"It's no surprise to see art deco being avidly embraced by the likes of Elon Musk"

[Celerity]

Art deco has a history of being a glitzy distraction from effecting genuine change during moments of turmoil, writes Catherine Slessor as part of our Art Deco Centenary series.

https://www.dezeen.com/2025/03/17/catherine-slessor-opinion-art-deco-centenary/



You can tell a lot about a style by the company it keeps. In 2021, before his acquisition and despoliation of what was then Twitter, Elon Musk tweeted "I love Art Deco" (709,000 likes). This random assertion has since become a monotonous refrain, with Twitter now recast as X, signified by an art deco-inflected letter X, refashioned for the digital age. Ironically, X's monumentally ugly branding, with its salacious overtones of adults-only content, was crowdsourced, following another gnomic Musk-style edict: "If X is closest to anything, it should, of course, be Art Deco."

As well as grotesque graphics, Musk's penchant for deco has manifested itself in outre objects. Apparently inspired by the streamlined forms of 1930s American trains, the Tesla Robovan (pictured top) is a self-driving pod designed to convey people and goods. Arguably, it resembles more a giant toaster unsettlingly come to life, but Musk is clearly high on his own supply. "Can you imagine going down the streets and you see this coming towards you? That would be sick!" he crowed at last year's much-hyped Robovan launch.



To paraphrase pop artist Richard Hamilton, just what is it that makes art deco so different, so appealing? Why is it still catnip to a fanbase that extends from self-regarding squillionaires to middlebrow aficionados of the Antiques Roadshow?

As a sumptuous veneer brushed over the economic and social turmoil of the interwar decades, art deco always connoted a kind of retro-futurist escapism. If the real future was too terrifying to contemplate, shaded by economic collapse and the rise of fascism, then art deco, a world of svelte contours and luxurious allure populated by men in tuxedos and women in opera coats, promised a soothing "moderne" style-du-jour, the non-threatening obverse to modernism's radical cultural and social upending. After all, "deco" stands for "décoratif". And every hour is cocktail hour.

snip

[riversedge]

1. There is NOTHING glitzy about an ugly Musk cybertruck!