Art Deco: after the flowing curves of Art Nouveau, Brussels returns to the Roaring Twenties and celebrates the carefree geometry of that era! To mark the occasion, here is a mind map of the characteristics of this art form, which sought to be both elitist and popular.

Brussels loves celebrations. After the unexpected success of its Art Nouveau year, the Belgian capital has embarked on exploring the aesthetics of the Roaring Twenties. Il faut dire que les arguments ne manquent pas. Nombreux sont les témoins architecturaux ou plastiques de l’époque dans la ville brabançonne.

Art Deco: a year to celebrate the aesthetics of the Roaring Twenties

A mind map available to download in various formats

As you can see in the image below, this Mindomo mind map is full of resources on Art Deco. You can download this map in MOM format (specific to Mindomo). on this page from our partner Biggerplate.

On some branches, you will see notes: these provide a few sentences of context. These notes are printed after the mind map in the PDF version.

The links are clickable, including those in the PDF. I have included two links to essential books on the Art Deco period: the Garçonne by Victor Margueritte, which describes female emancipation in a style that was very modern for its time. And, in English, The Great Gatsby, by Francis Scott Fitzgerald, one of the leading voices of the Lost Generation. These links will take you to pages from the Gutenberg Project, a community website offering free access to e-books. You can download these two books for free and read them at your leisure on your e-reader.

The INA video talks about three major figures in Art Deco-era music: Duke Ellington, George Gershwin, and Sergei Rachmaninoff. Witnesses to the cultural diversity of the Roaring Twenties. You can watch the video in the mind map.

The photo illustrating the African influence on Art Deco comes from an album I am currently creating on this period in Brussels. Like the one illustrating this article, it is available at Creative Commons licence on my Flickr account.

This card is the first of my initiatives as part of Art Deco Year in Brussels. If you would like to be informed about other activities related to this project, subscribe to our dedicated newsletter The Spirit of Places.

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