HOWZAT

GLITTER, STUCCO & DUMPSTER DIVING
By John Chase
Verso, £16

The subtitle, “Reflections on building production in the vernacular city”, even if I knew what it meant, gives no inkling of the hallucinatory hilarity of this irreverent book that demolishes not only the arid academic discipline that studies buildings as abstract aesthetic objects but also the naïve postmodernist attitude that values utilitarian forms.

Everything that formalist architectural criticism snootily overlooks, Chase contextualises in his own experience of living down and dirty in Los Angeles with a disturbed dog and neighbours who throw rotten fruit into his garden, and passers-by who cut holes in his fence so that they can park their bicycles. He goes for the vanity architectural projects with a viciousness that derives from his own urban rage in the dysfunctional LA landscape. This is a seriously funny and funnily serious book.

THE PICTURESQUE GARDEN IN EUROPE
By John Dixon Hunt
Thames & Hudson, £16.95

An Essay on the Picturesque in 1794 by Sir Uvedale Price helped to introduce a new aesthetic category, defined here as a landscape that “seemed either to have been composed after a painting or was designed to be the subject of one”. It persists still, and this well illustrated book focuses on the stability of the theory and practice.

A HISTORY OF COSTUME IN THE WEST
By François Boucher
Thames & Hudson, £29.95

First published in 1965, this is one of the great reference books on costume. Boucher recognised that styles evolve in social conditions and that there are causes behind innovations. He relates fashion to the secularising influence of Humanism in the 14th century, which prompted a move from the universal to the particular.

THE NORTHERN RENAISSANCE
By Jeffrey Chipps Smith
Phaidon, £14.95

Eurosceptics may wish to stop reading now: Chipps Smith points out that the dynamic arts of Europe from the late 14th to the late 16th centuries were informed by deep political, economic and family ties between communities such as Bruges and Florence. He also makes a case for conflating Late Gothic and Early Modern into one style.

OXFORD DICTIONARY OF CHRISTIAN ART
By Peter and Linda Murray
OUP, £9.99

What is a deambulatoria? A form of cloister surrounding the body of a church. The authors point out that modern secular visitors to art galleries can be confused. “What’s that pigeon doing there?” they ask, mistaking the dove of peace. This is the comprehensive reference book you never knew you wanted.

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