Vickie Rozell

Director/Dramaturg, Author, Editor

TheatreWorks’ production of A Little Night Music is set in Sweden in the summer of 1913, when Europe was in the midst of immense change. Politically it stood on the brink of World War I, a cataclysm that would alter both its politics and its “old world” culture forever. Socially, the 20 century’s first wave of women’s liberation was bringing the vote to women across Europe and beginning to change their role in society. Sweden approved full suffrage for women in 1909, followed by Norway in 1913, and Denmark in 1915. In the arts, first in painting and dance and then in fashion and graphic design, another new world was dawning: Art Deco.

The Art Deco movement was in vogue from approximately 1909 to 1939. It was launched when Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque started the revolution that became Cubism in 1907-8. The new style rejected the Rococo curves and floral motifs of Art Nouveau, which had been popular in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Deco embraced color for its own sake and forms inspired from nature, especially animals and the female form. Its angular or gently sweeping lines would eventually replace the elaborate curlicues of the previous era. Popularized by clothing designers and illustrators in fashion magazines such as LaGazette du Bon Ton and Vogue, it was eventually applied to every aspect of life from architecture to industrial design.

One of the major influences on the development of Art Deco came in 1909 when Russian Sergei Diaghilev founded the Ballet Russes in Paris (they never performed in Russia). Diaghilev’s innovations included the introduction of exotic themes, sets, and costumes to the ballet and the employing of many avant-garde composers and artists to do so. The sets and costumes mixed Asian with western styles and the avant-garde with the primitive, shocking the Parisian public. The company included Anna Pavlova and Vaslav Nijinsky, whose athleticism and sexuality revolutionized what people expected of ballet.

Diaghilev hired Léon Bakst to design sets and costumes for Ballet Russes, and his vivid designs inspired commercial artists to introduce the same kind of color into their illustrations. Fashion and costume designer Paul Poiret introduced his own colorful and sensual aesthetic, which influenced fashion well into the 1920s. He hired illustrators Paul Iribe and Jules Lepape to illustrate his fashion collections in hand-printed albums. In the illustrations, they borrowed from Japanese prints and the bright colors of Fauvist art, surrounding the fashions in swaths of color on clearly delineated backgrounds, marking the beginning of Art Deco illustration. Illustrators such as Geroge Barbier, Umberto Brunelleschi, and many others advanced the style, offering the sweeping curves of the clothing contrasted with simplified but evocative backdrops. Their works made a huge impact on design and fashion across Europe and America as well. The work of all these artists has been influential in shaping TheatreWorks’ production of A Little Night Music.

Art Deco continued to evolve through the First World War, the roaring 20s, and to the brink of World War II. Its clean lines and evocative graphic design still influence our art, architecture, and industrial design today.

© Vickie Rozell, All Rights Reserved

Reproduction only with permission