920s, travel posters, made for steamship lines and airlines, became extremely popular. The style changed notably in the 1920s, to focus attention on the product being advertised. The images became simpler, precise, more linear, more dynamic, and were often placed against a single-color background. In France, popular Art Deco designers included Charles Loupot and Paul Colin, who became famous for his posters of American singer and dancer Josephine Baker. Jean Carlu designed posters for Charlie Chaplin movies, soaps, and theatres; in the late 1930s he emigrated to the United States, where, during the World War, he designed posters to encourage war production. The designer Charles Gesmar became famous making posters for the singer Mistinguett and for Air France. Among the best-known French Art Deco poster designers was Cassandre, who made the celebrated poster of the ocean liner SS "Normandie" in 1935. In the 1930s a new genre of posters appeared in the United States during the Great Depression. The Federal Art Project hired American artists to create posters to promote tourism and cultural events.
Architecture. Styles. The architectural style of Art Deco made its debut in Paris in 1903–04, with the construction of two apartment buildings in Paris, one by Auguste Perret on rue Benjamin Franklin and the other on rue Trétaigne by Henri Sauvage. The two young architects used reinforced concrete for the first time in Paris residential buildings; the new buildings had clean lines, rectangular forms, and no decoration on the façades; they marked a clean break with the art nouveau style. Between 1910 and 1913, Perret used his experience in concrete apartment buildings to construct the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, 15 avenue Montaigne. Between 1925 and 1928 Sauvage constructed the new Art Deco façade of La Samaritaine department store in Paris. The Art Deco style was not limited to buildings on land; the ocean liner SS "Normandie", whose first voyage was in 1935, featured Art Deco design, including a dining room whose ceiling and decoration were made of glass by Lalique. Art Deco architecture is sometimes classified into three types: Zigzag [Moderne] (aka Jazz Moderne); Classic Moderne; and Streamline Moderne.
Zigzag Moderne. Zigzag Moderne (aka Jazz Moderne) was the first style to arrive in the United States. "Zigzag" refers to the stepping of the outline of a skyscraper to exaggerate its height, and was mainly used for large public and commercial buildings, in particular hotels, movie theaters, restaurants, skyscrapers, and department stores. Classic Moderne. Classic Moderne has a more graceful appearance, and there is less ornamentation. Classic Moderne is also sometimes referred to as PWA (Public Works Administration) Moderne or Depression Moderne, as it was undertaken by the PWA during the Great Depression. Streamline Moderne. In the late 1930s, a new variety of Art Deco architecture became common; it was called Streamline Moderne or simply Streamline, or, in France, the "Style Paquebot", or Ocean Liner style. Buildings in the style had rounded corners and long horizontal lines; they were built of reinforced concrete and were almost always white; and they sometimes had nautical features, such as railings and portholes that resembled those on a ship. The rounded corner was not entirely new; it had appeared in Berlin in 1923 in the Mossehaus by Erich Mendelsohn, and later in the Hoover Building, an industrial complex in the London suburb of Perivale. In the United States, it became most closely associated with transport; Streamline moderne was rare in office buildings but was often used for bus stations and airport terminals, such as the terminal at La Guardia airport in New York City that handled the first transatlantic flights, via the PanAm Clipper flying boats; and in roadside architecture, such as gas stations and diners. In the late 1930s a series of diners, modelled upon streamlined railroad cars, were produced and installed in towns in New England; at least two examples still remain and are now registered historic buildings.
Building types. Skyscrapers. American skyscrapers marked the summit of the Art Deco style; they became the tallest and most recognizable modern buildings in the world, designed to show the prestige of their builders through height, shape, their color, and dramatic illumination at night. The American Radiator Building by Raymond Hood (1924) combined Gothic and Deco modern elements in the design of the building. Black brick on the frontage of the building (symbolizing coal) was selected to give an idea of solidity and to give the building a solid mass. Other parts of the façade were covered in gold bricks (symbolizing fire), and the entry was decorated with marble and black mirrors. Another early Art Deco skyscraper was Detroit's Guardian Building, which opened in 1929. Designed by modernist Wirt C. Rowland, the building was the first to employ stainless steel as a decorative element, and the extensive use of colored designs in place of traditional ornaments. New York City's skyline was radically changed by the Chrysler Building in Manhattan (completed in 1930), designed by William Van Alen. It was a giant seventy-seven-floor tall advertisement for Chrysler automobiles. The top was crowned by a stainless steel spire, and was ornamented by deco "gargoyles" in the form of stainless steel radiator cap decorations. The base of the tower, thirty-three stories above the street, was decorated with colorful Art Deco friezes, and the lobby was decorated with Art Deco symbols and images expressing modernity.
The Chrysler Building was soon surpassed in height by the Empire State Building by William F. Lamb (1931), in a slightly less lavish Deco style and the RCA Building (now 30 Rockefeller Plaza) by Raymond Hood (1933) which together completely changed New York City's skyline. The tops of the buildings were decorated with Art Deco crowns and spires covered with stainless steel, and, in the case of the Chrysler building, with Art Deco gargoyles modeled after radiator ornaments, while the entrances and lobbies were lavishly decorated with Art Deco sculpture, ceramics, and design. Similar buildings, though not quite as tall, soon appeared in Chicago and other large American cities. Rockefeller Center added a new design element: several tall buildings grouped around an open plaza, with a fountain in the middle. Across the Hudson River, Art Deco style skyscrapers were constructed in Newark, New Jersey in the '20s and '30s, namely the New Jersey Bell Headquarters (completed in 1929), designed by Ralph Thomas Walker; the Lefcourt Building (completed in 1930), designed by Frank Grad; and the National Newark Building (completed in 1933), designed by John H. & Wilson C. Ely. John Cotton Dana, head of the Newark Public Library during this period, remarked contemporaneously that these skyscrapers transformed Newark from a "huge, uncouth and unthinking industrial Frankenstein monster into a place of refinement."
