Learning From Las Vegas. 1972

Current Selling Prices
$650-$3000 /£400-£2000

Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown and Steven Izenour. LEARNING FROM LAS VEGAS. Cambridge, Mass. & London: The M.I.T. Press, 1972

ARCHITECTURE
Cult classic -architecture / urbanism...a revolutionary case study that opened the world's eyes to vernacular architecture and iconography-the "ugly and ordinary" structures and signage born to satisfy the needs of regular people, not architects. It shows the considerable influence of pop art which some art critics say has, in its turn, influenced contemporary art. Venturi Scott Brown are now an important architectural firm with buildings at Harvard, Michigan, Yale and Tsinghua University Beijing. Robert Venturi is often referred to as the "father of Post Modernism."

The book is a large quarto of 188 pages and can turn up in a translucent glassene printed jacket that adds considerably to its value. In a 2007 interview by Melissa Urcan with the two surviving authors we get a look at the work 35 years on:

"Melissa Urcan: I would first like to ask you about the weight of Learning from Las Vegas, now almost 35 years old. Do you feel tied to the association of your work to this book, or is it something you continue to draw from?

Robert Venturi: Since
then we have written an essay called "Las Vegas After Its Classic Age," which emphasizes that Learning from Las Vegas in the context of now is completely historical. If you had written a book on the Renaissance in Florence, it would have taken maybe 100 years to say, "Oh that's historical." Now you can say 35 years have gone by very fast. But Learning from Las Vegas is still relevant in many ways, such as in its recognition of the relevance and significance of iconography and signage more than of space. Las Vegas got us in a lot of trouble, but we learned a lot from it.

MU: The Strip in Las Vegas appears to be where you spent the most research time. In this book you had the premonition of the building and sign eventually merging. Did you have any idea how big the entire city would become?

Denise Scott Brown: We did concentrate on the Strip, but not only on the Strip. We studied patterns of land use throughout Las Vegas. And we mapped all the strips of Las Vegas, not just the famous Strip...

VALUE? The book has been reprinted and can be picked up for $30 but the 1972 first is now of some value. When I featured this book 3 years ago there were 4 copies on ABE at between $1800 and $4500, there are now 14 with a decent enough copy sans jacket for $600 and a few in jacket from $1400 to $3500 and a one signed by Venturi with a drawing at $5000 in chipped jacket. Some copies listed may have jackets, the ever helpful Powells of Oregon merely describe their $1950 copy as 'standard' - a brutal price without jacket, but fairly decent with. The odds are it has no jacket and is a sad and tired example. If a copy is nice, dealers tend to say so. The jacket being printed acetate/ glassene is almost always less than fine and a perfect jacket could see a fast sale at $3000 otherwise it has become a slightly slow book to sell, although architecture is still a good subject and more reliable, say, than photobooks...For the person 'holding folding' there is also 'An Archive of Manuscript Materials Relating to the Publication of Learning from Las Vegas' at $35000 - considerably less than you could lose in 10 minutes play at the Bellagio.



OUTLOOK? Something of a sleeper, it can be picked up occasionally at library sales, boot sales and flea markets or even from web-savvy dealers who see online prices and assume the sellers are 'having a laugh.' Possibly a good hold over a decade or two, there seems to be considerable interest in the book and a plethora of critical works about it. I suspect in years to come Las Vegas will be seen as a suburb of hell and will be regarded in the way that we now think of Atlantic City or Blackpool. Only the Gods really know-- it mayl be better to sell now before more copies come to roost. My last copy took about a year to sell in 2008 at $1400 ('All lettering on front and back of jacket intact, loss of LE of 'Learning' at head of spine- an impressive example...')


For $50 or less you can buy I Am a Monument: On Learning from Las Vegas on Learning from Las Vegas by one Aron 'Balsamic' Vinegar. This 'provocative rereading of an iconic text' compares the text of the 1972 version and the 1977 'stripped down' edition. Vinegar is concerned lest we '... miss the underlying dialectic between skepticism and the ordinary, expression and the deadpan, that runs through the text.' Post post-modernism and beyond.

