Art Deco 1900-1940

This lavish and beautiful large-format album, which combines a thorough-going historical essay with a cornucopia of serendipitous illustrations, is a must for serious students of Art Deco. French art historian and author of Art Nouveau 1870-1914, Bouillon not only demonstrates, as other critics have done, that Art Deco was an international movement embracing everything from painting and architecture to sculpture, crafts, fashion design and stage sets, he also illustrates how Art Deco concepts of refinement, order, elegance and individualized beauty reached out to influence seemingly untouched artists like Modigliani, Matisse, Leger, Klee and Kandinsky. Uncanny juxtapositions are the rule in this picture-crammed showcase. A Georges Lepape cover for Vogue , for instance, next to a Picasso costume for the ballet Parade sparks unsuspected relationships that shed new light on each. (May)