"Cathedrals of Commerce". The grand showcases of American Art Deco interior design were the lobbies of government buildings, theaters, and particularly office buildings. Interiors were extremely colorful and dynamic, combining sculpture, murals, and ornate geometric design in marble, glass, ceramics and stainless steel. An early example was the Fisher Building in Detroit, by Joseph Nathaniel French; the lobby was highly decorated with sculpture and ceramics. The Guardian Building (originally the Union Trust Building) in Detroit, by Wirt Rowland (1929), decorated with red and black marble and brightly colored ceramics, highlighted by highly polished steel elevator doors and counters. The sculptural decoration installed in the walls illustrated the virtues of industry and saving; the building was immediately termed the "Cathedral of Commerce". The Medical and Dental Building called 450 Sutter Street in San Francisco by Timothy Pflueger was inspired by Mayan architecture, in a highly stylized form; it used pyramid shapes, and the interior walls were covered with highly stylized rows of hieroglyphs.
In France, the best example of an Art Deco interior during this period was the Palais de la Porte Dorée (1931) by Albert Laprade, Léon Jaussely and Léon Bazin. The building (now the National Museum of Immigration, with an aquarium in the basement) was built for the Paris Colonial Exposition of 1931, to celebrate the people and products of French colonies. The exterior façade was entirely covered with sculpture, and the lobby created an Art Deco harmony with a wood parquet floor in a geometric pattern, a mural depicting the people of French colonies; and a harmonious composition of vertical doors and horizontal balconies. Movie palaces. Many of the best surviving examples of Art Deco are cinemas built in the 1920s and 1930s. The Art Deco period coincided with the conversion of silent films to sound, and movie companies built large display destinations in major cities to capture the huge audience that came to see movies. Movie palaces in the 1920s often combined exotic themes with Art Deco style; Grauman's Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood (1922) was inspired by ancient Egyptian tombs and pyramids, while the Fox Theater in Bakersfield, California attached a tower in California Mission style to an Art Deco Hall.
Movie palaces in the 1920s often combined exotic themes with Art Deco style; Grauman's Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood (1922) was inspired by ancient Egyptian tombs and pyramids, while the Fox Theater in Bakersfield, California attached a tower in California Mission style to an Art Deco Hall. The largest of all is Radio City Music Hall in New York City, which opened in 1932. Originally designed as theatrical performance space, it quickly transformed into a cinema, which could seat 6,015 customers. The interior design by Donald Deskey used glass, aluminum, chrome, and leather to create a visual escape from reality. The Paramount Theatre in Oakland, California, by Timothy Pflueger, had a colorful ceramic façade, a lobby four stories high, and separate Art Deco smoking rooms for gentlemen and ladies. Similar grand palaces appeared in Europe. The Grand Rex in Paris (1932), with its imposing tower, was the largest cinema in Europe after the 6,000 seats of the Gaumont-Palace (1931–1973). The Gaumont State Cinema in London (1937) had a tower modelled on the Empire State building, covered with cream ceramic tiles and an interior in an Art Deco-Italian Renaissance style.
The Grand Rex in Paris (1932), with its imposing tower, was the largest cinema in Europe after the 6,000 seats of the Gaumont-Palace (1931–1973). The Gaumont State Cinema in London (1937) had a tower modelled on the Empire State building, covered with cream ceramic tiles and an interior in an Art Deco-Italian Renaissance style. The Paramount Theatre in Shanghai, China (1933) was originally built as a dance hall called "The gate of 100 pleasures"; it was converted to a cinema after the Communist Revolution in 1949, and now is a ballroom and disco. In the 1930s Italian architects built a small movie palace, the Cinema Impero, in Asmara in what is now Eritrea. Today, many of the movie theatres have been subdivided into multiplexes, but others have been restored and are used as cultural centres in their communities.
Decoration and motifs. Decoration in the Art Deco period went through several distinct phases. Between 1910 and 1920, as Art Nouveau was exhausted, design styles saw a return to tradition, particularly in the work of Paul Iribe. In 1912 André Vera published an essay in the magazine "L'Art Décoratif" calling for a return to the craftsmanship and materials of earlier centuries and using a new repertoire of forms taken from nature, particularly baskets and garlands of fruit and flowers. A second tendency of Art Deco, also from 1910 to 1920, was inspired by the bright colours of the artistic movement known as the Fauves and by the colourful costumes and sets of the Ballets Russes. This style was often expressed with exotic materials such as sharkskin, mother of pearl, ivory, tinted leather, lacquered and painted wood, and decorative inlays on furniture that emphasized its geometry. This period of the style reached its high point in the 1925 Paris Exposition of Decorative Arts. In the late 1920s and the 1930s, the decorative style changed, inspired by new materials and technologies. It became sleeker and less ornamental. Furniture, like architecture, began to have rounded edges and to take on a polished, streamlined look, taken from the streamline modern style. New materials, such as nickel or chrome-plated steel, aluminium and bakelite, an early form of plastic, began to appear in furniture and decoration.