Collecting James Lees - Milne

Current Selling Prices
£5-£700


It is hardly surprisingly that this novelist, architectural historian, and diarist, who was a friend of Betjeman’s and two years younger, with similar interests and a similar educational background --lonely, hypersensitive child, product of prep, public school, Magdalene College Oxford , and similar adult interests—poetry, architecture, the picturesque movement --- should have devoted admirers and now, thanks to his biographer, Michael Bloch, a website devoted to him.

As the youthful Historic Buildings Secretary of the even more youthful National Trust from 1936 to 1951 his job was basically motoring around the country sizing up properties and their contents and buttering up their owners in an effort to persuade them to hand them over to the nation. It was largely thanks to him that some of the finest country houses now in the care of the Trust were saved. He seems to have approached his often onerous task ( the diary entries for the terrible winter of 1947 are a testament to his stoicism ) with alacrity and determination. The early diaries chronicling his mission were published from the seventies. The later ones cover his life as a biographer, historian and novelist. Of the twelve published diaries five were published posthumously.

The extraordinary appeal of Lees- Milne’s confrontations with raddled ancient nabobs of the county set, their male scions and what Geoffrey Grigson called Art Tarts—– are sometimes moving, sometimes hilarious but always entertaining. Portraits of Great British Eccentrics are always popular, as producers of countless TV shows like Country House Rescue will tell you, and stories featuring their crumbling mansions filled with antique furniture and paintings seldom fail to engage. Lees- Milne should be read alongside Betjeman’s collected letters and John Harris’s classic No Voice from the Hall for a window onto this very English and now fast disappearing world—a world that only someone with Lees Milne’s background and sensibility could interpret. Betjeman’s biographer Bevis Hillier, summed up the diarist’s appeal perfectly:

"...he had in fuller measure than any of his contemporaries the qualities that make a diarist: honesty; a facility for putting down what one observes and feels without too much straining through the muslins of the intellect; concern for other people; the kind of interest in oneself that Gore Vidal has called ‘ objective narcissism ‘; a memory for dialogue; an awareness of setting ; an eye for significant detail; a sense of humour with a condiment dash of malice; a willingness to make a fool of oneself…"

To his literary executor, Michael Bloch, Lees Milne was a bundle of paradoxes: ‘He respected tradition, while hating convention; he admired the aristocracy, yet was contemptuous of aristocrats; he combined faint-heartedness with stoical courage; he was bisexual ‘. Lees- Milne has been compared to Virginia Woolf and Madame de Sevigny. Today as arguably ‘the greatest diarist of the twentieth century‘ he has a cult following.

Oddly, though, there only seems to be a strong demand for these diaries and for his novels. His first book, The Age of Adam (1947) can be had for £10 or less, while The Tudor Renaissance, which followed, is yours for around £4. Even the waspish Shell Guide to Worcestershire, the first draft of which was heavily blue-pencilled by the Shell bigwigs, isn’t expensive at around £10 - £20. The novels are a different matter. Although Hillier didn’t rate him as a novelist, a copy of Heretics in Love on ABE can set you back up to £75, the ‘scarce‘ Round the Clock may cost a little more, while some chancer wants £112 for The Fool of Love.

Then there are the diaries. Copies of the first editions in wrappers range from around $306 to $471, and inscribed examples are pricier still. A copy presented by the author to his friend and Betjeman’s, Lady ‘Billa‘ Harrod can be yours for $778, while the same bookseller offers a copy inscribed to Jane, Countess of Westmorland for £710. Another dealer will sell you all twelve volumes of the diaries for $1337. These are extraordinary prices compared with those that other acclaimed diaries fetch—such as Plomer’s edition of Kilvert’s Diary. They may possibly reflect small print runs, and indeed some editions are described as ‘ scarce ‘, but I would venture to say that firsts of these diaries aren’t as hard to find as the dealers’ prices suggest and bargain spotters ought to find decently priced copies if they look hard enough.[R.M. Healey]

Many thank Robin. Lees-Milne is surely the Dan Brown of architectural writers--endlessly saleable and, in smarter bookshops than ours, continually requested. There is a witty Private Eye Lees-Milne parody written by Craig Brown in the 1990s. JLM has died and gone to heaven where he finds the decor 'garish, garish, garish... oh for a little English restraint.' It is preserved in the matchless Craig Brown Omnibus. Brown's friend the late Hugh Montgomery-Massingberd devised Ancestral Voices, a one-man show from the diaries of James Lees- Milne, which he performed, from 2002, at various small venues. Must check YouTube to see if anyone captured it. As for Lees-Milne prices, they may be levelling off but there are still some very well cushioned punters for complete sets of his diaries (all firsts, all fine) - they make impressive presents, rewards or inducements.

