ART DECO <i> By Victor Arwas (Abrams: $75; 316 pp.) </i>

Artists are fighters. They fight with themselves to create and they fight with each other over their creations. The founders of Art Deco were no less argumentative than any other group thinking itself on the cusp. Proud to be facing an unofficial blacklist by the proponents of the dying Art Nouveau movement, they formed their own movement, one that would smudge the barrier between those arts fine and decorative.

Victor Arwas covers all this and more in this informative and beautifully produced revision of the 1985 edition, already a standard reference work. He is generous with illustrations (436 of them; 339 plates in color), notes, and most graciously, thumbnail biographies of these artists whose work continues to influence contemporary design and thought. One interesting irony: In his introduction he partially attributes the downfall of Art Nouveau to its rigid structuring of exhibits by category, grouping glass, ceramics, metalwork, furniture, etc. And then he organizes his book this way: furniture, metal, silver, glass, etc. This is a contradiction for a surrealist.