Throughout the Art Deco period, and particularly in the 1930s, the motifs of the décor expressed the function of the building. Theatres were decorated with sculpture which illustrated music, dance, and excitement; power companies showed sunrises, the Chrysler building showed stylized hood ornaments; The friezes of Palais de la Porte Dorée at the 1931 Paris Colonial Exposition showed the faces of the different nationalities of French colonies. The Streamline style made it appear that the building itself was in motion. The WPA murals of the 1930s featured ordinary people; factory workers, postal workers, families and farmers, in place of classical heroes. Art Deco, like the complex times that engendered it, can best be characterized by a series of contradictions: minimalist vs maximalist, angular vs fluid, ziggurat vs streamline, symmetrical vs irregular, to name a few. The iconography chosen by Art Deco artists to express the period is also laden with contradictions. Fair maidens in 18th-century dress seem to coexist with chic sophisticated ladies and recumbent nudes, and flashes of lightning illuminate stylized rosebuds.
Furniture. French furniture from 1910 until the early 1920s was largely an updating of French traditional furniture styles, and the art nouveau designs of Louis Majorelle, Charles Plumet and other manufacturers. French furniture manufacturers felt threatened by the growing popularity of German manufacturers and styles, particularly the Biedermeier style, which was simple and clean-lined. The French designer Frantz Jourdain, the president of the Paris Salon d'Automne, invited designers from Munich to participate in the 1910 Salon. French designers saw the new German style and decided to meet the German challenge. The French designers decided to present new French styles in the Salon of 1912. The rules of the Salon indicated that only modern styles would be permitted. All of the major French furniture designers took part in Salon: Paul Follot, Paul Iribe, Maurice Dufrêne, André Groult, André Mare and Louis Suë took part, presenting new works that updated the traditional French styles of Louis XVI and Louis Philippe with more angular corners inspired by Cubism and brighter colours inspired by Fauvism and the Nabis.
The painter André Mare and furniture designer Louis Süe both participated the 1912 Salon. After the war the two men joined to form their own company, formally called the "Compagnie des Arts Française", but usually known simply as Suë and Mare. Unlike the prominent art nouveau designers like Louis Majorelle, who personally designed every piece, they assembled a team of skilled craftsmen and produced complete interior designs, including furniture, glassware, carpets, ceramics, wallpaper and lighting. Their work featured bright colors and furniture and fine woods, such as ebony encrusted with mother of pearl, abalone and silvered metal to create bouquets of flowers. They designed everything from the interiors of ocean liners to perfume bottles for the label of Jean Patou.The firm prospered in the early 1920s, but the two men were better craftsmen than businessmen. The firm was sold in 1928, and both men left.
Jules Leleu was a traditional furniture designer who moved smoothly into Art Deco in the 1920s; he designed the furniture for the dining room of the Élysée Palace, and for the first-class cabins of the steamship "Normandie". his style was characterized by the use of ebony, Macassar wood, walnut, with decoration of plaques of ivory and mother of pearl. He introduced the style of lacquered Art Deco furniture in the late 1920s, and in the late 1930s introduced furniture made of metal with panels of smoked glass. In Italy, the designer Gio Ponti was famous for his streamlined designs. The costly and exotic furniture of Ruhlmann and other traditionalists infuriated modernists, including the architect Le Corbusier, causing him to write a famous series of articles denouncing the "arts décoratif" style. He attacked furniture made only for the rich and called upon designers to create furniture made with inexpensive materials and modern style, which ordinary people could afford. He designed his own chairs, created to be inexpensive and mass-produced.
In the 1930s, furniture designs adapted to the form, with smoother surfaces and curved forms. The masters of the late style included Donald Deskey, who was one of the most influential designers; he created the interior of the Radio City Music Hall. He used a mixture of traditional and very modern materials, including aluminium, chrome, and bakelite, an early form of plastic. Other top designers of Art Deco furniture of the 1930s in the United States included Gilbert Rohde, Warren McArthur, and Kem Weber. The Waterfall style was popular in the 1930s and 1940s, the most prevalent Art Deco form of furniture at the time. Pieces were typically of plywood finished with blond veneer and with rounded edges, resembling a waterfall. Design. Streamline was a variety of Art Deco which emerged during the mid-1930s. It was influenced by modern aerodynamic principles developed for aviation and ballistics to reduce aerodynamic drag at high velocities. The bullet shapes were applied by designers to cars, trains, ships, and even objects not intended to move, such as refrigerators, gas pumps, and buildings. One of the first production vehicles in this style was the Chrysler Airflow of 1933. It was unsuccessful commercially, but the beauty and functionality of its design set a precedent; meant modernity. It continued to be used in car design well after World War II.
New industrial materials began to influence the design of cars and household objects. These included aluminium, chrome, and bakelite, an early form of plastic. Bakelite could be easily moulded into different forms, and soon was used in telephones, radios and other appliances. Ocean liners also adopted a style of Art Deco, known in French as the "Style Paquebot", or "Ocean Liner Style". The most famous example was the SS "Normandie", which made its first transatlantic trip in 1935. It was designed particularly to bring wealthy Americans to Paris to shop. The cabins and salons featured the latest Art Deco furnishings and decoration. The Grand Salon of the ship, which was the restaurant for first-class passengers, was bigger than the Hall of Mirrors of the Palace of Versailles. It was illuminated by electric lights within twelve pillars of Lalique crystal; thirty-six matching pillars lined the walls. This was one of the earliest examples of illumination being directly integrated into architecture. The style of ships was soon adapted to buildings. A notable example is found on the San Francisco waterfront, where the Maritime Museum building, built as a public bath in 1937, resembles a ferryboat, with ship railings and rounded corners. The Star Ferry Terminal in Hong Kong also used a variation of the style.