Ian Nairn, Outrage, 1955

Ian Nairn. OUTRAGE. The Architectural Press, Westminster, (1955)

Current Selling Prices
$50-$1500 /£30-£100

When Ian Nairn died of cirrhosis of the liver in 1983 aged just 52 he was a largely forgotten figure whose best work lay many years behind him. Some may have remembered his column in the Sunday Times and his TV shows that saw him pootering around the UK in a Morris Minor. Many may have bought his brilliantly idiosyncratic book on London, or perhaps his similar guide to Paris. But all this, together with his work with Pevsner on guides to Surrey and Sussex, was part of his creative period. For nearly a decade afterwards he had done nothing but drink himself into an early grave.

But, the great, the pioneering Ian Nairn, has always had a small, devoted following, and thanks to people like Jonathan Meades and other devoted fans through the world he can be seen as one of the great prophets of environmentalism. As such, there has always been a demand for his books, and particularly for his debut polemic, Outrage (1955). In this astonishing indictment of post-war planning Nairn sought to name and shame all those ‘ agents ‘responsible for the shocking ‘creeping mildew ‘ that occasionally individuals, but usually local authorities, had visited on both town and countryside over the years. He called it ‘ death by slow decay ‘ and he coined the word ‘Subtopia … a compound word formed from suburb and utopia, i.e, making an ideal of suburbia ‘, to describe what this malaise produced.

Outrage would have been an astonishing debut for anyone in his forties with two decades of architectural training behind him, but Nairn was just twenty-five year old, an ex-RAF pilot with a degree in maths from Birmingham University and with no architectural qualifications whatsoever. Like Betjeman before him, Nairn’s lack of professional qualifications did not prevent him contributing brilliantly perceptive pieces to the Architectural Review in the early fifties and I have a theory that it was Betch’s famous diatribe on post-war England in First and Last Loves (1952) that was mainly responsible for Nairn’s excursion into polemics. Around 1954/ 1955, in the spirit of Priestley (1936) and Cobbett (1823), he decided to take a rain check on the visual state of England by taking his camera with him on a journey from Southampton to Carlisle and beyond. The result was a damning indictment of planning blunders and architectural solecisms and it duly appeared as a special number of the Architectural Review in June 1955 and was published as a separate book soon afterwards.

Looking at Outrage now, its tiny photographs and architectural graphics, it can read like a period piece; it is when one examines the tone of voice that Nairn’s prescience seems astonishing. His is the voice that was scarcely heard at that time—indignant, disrespectful, and yet so very rational and sane. And the book evidently made its mark, because a reprint was called for immediately. Less immediate was the response from planners ( who, let’s face it, are not the brightest ). Over the years, however, the influence has been greater among those with similar agendas to Nairn’s. Without Outrage and its follow up, Counter Attack and such works as Your England Revisited, there probably wouldn’t have been Private Eyes’s ‘Nooks and Corners’. The trendy psychogeography of Ian Sinclair and his imitators owes much to Nairn too, as does the more recent Crap Towns. Things have improved a little in the past forty years. We don’t allow a perfectly good Georgian country house to rot ; we would never allow a fine Georgian terrace to be bulldozed to make way for a shopping parade and we wouldn’t let the National Grid string a line of pylons across a scenic river valley; we are more aware of the creeping effect of ribbon development and the ugliness of concrete lamp standards. However, some of the general lessons that Nairn taught—particularly the value of keeping suburban sights out of the country and gentility away from town centres-- which to anyone of any aesthetic sensitivity whatsoever are no-brainers-- are still being ignored by planners, and visual blunders involving street advertising, road signs, mobile-phone masts, fencing, etc are being committed every minute of the day around the UK.,

