Books: Decorative Art

NEW DIMENSIONS—Paul T. Frankl—Payson & Clarke ($6).

From elaborate exhibits in museum and department store to window displays in cheap furniture shops, “modern decorative art” has been thrust at last upon the U. S. public. Justification is now undertaken by Paul Frankl, enthusiastic creator of skyscraper dressing tables, who traces origins in Austria, Germany, and, above all, Paris, where dressmakers felt the need of new backgrounds for their simple (but oh so intricate) knee-length frocks. In a spirit of cooperation, the new decorator therefore scraps everything old (the pyramids excepted), and matches modern life with “simple rhythmic combinations of masses,” and sharp color contrasts, rather than the “sentimental combinations” of Chippendale, of Louis Quinze.

Author Frankl does not prove that “simplicity” does match modern life. Nor does he recognize that his “simplicity” is rather the affectation of simplicity—witness a creation entitled “lady’s whimsical desk built like a puzzle.”