Textiles. Textiles were an important part of the Art Deco style, in the form of colourful wallpaper, upholstery and carpets, In the 1920s, designers were inspired by the stage sets of the Ballets Russes, fabric designs and costumes from Léon Bakst and creations by the Wiener Werkstätte. The early interior designs of André Mare featured brightly coloured and highly stylized garlands of roses and flowers, which decorated the walls, floors, and furniture. Stylized Floral motifs also dominated the work of Raoul Dufy and Paul Poiret, and in the furniture designs of J.E. Ruhlmann. The floral carpet was reinvented in Deco style by Paul Poiret. The use of the style was greatly enhanced by the introduction of the "pochoir" stencil-based printing system, which allowed designers to achieve crispness of lines and very vivid colours. Art Deco forms appeared in the clothing of Paul Poiret, Charles Worth and Jean Patou. After World War I, exports of clothing and fabrics became one of the most important currency earners of France.
Late Art Deco wallpaper and textiles sometimes featured stylized industrial scenes, cityscapes, locomotives and other modern themes, as well as stylized female figures, metallic finishes and geometric designs. Fashion. Fashion changed dramatically during this period, thanks in particular to designers Paul Poiret and later Coco Chanel. Poiret introduced the concept of draping, a departure from the tailoring and patternmaking of the past. He designed clothing cut along straight lines and constructed of rectangular motifs. His styles offered structural simplicity The corseted look and formal styles of the previous period were abandoned, and fashion became more practical, and streamlined. With the use of new materials, brighter colours and printed designs. The designer Coco Chanel continued the transition, popularising the style of sporty, casual chic. A particular typology of the era was the Flapper, a woman who cut her hair into a short bob, drank cocktails, smoked in public, and danced late into the night at fashionable clubs, cabarets or bohemian dives. Of course, most women didn't live like this, the Flapper being more a character present in popular imagination than a reality. Another female Art Deco style was the androgynous "garçonne" of the 1920s, with flattened bosom, dispelled waist and revealed legs, reducing the silhouette to a short tube, topped with a head-hugging cloche hat.
Jewelry. In the 1920s and 1930s, designers including René Lalique and Cartier tried to reduce the traditional dominance of diamonds by introducing more colourful gemstones, such as small emeralds, rubies and sapphires. They also placed greater emphasis on very elaborate and elegant settings, featuring less-expensive materials such as enamel, glass, horn and ivory. Diamonds themselves were cut in less traditional forms; the 1925 Exposition saw many diamonds cut in the form of tiny rods or matchsticks. Other popular Art Deco cuts include: The settings for diamonds also changed; More and more often jewellers used platinum instead of gold, since it was strong and flexible, and could set clusters of stones. Jewellers also began to use more dark materials, such as enamels and black onyx, which provided a higher contrast with diamonds. Jewellery became much more colourful and varied in style. Cartier and the firm of Boucheron combined diamonds with colourful other gemstones cut into the form of leaves, fruit or flowers, to make brooches, rings, earrings, clips and pendants. Far Eastern themes also became popular; plaques of jade and coral were combined with platinum and diamonds, and vanity cases, cigarette cases and powder boxes were decorated with Japanese and Chinese landscapes made with mother of pearl, enamel and lacquer.
Rapidly changing fashions in clothing brought new styles of jewellery. Sleeveless dresses of the 1920s meant that arms needed decoration, and designers quickly created bracelets of gold, silver and platinum encrusted with lapis-lazuli, onyx, coral, and other colourful stones; Other bracelets were intended for the upper arms, and several bracelets were often worn at the same time. The short haircuts of women in the twenties called for elaborate deco earring designs. As women began to smoke in public, designers created very ornate cigarette cases and ivory cigarette holders. The invention of the wristwatch before World War I inspired jewelers to create extraordinary, decorated watches, encrusted with diamonds and plated with enamel, gold and silver. Pendant watches, hanging from a ribbon, also became fashionable.
Glass art. Like the Art Nouveau period before it, Art Deco was an exceptional period for fine glass and other decorative objects designed to fit their architectural surroundings. The most famous producer of glass objects was René Lalique, whose works, from vases to hood ornaments for automobiles, became symbols of the period. He had experimented with glass before World War I, designing bottles for the perfumes of François Coty, but he did not begin serious production of art glass until after World War I. In 1918, at the age of 58, he bought a large glass works in Combs-la-Ville and began to manufacture both artistic and practical glass objects. He treated glass as a form of sculpture, creating statuettes, vases, bowls, lamps and ornaments. He used demi-crystal rather than lead crystal, which was softer and easier to form, though not as lustrous. He sometimes used coloured glass, but more often used opalescent glass, where part or the whole of the outer surface was stained with a wash. Lalique provided the decorative glass panels, lights and illuminated glass ceilings for the ocean liners in 1927 and the SS "Normandie" in 1935, and for some of the first-class sleeping cars of the French railroads. At the 1925 Exposition of Decorative Arts, he had his own pavilion, designed a dining room with a table setting and matching glass ceiling for the Sèvres Pavilion, and designed a glass fountain for the courtyard of the Cours des Métiers, a slender glass column which spouted water from the sides and was illuminated at night.
