Erté was the art deco pioneer who had "neither equal nor rival"
In the first of our Art Deco Centenary profiles, we look at the Russian-French artist and designer Romain de Tirtoff – better known as Erté – who became credited as "the father of art deco". While the style of art deco filtered down to the most everyday forms of design in the interwar years, many The post Erté was the art deco pioneer who had "neither equal nor rival" appeared first on Dezeen.
In the first of our Art Deco Centenary profiles, we look at the Russian-French artist and designer Romain de Tirtoff – better known as Erté – who became credited as "the father of art deco".
While the style of art deco filtered down to the most everyday forms of design in the interwar years, many of its origins lay in the era's most rarefied worlds: those of Parisian haute couture, New York's Broadway and the golden age of Hollywood.
Erté, who began his career working for the "king of fashion" Paul Poiret, and would go on to designs sets and costumes for a staggering roster of stars including Josephine Baker, Anna Pavlova and Mary Garden, was at the centre of these worlds.
His creations represented art deco at its most opulent and aspirational, and the spread of Erté's luxurious, modern visions of femininity – not least through the hundreds of covers he drew for Harper's Bazaar – saw him rise to be regarded as one of the key arbiters of the movement.
As the critic Brian Sewell wrote, "Erté had neither equal nor rival; he was and remains unique."
Erté was born Romain de Tirtoff in 1892 to an aristocratic family in St Petersburg, and it quickly became apparent that he had no interest in following almost all of the men in his family into a career in the navy.
When asked by his father what he wanted as a reward for passing his baccalaureate exams, Erté requested a passport, eager to return to France where a visit to the 1900 Exposition Universelle had left a profound impression on him as an eight year old.
"To a child, it was sheer enchantment," he told the New York Times in a 1976 interview. "There were the first illuminated fountains, there was Loie Fuller with her butterfly and fire dances; I fell in love with it."
In 1912 Erté left Russia for Paris, officially working as a special correspondent for the journal Ladies' World to both write and sketch about goings-on in fashion and high society.
Visions of modernity
Swapping the familial pressures of aristocratic St Petersburg for the bohemian neighbourhoods of Paris certainly proved more comfortable for Erté as a young, gay, fashion obsessive – although his sexuality was not something he would discuss openly until his 1975 biography, Things I Remember.
After an unsuccessful stint at a small boutique named Caroline, Erté decided to go for broke, gathering all of his drawings and sending them to the house of renowned couturier Paul Poiret, known as the "king of fashion".
The pair immediately found a shared aesthetic sensibility. While their collaboration was brief, its impacts were long lasting, not least as it was was Poiret who invented the nickname Erté – the French pronunciation of Romain de Tirtoff's initials, RT – which would forever remain.
The work they produced in this period (often credited solely to Poiret but later attributed to Erté) displayed a vision of modernity that typified much of what art deco would become – one based both in a romantic vision of ancient cultures and also an Orientalist perception of the "exotic".
Just as in architecture this manifested as geometries drawn from Egypt or Mesoamerica, in couture it meant casting off more restrictive forms of traditional dress like the corset and looking instead to looser silhouettes like the Japanese kimono and Turkish harem pants.
Sewell wrote how Erté "brought theatre into the field of fashion", but the reverse was also true, with the motifs of his work with Poiret finding their way into his earliest costume designs, most notably for the Dutch exotic dancer Mata Hari in the 1913 ballet Le Minaret.
The illustrations he produced in this period were enough to garner the attention of Harper's Bazaar, with whom he signed a 10-year contract in 1915 to design the front covers.
This project that would end up lasting over two decades, during which Erté would draw more than 200 covers, and it was this launching of his visions into a much broader public that would go on to cement his status for many as the "father of art deco".
These strikingly modern covers established many of the motifs that would become so closely associated with both Erté's work and art deco more broadly: fashionable figures laden with fur, feathers and jewels; simple, strong geometries contrasted by intricate and complex floral motifs, and a bold colour palette.
Unsuccessful Hollywood stint
The magazine's owner and publisher William Hearst is once said to have remarked "what would Harper's Bazaar have been if it wasn't for Erté?"
By 1925, as art deco's global influence grew following the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes in Paris, Erté's fame had proved sufficient to attract the attention of Louis B Mayer, who had recently founded Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) studios.
Erté was invited to Hollywood, his arrival heralded like that of a star, where he was contracted to work with MGM on both costume and set designs.
While this anticipated art deco's taking of the United States by storm, it did not prove a hugely successful match for Erté. The cotton costumes he designed for La Boheme were refused by the star Lilian Gish, who said "I can only stand silks on my skin", and none of the films he worked on ended up being produced.
Erté soon tired of Hollywood's pretence, and moved on to more exciting projects in New York, where by the late 1920s there was hardly a Broadway revue that he had not worked on the costumes and sets for, from George White's Scandals to the Ziegfield Follies.
He also continued to find success in Paris, creating costumes for the opera and shows at the Folie Bergère – one of which he recalls using a "mile and a quarter of gold lamé".
While art deco fell out of favour following the second world war, Erté survived to see its resurgence in the 1960s, which brought with it a surge in new appreciation for his work.
He had his first exhibition in London 1967, which was the first time his famous Alphabet series was displayed, a project begun in 1927 to depict each letter of the alphabet as a scantily clad, feminine figure.
Erté also turned to sculpture, finding a whole new market for his work in the creation of bronze figures that resembled his original illustrations of the 1920s as well as jewellery.
Erté was named Officer of Arts and Letters by the French Government in 1976, and the Medal of the City of Paris followed in 1986.
But these were not laurels on which he rested, continuing his work until the very end. When the broadway show Stardust was revived in 1990, it was Erté who designed its costumes. He died in Paris later that year, aged 97.
The top illustration is by Vesa Sammalisto.
Art Deco Centenary
This article is part of Dezeen's Art Deco Centenary series, which explores art deco architecture and design 100 years on from the "arts décoratifs" exposition in Paris that later gave the style its name.
The post Erté was the art deco pioneer who had "neither equal nor rival" appeared first on Dezeen.
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