Eye Magazine

This comprehensive exhibition successfully presents coastal Art Deco through the disciplines of architecture, graphic design, fashion, interior and product design. The collections showcase the seaside as fertile ground for creative experimentation in developing contemporary designs for pleasure and escapism. Here we can see the fluid lines in the furniture designs of Alvar Aalto and Marcel Breuer alongside the collection of innovative Ekco radios, made at Southend-on-Sea during this period. In an era of mass tourism, artists, designers and architects explored craft traditions with the tools of the mechanical age in designs to entice and engage the holidaymaker. Displayed against photographic backdrops of some of the most iconic buildings of the time, including the De La Warr Pavilion and the Midland Hotel in Morecambe, we are presented with an all-encompassing visual manifesto.

The exhibition is particularly revealing when architectural plans and designs are presented alongside the completed hotel, municipal building and theme park projects. Notable highlights are the drawn perspectives by John Dean Monroe Harvey for the Midland Hotel and the unexecuted plans for the Frinton Park Estate; Tom Purvis’s original logo design for Blackpool Pleasure Beach Casino; and the draft, illustrative typography for Frank Codona’s Speedway from the National Fairground and Circus Archive. There is also an opportunity to see Purvis’s ‘East Coast Joys’ posters as a complete series, representative of advertising design of the period; the hand-drawn lettering on Andrew Johnson’s piece promoting Berwick; Laura Knight’s Yorkshire coast scene; and Edward McKnight Kauffer’s inspirational Great Western to Cornwall colour lithograph from 1932.

The accompanying book, also edited by Wood, provides the reader with the first detailed analysis of the specific influence of Art Deco on Britain’s seaside resorts. The publication explores how artists and designers redefined the seaside experience by challenging the traditions and expectations of the time. The chapters connect with categorised curation of the exhibition, with the contributing authors contextualising the visual aesthetic, cultural experience and societal impact of Art Deco at the seaside. Essays such as ‘Boulevards of Beauty and Delight (Amusement Design in the 1930s)’ explore the interdisciplinary relationship of architecture, interior and graphic design in documenting the work of architects Joseph Emberton and Leonard Thompson, and artists and designers Margaret Blundell and Percy Metcalfe. The movement is symbolic of seaside leisure, fashion and entertainment, and we are provided with further insight into the ambition of the period and Art Deco’s legacy, seen today in resorts such as Bexhill-on-Sea. The book highlights the decay and destruction of Art Deco lidos, public buildings and attractions as part of new promenade developments in the latter decades of the twentieth century. Thankfully, in recent years, we have seen the restoration and protection of many of these coastal assets – such as Dreamland and the Midland Hotel – and they remain focal points of the seafront vistas of Margate and Morecambe.

‘Art Deco by Sea’ appropriately highlights the need to protect architectural spaces and objects of this period and to increase awareness of their cultural value. This exhibition is a fascinating, timely reminder of the ambition of the artists, architects and designers who created seaside splendour to which we can all escape to.

Justin Burns, Head of Art & Design, Leeds School of Arts at Leeds Beckett University, Yorkshire

First published in Eye no. 101 vol. 26, 2021

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