Other notable Art Deco glass manufacturers included Marius-Ernest Sabino, who specialized in figurines, vases, bowls, and glass sculptures of fish, nudes, and animals. For these he often used an opalescent glass which could change from white to blue to amber, depending upon the light. His vases and bowls featured molded friezes of animals, nudes or busts of women with fruit or flowers. His work was less subtle but more colourful than that of Lalique. Other notable Deco glass designers included Edmond Etling, who also used bright opalescent colours, often with geometric patterns and sculpted nudes; Albert Simonet, and Aristide Colotte and Maurice Marinot, who was known for his deeply etched sculptural bottles and vases. The firm of Daum from the city of Nancy, which had been famous for its Art Nouveau glass, produced a line of Deco vases and glass sculpture, solid, geometric and chunky in form. More delicate multi-coloured works were made by Gabriel Argy-Rousseau, who produced delicately shaded vases with sculpted butterflies and nymphs, and Francois Decorchemont, whose vases were streaked and marbled.
The Great Depression impacted on the decorative glass industry, which depended upon wealthy clients. Some artists turned to designing stained glass windows for churches. In 1937, the Steuben glass company began the practice of commissioning famous artists to produce glassware. Louis Majorelle, famous for his Art Nouveau furniture, designed a remarkable Art Deco stained glass window portraying steel workers for the offices of the Aciéries de Longwy, a steel mill in Longwy, France. Amiens Cathedral has a rare example of Art Deco stained glass windows in the Chapel of the Sacred Heart, made in 1932–34 by the Paris glass artist Jean Gaudin based on drawings by Jacques Le Breton. Metal art. Art Deco artists produced a wide variety of practical objects in the Art Deco style, made of industrial materials from traditional wrought iron to chrome-plated steel. The American artist Norman Bel Geddes designed a cocktail set resembling a skyscraper made of chrome-plated steel. Raymond Subes designed an elegant metal grille for the entrance of the Palais de la Porte Dorée, the centre-piece of the 1931 Paris Colonial Exposition. The French sculptor Jean Dunand produced magnificent doors on the theme "The Hunt", covered with gold leaf and paint on plaster (1935).
Animation. Art Deco visuals and imagery was used in multiple animated films including "", "Night Hood", "All's Fair at the Fair", "Merry Mannequins", "Page Miss Glory", "Fantasia" and "Sleeping Beauty". The architecture is featured in the fictitious underwater city of Rapture in the "BioShock" video game series. Art Deco visuals were an inspiration for the architecture of Iacon City in the animated science fiction film "Transformers One". Art Deco architecture around the world. Art Deco architecture began in Europe, but by 1939 there were examples in large cities on every continent and in almost every country. This is a selection of prominent buildings on each continent. "For a comprehensive list of existing buildings by country, see: List of Art Deco architecture." Africa. Most Art Deco buildings in Africa were built during European colonial rule, and often designed by Italian, French and Portuguese architects. Asia. Many Art Deco buildings in Asia were designed by European architects. But in the Philippines, local architects such as Juan Nakpil, Juan Arellano, Pablo Antonio and others were preeminent. Many Art Deco landmarks in Asia were demolished during the great economic expansion of Asia the late 20th century, but some notable enclaves of the architecture still remain, particularly in Shanghai and Mumbai.
The Indian Institute of Architects, founded in Mumbai in 1929, played a prominent role in propagating the Art Deco movement. In November 1937, this institute organised the 'Ideal Home Exhibition' held in the Town Hall in Mumbai which spanned over 12 days and attracted about one hundred thousand visitors. As a result, it was declared a success by the 'Journal of the Indian Institute of Architects'. The exhibits displayed the 'ideal', or better described as the most 'modern' arrangements for various parts of the house, paying close detail to avoid architectural blunders and present the most efficient and well-thought-out models. The exhibition focused on various elements of a home ranging from furniture, elements of interior decoration as well as radios and refrigerators using new and scientifically relevant materials and methods. Guided by their desire to emulate the west, the Indian architects were fascinated by the industrial modernity that Art Deco offered. The western elites were the first to experiment with the technologically advanced facets of Art Deco, and architects began the process of transformation by the early 1930s.
Mumbai's expanding port commerce in the 1930s resulted in the growth of educated middle class population. It also saw an increase of people migrating to Mumbai in search of job opportunities. This led to the pressing need for new developments through Land Reclamation Schemes and construction of new public and residential buildings. Parallelly, the changing political climate in the country and the aspirational quality of the Art Deco aesthetics led to a whole-hearted acceptance of the building style in the city's development. Most of the buildings from this period can be seen spread throughout the city neighbourhoods in areas such as Churchgate, Colaba, Fort, Mohammed Ali Road, Cumbala Hill, Dadar, Matunga, Bandra and Chembur. Australia and New Zealand. Melbourne and Sydney, Australia, have several notable Art Deco buildings, including the Manchester Unity Building and the former Russell Street Police Headquarters in Melbourne, the Castlemaine Art Museum in Castlemaine, central Victoria and the Grace Building, AWA Tower and Anzac Memorial in Sydney.
Several towns in New Zealand, including Napier and Hastings were rebuilt in Art Deco style after the 1931 Hawke's Bay earthquake, and many of the buildings have been protected and restored. Napier has been nominated for UNESCO World Heritage Site status, the first cultural site in New Zealand to be nominated. Wellington has retained a sizeable number of Art Deco buildings. North America. In Canada, surviving Art Deco structures are mainly in the major cities; Montreal, Toronto, Hamilton, Ontario, and Vancouver. They range from public buildings like Vancouver City Hall to commercial buildings (College Park) to public works (R. C. Harris Water Treatment Plant). In Mexico, the most imposing Art Deco example is interior of the Palacio de Bellas Artes (Palace of Fine Arts), finished in 1934 with its elaborate décor and murals. Examples of Art Deco residential architecture can be found in the Condesa district, many designed by Francisco J. Serrano. In the United States, Art Deco buildings are found from coast to coast, in all the major cities. It was most widely used for office buildings, train stations, airport terminals, and cinemas; residential buildings are rare. During the 1920s and 1930s architects in the Southwestern United States, particularly in the US state of New Mexico, combined Pueblo Revival with Territorial Style and Art Deco to create Pueblo Deco, as seen in the KiMo Theater in Albuquerque. In the 1930s, the more austere streamline style became popular. Many buildings were demolished between 1945 and the late 1960s, but then efforts began to protect the best examples. The City of Miami Beach established the Miami Beach Architectural District to preserve the fine collection of Art Deco buildings found there.
