Art deco: It’s not just Paris and New York
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F you’ve got a Berlitz travel guide on your bookshelf for places like Libya, Oman or Egypt, then chances are it’s been written by British travel expert Chris Bradley. Chris is coming to Dubbo to speak on Monday, March 12, to share photographs from his vast library of travel images on a topic that’s a bit dear to the former civil engineer’s heart: art deco buildings. Chris will summarily put to bed the common belief that it’s a style reserved just for places like Paris or Manhattan, sharing examples from Egypt, Iran, even Eretria.
Why are you so interested in Art Deco building decoration?
It is an odd topic from the list of talks I do. The majority are connected to the Middle East or Africa, but I’ve got a degree in civil engineering and art deco was part of the course that we did. In the ‘60s and ‘70s they were demolishing art deco buildings everywhere. Professionally I never did any work on art deco Chris Bradley (below) names his favourite example of Art Deco as this building, shaped in the form of an aeroplane, in the Eritrean capital Asmara. The Fiat Tagliero building was designed by Italian architect Giuseppe Pettazzi and completed in 1938.
buildings, but travelling for the past 40 years has given me an opportunity to take photographs world-wide of them.
Where’s your favourite art deco in the world?
Oh, there are so many. My favourite would be in Eritrea, in the capital Asmara. It’s a petrol filling station in the shape of an aeroplane. People just cannot believe in the highlands of Eritrea, in the north east of Africa, there’s a concrete petrol station in the shape of plane.
Where did art deco come from?
It came into fashion between the two wars. Such a short period. It was originally called “Art Decoratif” and appeared in a French exhibition in 1925. The idea was to sweep the old stuff aside and move over to a glossy, bright, neon, curvy future.
It spread worldwide through the “new” media of magazines,
and the cinema, so everyone saw buildings in movies like the Chrysler building or the Empire State building. It all looked new and jazzy.
It’s pretty much the world’s first international building style. Very few countries don’t have an art deco building. A majority of the world has pretty good examples.
Where is your favourite place to travel?
People are usually surprised when I tell people it’s Yemen. The people are very interesting and it has a wonderful history that goes back 3000 years. It’s also not what people expect. The mountains are 14,000 feet high and in some places it’s very green. People just don’t think of that when they think of Yemen.
What do you think of the trouble there now?
With regards to the chaos at the moment, the Yemenis are not completely blameless... (There’s been) a lot of fighting among themselves but they’re trapped between superpower neighbours Saudi and Iran. It’s very sad.
What work have you done on BBC documentaries?
This June I celebrate 40 years of leading tours and jumping from civil engineering. In about the first 15 years I always supplemented leading the tours by taking photographs and writing articles or guide books, and I’d come across interesting documentary stories. I started to feed the ideas into documentary making friends in the UK.
It was never easy, but I started Zanzibar Productions. We got quite a few commissions. We did one called “House of Stone” in Zimbabwe looking at the black and white situation. It’s shot around the 100th anniversary of Cecil Rhoades setting up Rhodesia and the 10th anniversary of Zimbabwe becoming an independent country.
We made Nick Crane’s first two documentaries for National Geographic in Morocco and Channel 4 when Nick walked across Europe. We were at the forefront of video diaries. We joined him as much as we could over 17 months.
We’re talking some time ago now. Nick’s done well, he’s the president of the Royal Geographical Society.
What tours are you leading this year?
I do four separate ADFAS (Australian Decorative and Fine Arts Society) branded tours that I lead for Academy Travel in Sydney.
Iran is one that’s coming up in a couple of months, and Ethiopia.
Being an ADFAS art lecturer and because I know these places so well, I can devise my own itinerary. Because the theme is art, decoration and fine art for ADFAS, I can work out an itinerary to suit that.
Iran is the only country that has Shia Islam as its state religion, so it’s the opposite to Saudi. When people are in Muslim or Islamic countries the vast majority of the time, they get the Sunni view of what Islamic art is. You might be told there are no human figures in Islamic art but that’s just the Sunni point of view, so there’s lots of calligraphy and design (similar to what you’d see) in Dubai, Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia or Indonesia.
North Yemen, Afghanistan and Iran aren’t places people tend to go so you don’t get to see the other side of the coin.
So, are you excited about visiting Dubbo?
I’ve never been to Dubbo before. This is the third time I’ve been on the ADFAS circuit. Because I’m in the travel industry I just love it. I really enjoy meeting the people. What’s different is I have been leading ADFAS tours of late, and I’ve stayed with people who’ve been on a tour with me in Ethiopia and other places. I love travelling anyway. The fact I can pass on information and entertain people while I’m doing it is good.
WHAT WHERE WHEN
ADFAS presents Chris Bradley Wesley Hall, Church Street, Dubbo Monday, March 12, 5.30pm for 6pm Members $5. General admission $20