Newsday (Suffolk Edition) from Melville, New York • 84

The resurrection of Art Dceo -that decorative styling of the and now complete with new pxliibiU at the Metropolitan Museum of Art anil flic ISrooklyn Museum Pnthpe Hunter position bronze head tn -Uu quf s-t mile Huhlmann ii or -inlaid i ubinci at the Met xhihit By Doris Herzig Add Art Deco to your home furnishings vocabulary if you already done so The term from the French words art decoratif refers to the modem decorative style of tho 1920s and Furnishings of this period have been in demand by serious collectors for the past few years and their importance is now emphasized by two major museums The Metropolitan Museum of Art has dusted off pieces that been shown since 1934 and has acquired some others to stress Art Deco in its new 20th-('entury Decorative Arts Gallery Across the East River the Brooklyn Museum has installed an Art Deco room moved in its entirety from a Park Avenue apartment At first glance there seems to be little similarity between the Art Deco at the Met and the Art Deco in Brooklyn The Brooklyn room has few surprises for those only slightly familiar with the style Chunky straight-lined sitting squat on the floor Art Deco it? Well it's not the Art Deco that is most prominent at the Met where some of the pieces are delicately proportioned gently curved and clearly related to both the immediately preceding Art Nouveau style as well as earlier French designs Blit a second comparison between the furniture at the two museums reveals a number of common denominators Even the more traditional pieces are greatly simplified showing the beginnings of a streamlining process that was soon to stiffen harden and take on bulk And even the most moderne designs were executed with painstaking traditional craftsmanship Unlike the Bauhaus school of modern that developed in Germany at about the same time and utilized machine-age methods Art Deco was marked in its first decade by a return to the ISth Century technique of superb veneering and the use of fine rare woods and other rich materials This phase of Art Deco was for the wealthy and did not survive the Great Depression which brought on a commercialization and vulgarization of the streamlining process The Brooklyn Museum room was fashioned in France between 1928 and 1930 The Metropolitan Art Deco furniture also was made in France a few years earlier pieces were the highest in luxury the workmen were the highest-paid in Paris at the said Penelope Hunter who set up the new gallery Despite the current inflated prices being paid by collectors she said that prices for signed pieces have just begun to approach the market value they had in their own time The museum acquired many of its pieces in the 1920s but has kept them in storage since its last Art Deco show in 1934 The style was unheard of in this country before 1925 when the Exposition Internationale des Arts Decoratif et Jndustriels Modrrncs' was held in Paris and gave the new design movement its name The style drew inspiration from varied sources American Indian art the Russian ballet cubism the Bauhaus the more A i Xewsday.