Central America and the Caribbean. Art Deco buildings can be found throughout Central America, including in Cuba. Europe. The architectural style first appeared in Paris with the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées (1910–13) by Auguste Perret but then spread rapidly around Europe, until examples could be found in nearly every large city, from London to Moscow. In Germany two variations of Art Deco flourished in the 1920s and 30s: The Neue Sachlichkeit style and Expressionist architecture. Notable examples include Erich Mendelsohn's Mossehaus and Schaubühne in Berlin, Fritz Höger's Chilehaus in Hamburg and his Kirche am Hohenzollernplatz in Berlin, the in Hanover and the in Berlin. One of the largest Art Deco buildings in Western Europe is the National Basilica of the Sacred Heart in Koekelberg, Brussels. In 1925, architect Albert van Huffel won the Grand Prize for Architecture with his scale model of the basilica at the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes in Paris. Spain and Portugal have some striking examples of Art Deco buildings, particularly movie theaters. Examples in Portugal are the Capitólio Theater (1931) and the Éden Cine-Theatre (1937) in Lisbon, the Rivoli Theater (1937) and the Coliseu (1941) in Porto and the Rosa Damasceno Theater (1937) in Santarém. An example in Spain is the Cine Rialto in Valencia (1939).
During the 1930s, Art Deco had a noticeable effect on house design in the United Kingdom, as well as the design of various public buildings. Straight, white-rendered house frontages rising to flat roofs, sharply geometric door surrounds and tall windows, as well as convex-curved metal corner windows, were all characteristic of that period. The London Underground is famous for many examples of Art Deco architecture, and there are a number of buildings in the style situated along the Golden Mile in Brentford. Also in West London is the Hoover Building, which was originally built for The Hoover Company and was converted into a superstore in the early 1990s. Bucharest, once known as the "Little Paris" of the 19th century, engaged in a new design after World War I, redirected its inspiration towards New York City. The 1930s brought a new fashion which echoed in the cinema, theatre, dancing styles, art and architecture. Bucharest during the 1930s was marked by more and more Art Deco architecture from the bigger boulevards like Bulevardul Magheru to the private houses and smaller districts. The Telephone Palace, an early landmark of modern Bucharest, was the first skyscraper of the city. It was the tallest building between 1933 and the 1950s, with a height of . The architects were Louis Weeks and Edmond van Saanen Algi and engineer Walter Troy. The Art Deco monuments are a crucial part of the character of Bucharest since they describe and mark an important period from its history, the interbellic life (World War I–World War II). Most of the buildings from those years are prone to catastrophe, as Bucharest is located in an earthquake zone.
South America. Art Deco in South America is especially present in countries that received a great wave of immigration in the first half of the 20th century, with notable works in their richest cities, like São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, Buenos Aires in Argentina and Montevideo in Uruguay. The Kavanagh Building in Buenos Aires (1934), by Sánchez, Lagos and de la Torre, was the tallest reinforced-concrete structure when it was completed and is a notable example of late Art Deco style. Preservation and neo-Art Deco. In many cities, efforts have been made to protect the remaining Art Deco buildings. In many U.S. cities, historic Art Deco cinemas have been preserved and turned into cultural centres. Even more modest Art Deco buildings have been preserved as part of America's architectural heritage; an Art Deco café and gas station along Route 66 in Shamrock, Texas is an historic monument. The Miami Beach Architectural District protects several hundred old buildings, and requires that new buildings comply with the style. In Havana, Cuba, many Art Deco buildings have badly deteriorated. Efforts are underway to bring the buildings back to their original appearance.
In the 21st century, modern variants of Art Deco, called Neo Art Deco (or neo-Art Deco), have appeared in some American cities, inspired by the classic Art Deco buildings of the 1920s and 1930s. Examples include the NBC Tower in Chicago, inspired by 30 Rockefeller Plaza in New York City; the Smith Center for the Performing Arts in Las Vegas, Nevada, which includes Art Deco call backs to the Hoover Dam; 99 Hudson in Jersey City, New Jersey, the state's tallest building and the 46th tallest in the United States, which features Art Deco-inspired limestone and glass lineation; and the Brooklyn Tower in Brooklyn, New York, the borough's tallest building and the 19th tallest in the country, with its black glass and bronze piping.
ASCII art ASCII art is a graphic design technique that uses computers for presentation and consists of pictures pieced together from the 95 printable (from a total of 128) characters defined by the ASCII Standard from 1963 and ASCII compliant character sets with proprietary extended characters (beyond the 128 characters of standard 7-bit ASCII). The term is also loosely used to refer to text-based visual art in general. ASCII art can be created with any text editor, and is often used with free-form languages. Most examples of ASCII art require a fixed-width font (non-proportional fonts, as on a traditional typewriter) such as Courier or Consolas for presentation. Among the oldest known examples of ASCII art are the creations by computer-art pioneer Kenneth Knowlton from around 1966, who was working for Bell Labs at the time. "Studies in Perception I" by Knowlton and Leon Harmon from 1966 shows some examples of their early ASCII art. ASCII art was invented, in large part, because early printers often lacked graphics ability and thus, characters were used in place of graphic marks. Also, to mark divisions between different print jobs from different users, bulk printers often used ASCII art to print large banner pages, making the division easier to spot so that the results could be more easily separated by a computer operator or clerk. ASCII art was also used in early e-mail when images could not be embedded.
