Tamara De Lempicka - Art Deco Icon

Tamara de Lempicka — Art Deco Icon (2004)
Author/Publisher: Royal Academy of Arts • ISBN: 9781903973431
Condition: Good (sleek as a roadster, honest as a receipt)
Imprint: Crappy Old Books

Fasten your enamel brooches: this is the lacquered, high-octane catalogue of Tamara de Lempicka, patron saint of speed-line cheekbones and chrome-plated desire. The Royal Academy here moonlights as a Deco pit crew—polishing canvases until they purr and arranging the life and legend of Tamara with the precision of a society portraitist arranging a glove. You get the full 1920s–30s panorama: emerald dresses with the gravitational pull of small planets, lips engineered by aerodynamics, and a parade of patrons who all look like they know where the good parties are.

Condition “Good” means this copy has done a few laps but didn’t hit the barriers. The jacket shows modest edge-rub (call it light patina—very Tamara), the boards remain square, and the pages are clean, glossy, and ready to reflect your chandelier. No coffee catastrophes, no museum-sticker trauma, just the gentle trace of having been admired at arm’s length by someone who said “divine” unironically.

Inside, the book is a showroom of Lempicka’s greatest hits and most debonair detours:

• Portraits that double as architecture, all planes and torque, bodies rendered like streamlined buildings.

• Self-portraits that could apply for diplomatic immunity.

• Drapery that behaves like a well-trained thunderstorm.

• Essays that balance biography, gossip, and provenance with academic sangfroid—because even a myth deserves footnotes.

• A crisp chronology for anyone who likes to know exactly when Paris sat up straight.

Expect the Royal Academy tone: lucid, lavishly illustrated, and just tart enough to keep the legend honest. The reproductions are lush without lying; you can practically hear the engines in the background as Tamara overtakes the 19th century and waves politely. The design team, sensibly, lets the paintings do the shouting while the captions slide in with dates, lenders, and occasional revelations (“that green is doing most of the seduction”).

Use cases (tested at soirées and serious desks):

• Coffee table power move that says, “Yes, I have electricity and taste.”

• Quick refresher before lecturing someone about Machine Age glamour and why shoulders came with spoilers.

• Palette inspiration when your living room cries out for oyster, malachite, and scandal.

• A diplomatic answer to “What, exactly, is Art Deco?” (Open to any page. Gesture.)

Talking points to deploy while adjusting your monocle:

• Lempicka painted speed as a religion and modernity as a mood.

• Her patrons didn’t sit; they posed like treaties.

• The triangles are never accidental. Neither are the gloves.

• Between Ingres and Bugatti, she chose both, then tinted them emerald.

Physical particulars, candidly declared: jacket lightly rubbed at extremities; boards square; binding tight; plates bright and unruffled; pages free of inscriptions, with only the faintest whisper of shelf-life—more salon than storage. Smells agreeably of book and a hint of imaginary perfume.

Ideal for: Deco devotees, portrait pilgrims, maximalists with plans, minimalists in crisis, and anyone who believes a well-drawn elbow can win an argument.

Crappy Old Books guarantee: we don’t sell mint; we sell seductively intact. If you want a catalogue that arrives in a roadster and leaves with your attention, this Tamara is idling at the curb, engine purring, lipstick set to “inevitable.”

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