Geometrical creativity

Six decades back, as a teenager growing up in the erstwhile princely city of Patiala, the weekly highlight was an English movie at Phul Cinema. As the lights dimmed, the plush neon-lit glitzy interiors with murals and motifs would come alive. We were transported to the world of movie extravaganzas, little realising that the glamour and razzmatazz of the cinema’s decor was no less fascinating — the Art Deco style.

The exterior had a unique architecture defined by a set of geometrical lines. It had typical features of Art Deco — the entrance from the rounded corner of the building leading to a portico with a vertical spire at the top, blazing the cinema’s name at night in a red neon sign. The interiors, with elements in geometrical designs and motifs, crafted in stucco, had Art Deco opulence written all over them.

Hemant Chaturvedi, a renowned cinematographer documenting cinemas across the country, writes that Phul Cinema, commissioned by the erstwhile Maharaja of Patiala, opened in 1947. Built by a local business family, it was designed by WM Namjoshi, who had a significant number of Art Deco masterpieces, including Golcha Cinema in Delhi. After an authentic restoration in 2019, Phul regained popularity and now runs as a single-screen cinema.

In its heyday, Patiala was a truly regal city, with magnificent public buildings along the stately Mall Road, lined with rows of Gulmohar trees. Along the curving stretch of the Mall were located, among other buildings, the State Library, State Bank of Patiala (now SBI) and the Punjab State Electricity Board. The library building is built in the Art Deco style, and the other two in the hybrid Indo-Saracenic style (fusion of Islamic and Rajput elements), popular in princely states then.

The library’s central clock tower is typical of Art Deco. The Mall Road’s grand curving sweep, perhaps inspired by Bombay’s Marine Drive, culminates opposite Phul Cinema, near the sculptural ‘Phuwara Chowk’, a fountain probably on the lines of London’s Victoria Memorial.

As the world celebrates 100 years of Art Deco that swept the western world in the late 1920s, many global icons come to mind. The ornamental crown of the Chrysler Building and the top finial of the Empire State Building in New York are the most familiar landmarks. The largest concentration of Art Deco architecture in the world is at Miami Beach, Florida.

Centenary celebrations are being held by museums and institutions the world over to showcase Art Deco’s impact on decorative arts, design and architecture. Led by Musee des Arts Decoratifs (Paris), special lectures and exhibitions will be held. Art Deco’s influence is being explored in different cities and regions of the world, including Paris, Mumbai and New York.

Short for the French ‘Arts decoratifs’, Art Deco was a style of visual arts, architecture and product design that made its presence in the United States and Europe during the 1920s to early 1930s — the Jazz Age. It took its name from the 1925 International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts held in Paris. Among the participants was the young Le Corbusier, with a small ‘no-frills’ house called Pavillon de l’Esprit Nouveau, drawing attention through its functional modernist statement, in contrast to the superfluous decorations of prevailing trends.

Besides architecture, Art Deco’s styling impacted fashion, jewellery, upholstery, furniture — even ships, trains, cars, trucks and everyday objects, including radios and vacuum cleaners. Remember the American limousines like Pontiac and Chevrolet with their shiny chrome-plated fins extruding from the rear!

Art Deco landed in India literally on the shores of colonial Bombay, where a large number of buildings — public, corporate and residential, cinemas and mini-palaces of princes who frequently visited the cosmopolitan city — came up. It soon spread all over India.

A revised edition of ‘Bombay Deco’ by Sharda Dwivedi and Rahul Mehrotra (Professor of Urban Planning at Harvard) is an elegant magnum opus with breathtaking visual documentation, accompanied by incisive essays on the history of the Bombay skyline.

The book explores and documents its architectural transformation from the colonial dominance of the Victorian-Gothic ensemble (the familiar landmarks of the Bombay High Court and University of Bombay and others around the Oval Maidan) to the ‘global swank of Art Deco’.

The book’s cover has an enigmatic photograph — the spire of Liberty Cinema, denoting the style’s looming presence over the city then. “‘Bombay Deco’ is truly a celebration of one of the largest collections of Art Deco structures, and the first detailed review of this style that transformed the city — from a Victorian town to a cosmopolitan metropolis,” says the blurb.

The Preface by Mehrotra ruminates on the publication of the first edition of the book in 2008, and talks of Art Deco being a transitory style and therefore the significance of documenting that ‘lived experience’ before the memories die down. He writes: “Art Deco incorporated decorative themes and motifs, continuing with the theme of individual expression critical for the society in the throes of transition.”

The book also opened a debate on the importance of looking at the city’s architecture between 1930 and 1950 more seriously, and stirring activism to protect it. An essay by Jon Alff, a San Francisco-based expert on Art Deco architecture, reminds that “while earlier Gothic and Victorian buildings had a great stature and monumentality, they denoted colonial power, whereas Art Deco heralded India”. He also raises a timely alarm about Art Deco buildings’ vulnerability and challenges of their maintenance — and, therefore, an urgency for conservation.

The book has a collection of rare visuals supported by essays on the progression of Art Deco, and its transformative role.

The special section on the cinemas of Bombay brings to light the tremendous role played by the architecture of show business in stirring the desire for luxury and fantasies both on and off-screen, through the decor and architecture depicted in them. Details of window grilles, staircase railings and other such decorative objects are also rigorously documented.

The commissioning of a large number of European architects from Bombay for designing luxury palaces of princes, mansions of rich industrialists and business magnates provided opportunities to incorporate Art Deco elements to match the style and swagger of the new ultra-rich patrons.

Manak Bagh, the palace for Yeshwant Holkar II of Indore, incorporated murals, furniture and furnishings adapted from Le Corbusier and Charlotte Perriand’s Salon in Paris, and also the renowned line of Eileen Gray of France.

The book reproduces archival material of the Associated Cement Companies (ACC), promoting construction in reinforced material, that became a game-changer in the architectural language of the county.

Similarly, tourism brochures, pamphlets for furniture and furnishings of that era brought spark to the forces of transformation of a vibrant cosmopolitan financial hub of the country. Thanks to a crusade by city lovers and committed heritage experts, in 2018, UNESCO designated the combined areas of Fort and Marine Drive as Heritage Precincts under the title ‘Victorian Gothic and Art Deco Ensemble of Mumbai’. This was the first-ever nomination initiated by a citizens’ group, instead of a government agency, to have got the recognition.

What started in Paris and spread across the world with its flourishes of ornate ‘show-and-tell’ aesthetics made its appearance in Le Corbusier’s Chandigarh, too, known for its cuboid modernist architecture. Kiran Cinema — the first movie hall of the city built in 1956, located in Sector 22 — was designed by the British architect E Maxwell Fry, an associate of Corbusier’s team. Fry created a curved roof with a projecting canopy for the facade, clad in blue ceramic tiles on the front. A curving protruding brick mass on the right-end corner of the building, too, was a typical Art Deco element. The interiors in stucco are claimed to have been designed by WM Namjoshi.

As we celebrate Art Deco, we cherish its bold flourishes of creativity.

— The writer is former principal, Chandigarh College of Architecture

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