History. Typewriter art. Since 1867, typewriters have been used for creating visual art. Typists could find guides in books or magazines with instructions on how to type portraits or other depictions. TTY and RTTY. TTY stands for "TeleTYpe" or "TeleTYpewriter", and is also known as Teleprinter or Teletype. RTTY stands for Radioteletype; character sets such as Baudot code, which predated ASCII, were used. According to a chapter in the "RTTY Handbook", text images have been sent via teletypewriter as early as 1923. However, none of the "old" RTTY art has been discovered yet. What is known is that text images appeared frequently on radioteletype in the 1960s and the 1970s. Line-printer art. In the 1960s, Andries van Dam published a representation of an electronic circuit produced on an IBM 1403 line printer. At the same time, Kenneth Knowlton was producing realistic images, also on line printers, by overprinting several characters on top of one another. Note that it was not ASCII art in a sense that the 1403 was driven by an EBCDIC-coded platform and the character sets and trains available on the 1403 were derived from EBCDIC rather than ASCII, despite some glyphs commonalities.
ASCII art. The widespread usage of ASCII art can be traced to the computer bulletin board systems of the late 1970s and early 1980s. The limitations of computers of that time period necessitated the use of text characters to represent images. Along with ASCII's use in communication, however, it also began to appear in the underground online art groups of the period. An ASCII comic is a form of webcomic which uses ASCII text to create images. In place of images in a regular comic, ASCII art is used, with the text or dialog usually placed underneath. During the 1990s, graphical browsing and variable-width fonts became increasingly popular, leading to a decline in ASCII art. Despite this, ASCII art continued to survive through online MUDs, an acronym for "Multi-User Dungeon", (which are textual multiplayer role-playing video games), Internet Relay Chat, Email, message boards, and other forms of online communication which commonly employ the needed fixed-width. ASCII art is seen to this day on the CLI app Neofetch, which displays the logo of the OS on which it is invoked.
ANSI. ASCII and more importantly, ANSI were staples of the early technological era; terminal systems relied on coherent presentation using color and control signals standard in the terminal protocols. Over the years, warez groups began to enter the ASCII art scene. Warez groups usually release .nfo files with their software, cracks or other general software reverse-engineering releases. The ASCII art will usually include the warez group's name and maybe some ASCII borders on the outsides of the release notes, etc. BBS systems were based on ASCII and ANSI art, as were most DOS and similar console applications, and the precursor to AOL. Uses. ASCII art is used wherever text can be more readily printed or transmitted than graphics, or in some cases, where the transmission of pictures is not possible. This includes typewriters, teleprinters, non-graphic computer terminals, printer separators, in early computer networking (e.g., BBSes), email, and Usenet news messages. ASCII art is also used within the source code of computer programs for representation of company or product logos, and flow control or other diagrams. In some cases, the entire source code of a program is a piece of ASCII art – for instance, an entry to one of the earlier International Obfuscated C Code Contest is a program that adds numbers, but visually looks like a binary adder drawn in logic ports.
Some electronic schematic archives represent the circuits using ASCII art. Examples of ASCII-style art predating the modern computer era can be found in the June 1939, July 1948 and October 1948 editions of Popular Mechanics. Early computer games played on terminals frequently used ASCII art to simulate graphics, most notably the roguelike genre using ASCII art to visually represent dungeons and monsters within them. "0verkill" is a 2D platform multiplayer shooter game designed entirely in color ASCII art. MPlayer and VLC media player can display videos as ASCII art through the AAlib library. ASCII art is used in the making of DOS-based ZZT games. Many game walkthrough guides come as part of a basic .txt file; this file often contains the name of the game in ASCII art. Such as below, word art is created using backslashes and other ASCII values in order to create the illusion of 3D. Types and styles. Different techniques could be used in ASCII art to obtain different artistic effects. "Typewriter-style" lettering, made from individual letter characters:
Line art, for creating shapes: .--. /\ ____ '--' /__\ (^._.^)~ <(o.o )> Solid art, for creating filled objects: .g@8g. db 'Y8@P' d88b Shading, using symbols with various intensities for creating gradients or contrasts: :$#$: "4b. ':. :$#$: "4b. ':. Combinations of the above, often used as signatures, for example, at the end of an email: \|\_/\| **************************** (\_/) / @ @ \ * "Purrrfectly pleasant" * (='.'=) ( > º < ) * Poppy Prinz * (")_(") `»x«´ * (pprinz@example.com) * / O \ **************************** As-pixel characters use combinations of ░ , █ , ▄, ▀ (Block Elements), and/or ⣿, ⣴, ⢁, etc (Braille ASCII) to make pictures: ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⠟⢁⣴⣾⣿⣷⣦⣌⠙⢿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⠟⢁⣴⣿⣿⠟⠋⣉⠙⢻⣿⣿⣿⣷⠀⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⠟⢁⣴⣿⣿⠟⢁⣴⣿⣿⡿⠋⣠⣾⣿⣿⠟⢁⣼⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⠟⢁⣴⣿⣿⠟⢁⣴⣿⣿⡿⠋⣠⣾⣿⣿⠟⢁⣴⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⠁⣴⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡿⠋⣠⣾⣿⣿⠟⢁⣴⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣧⡈⠻⢿⣿⡿⠋⣠⣾⣿⣿⡟⢁⣴⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿ Emoticons. The simplest forms of ASCII art are combinations of two or three characters for expressing emotion in text. They are commonly referred to as 'emoticon', 'smilie', or 'smiley'. There is another type of one-line ASCII art that does not require the mental rotation of pictures, which is widely known in Japan as kaomoji (literally "face characters".)
