Art Deco vs Beaux-Arts
アール・デコ / ボザール様式
Both sit in Historical Styles, so the question is not what they belong to but how they behave. Both are read here as style. They are reached for with some of the same intent, which is where they get confused.
Art Deco
Stages urban luxury with repeating geometry and a metallic sheen.
Beaux-Arts
The academic synthesis of the classical taught at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Grand axes, sculptural ornament and a hierarchy of formality were laid over the new technologies of iron and glass, giving the modern city its public face in stations, museums and banks.
| Art Deco | Beaux-Arts | |
|---|---|---|
| Era | 1920s–1930s | 1830s–1920s |
| Family | Historical Styles | Historical Styles |
| Kind | Style | Style |
| Cues | Symmetry / Radiating lines / Stepped motifs / Gold and black | Grand axes and staircases / Synthesized classical orders / Sculptural ornament / Stone over iron structure |
| Best used for | Giving an event a sense of occasion · Producing instant classic luxury | Giving formal order to a station or museum where crowds have to move · Joining a new structure to an existing street using classical vocabulary |
| Type | Tall, narrow geometric display type | Roman capitals carved deep into the band of the entablature |
| Composition | Centered, symmetrical composition | One main axis, stairs and halls rising in formality along the route |
| Material | Black, gold, ivory; repeated hairlines | An iron frame inside a stone skin, interiors of marble and sculpture |
| Caution | Too much ornament turns theme-park. Let white space carry the dignity. | Spreading classical parts evenly over every surface with no axis and no hierarchy, so nobody can tell which room is the important one. |