Bevis Hillier
Last of the Total Styles
Art Deco 1910-1939
By Charlotte Benton, Tim Benton and Ghislaine Wood
V & A Publications 464pp £40
FOR REASONS THAT will become clear, this review will inevitably be a bit of an ego trip. This month the Victoria & Albert Museum is putting on a most ambitious exhibition of Art Deco - the decorative art of the 1920s and 1930s. (The organisers stretch back the boundaries of the style to 1910: more on that in a moment.) In 1968 I wrote the first book in English on Art Deco. In 1971 I organised a big exhibition of Art Deco at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts: the catalogue was published as a book, The World of Art Deco. And in 1998 - thirty years after my first Deco book - I wrote, with Stephen Escritt, a further book, Art Deco Style; my contribution, headed 'Art Deco Revisited', was a retrospect of the adventures I had had in helping to identify, anatomise and popularise the style.
I must admit that I was mildly miffed when I heard that plans for a V&A Deco show were well advanced and its organisers had not approached me. While I did not expect them to sit at my feet, there were things I could have lent them and obscure collectors
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
Twitter Feed
Knowledge of Sufism increased markedly with the publication in 1964 of The Sufis, by Idries Shah. Nowadays his writings, much like his father’s, are dismissed for their Orientalism and inaccuracy.
@fitzmorrissey investigates who the Shahs really were.
Fitzroy Morrissey - Sufism Goes West
Fitzroy Morrissey: Sufism Goes West - Empire’s Son, Empire’s Orphan: The Fantastical Lives of Ikbal and Idries Shah by Nile Green
literaryreview.co.uk
Rats have plagued cities for centuries. But in Baltimore, researchers alighted on one surprising solution to the problem of rat infestation: more rats.
@WillWiles looks at what lessons can be learned from rat ecosystems – for both rats and humans.
Will Wiles - Puss Gets the Boot
Will Wiles: Puss Gets the Boot - Rat City: Overcrowding and Urban Derangement in the Rodent Universes of John B ...
literaryreview.co.uk
Twisters features destructive tempests and blockbuster action sequences.
@JonathanRomney asks what the real danger is in Lee Isaac Chung's disaster movie.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/eyes-of-the-storm