More complex examples use several lines of text to draw large symbols or more complex figures. Hundreds of different text smileys have developed over time, but only a few are generally accepted, used and understood. ASCII comic. An ASCII comic is a form of webcomic. The Adventures of Nerd Boy. 'The Adventures of Nerd Boy', or just 'Nerd Boy', was an ASCII comic, published by Joaquim Gândara between 5 August 2001 and 17 July 2007, and consisting of 600 strips. They were posted to ASCII art newsgroup alt.ascii-art and on the website. Some strips have been translated to Polish and French. Styles of the computer underground text art scene. Atari 400/800 ATASCII. The Atari 400/800, which were released in 1979, did not follow the ASCII standard and had their own character set, called ATASCII. The emergence of ATASCII art coincided with the growing popularity of BBS Systems caused by availability of the acoustic couplers that were compatible with the 8-bit home computers. ATASCII text animations are also referred to as "break animations" by the Atari sceners.
C-64 PETSCII. The Commodore 64, which was released in 1982, also did not follow the ASCII standard. The C-64 character set is called PETSCII, an extended form of ASCII-1963. As with the Atari's ATASCII art, C-64 fans developed a similar scene that used PETSCII for their creations. "Block ASCII" / "High ASCII" style ASCII art on the IBM PC. So-called "block ASCII" or "high ASCII" uses the extended characters of the 8-bit code page 437, which is a proprietary standard introduced by IBM in 1979 (ANSI Standard x3.16) for the IBM PC DOS and MS-DOS operating systems. "Block ASCIIs" were widely used on the PC during the 1990s until the Internet replaced BBSes as the main communication platform. Until then, "block ASCIIs" dominated the PC Text Art Scene. The first art scene group that focused on the extended character set of the PC in their artwork was called "Aces of ANSI Art", or . Some members left in 1990 and formed a group called "ANSI Creators in Demand", or ACiD. In that same year the second major underground art scene group "Insane Creators Enterprise", or ICE, was founded.
There is some debate between ASCII and block ASCII artists, with "Hardcore" ASCII artists maintaining that block ASCII art is in fact not ASCII art, because it does not use the 128 characters of the original ASCII standard. On the other hand, block ASCII artists argue that if their art uses only characters of the computer's character set, then it is to be called ASCII, regardless if the character set is proprietary or not. Microsoft Windows does not support the ANSI Standard x3.16. One can view block ASCIIs with a text editor using the font "Terminal", but it will not look exactly as it was intended by the artist. With a special ASCII/ANSI viewer, such as ACiDView for Windows , one can see block ASCII and ANSI files properly. An example that illustrates the difference in appearance is part of this article. Alternatively, one could look at the file using the TYPE command in the command prompt. "Amiga"/"Oldskool" style ASCII art. In the art scene one popular ASCII style that used the 7-bit standard ASCII character set was the so-called "Oldskool" style. It is also called "Amiga style", due to its origin and widespread use on Commodore Amiga computers. The style uses primarily the characters codice_1 and looks more like the outlined drawings of shapes than real pictures. The accompanying image is an example of "Amiga style" (also referred to as "old school" or "oldskool" style) scene ASCII art.
The Amiga ASCII scene surfaced in 1992, seven years after the introduction of the Commodore Amiga 1000. The Commodore 64 PETSCII scene did not make the transition to the Commodore Amiga as the C64 demo and warez scenes did. Among the first Amiga ASCII art groups were ART, Epsilon Design, Upper Class, Unreal (later known as "DeZign"). This means that the text art scene on the Amiga was actually younger than the text art scene on the PC. The Amiga artists also did not call their ASCII art style "Oldskool". That term was introduced on the PC; when and by whom is unknown and lost to history. The Amiga style ASCII artwork was most often released in the form of a single text file, which included all the artwork (usually requested), with some design parts in between, as opposed to the PC art scene where the art work was released as a ZIP archive with separate text files for each piece. Furthermore, the releases were usually called "ASCII collections" and not "art packs" like on the IBM PC. In text editors. This kind of ASCII art is handmade in a text editor. Popular editors used to make this kind of ASCII art include Microsoft Notepad, CygnusEditor also known as CED (Amiga), and EditPlus2 (PC).
The accompanying image shows an Oldskool font example done with the ASCII editor FIGlet on a PC. Newskool style ASCII art. "Newskool" is a popular form of ASCII art which capitalizes on character strings like "$#Xxo". In spite of its name, the style is not "new"; on the contrary, it was very old but fell out of favor and was replaced by "Oldskool" and "Block" style ASCII art. It was dubbed "Newskool" upon its comeback and renewed popularity at the end of the 1990s. Newskool changed significantly as the result of the introduction of extended proprietary characters. The classic 7-bit standard ASCII characters remain predominant, but the extended characters are often used for "fine tuning" and "tweaking". The style developed further after the introduction and adaptation of Unicode. Methods for generating ASCII art. While some prefer to use a simple text editor to produce ASCII art, specialized programs, such as JavE have been developed that often simulate the features and tools in bitmap image editors. For Block ASCII art and ANSI art the artist almost always uses a special text editor, because to generate the required characters on a standard keyboard, one needs to know the Alt code for each character. For example, + will produce ▓, + will produce ▒, and + will produce ◘.

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