Although Outrage remains the Nairn title that everyone wants, prices aren’t exorbitantly high for something so worth having. A friend recently (on my recommendation ) went in search of a copy in her local bookshop and found a reprint of 1956 in good condition for a mere £25.One copy of the first was recently s priced on the Net at around £100, but this has now gone and in the past year or so a number of copies have quickly been and gone, such is the steady demand. Counter Attack is much easier to find at around £20 -£30, though it is unlikely that a great many were printed. Other titles by Nairn are more common still. [R.M. Healey]

Albert Speer Nazi Architect

Speer who was released from Spandau in 1966, published his memoirs 'Inside the Third Reich' in 1970, netting himself a personal fortune, disavowed Nazism and died on a visit to London in 1981. Krier's book is, for reasons one can only guess at, extremely hard to find...I have never seen a copy.

Leon Krier. ALBERT SPEER.

ARCHITECTURE. Princeton Architectural Press,1989. ISBN 2871430063

Current Prices $350-$700 /£180-£350

ARCHITECTURE / NAZIS
Elusive work on Hitler's architect by Prince Charles's pal, architect and Poundbury town planner Leon "Town" Krier. Not an apologist but clearly fascinated by the power given to one man in building Hitler's dream. I imagine it is an art book, probably not thick. It is always said that not a single Speer project has survived, so a book like this is the only record.

VALUE? Amazon Canada list a copy at $100 but then note it is not available, fairly usual for them. No other copies online for months at a time. No idea of value but anyone paying over £400 would have to be a little in love with fascism or at least Nazi kitsch...half that and one might be right on the money.

STOP PRESS. Above was written December 2006. The book has hardly shown up since then, and is not listed at Addall or Bookfinder. It must be thought of as being worth £200 minimum unless it gets reprinted. The text is in French and English and I have found at least one Speer building still standing - the Zepplintribune, at the Nuremberg parade grounds (pictured below.) There are many ruins and traces + this piece of defiant early Brutalism. Speer was concerned that in thousands of years his buildings would make noble ruins. The Nazis wer a far sighted bunch--how many architects plan for the ruins? Fortunately the ruins came fast.

In an interesting article in NYRB this week Robert Hughes talks of meeting Speer in the 1970s and asking him who he favoured in current architecture. Tellingly, he named Philip Johnson whose own far right past was unknown at the time. Hughes describes PJ's later work as 'a stream of pastiche and kitsch.' Hughes conveyed a copy of Speer's own book 'Architektur' to Johson signed to him 'in sincere appreciation of his most recent designs..' Johnson on receiving it appeared slightly shocked and quickly hid it away. A valuable 'association' item now. [ W/Q *** ]



TRIVIA. 'Fascinating Fascism'. In April this year Roxy Music singer Bryan Ferry described the aesthetic behind Nazi Germany as "just amazing". In an interview with Welt am Sonntag, Ferry also revealed that he calls his studio in west London his "Fuhrerbunker". He said: "My God, the Nazis knew how to put themselves in the limelight and present themselves. I'm talking about Leni Riefenstahl's movies and Albert Speer's buildings and the mass parades and the flags - just amazing. Really beautiful." Bryan later apologised profusely.

Learning From Las Vegas. 1972

Current Selling Prices
$1250-$3000 /£650-£1500

Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown and Steven Izenour. LEARNING FROM LAS VEGAS. Cambridge, Mass. & London: The M.I.T. Press, 1972 ISBN: 0262220156

ARCHITECTURE
Cult classic -architecture / urbanism...a revolutionary case study that opened the world's eyes to vernacular architecture and iconography-the "ugly and ordinary" structures and signage born to satisfy the needs of regular people, not architects. Venturi Scott Brown are now an important Architectural firm with buildings at Harvard, Michigan, Yale and Tsinghua University Beijing. Robert Venturi is often referred to as the "father of Post Modernism."

The book is a large quarto of 188 pages and can turn up in a translucent glassene printed jacket that adds considerably to its value. In an interview by Melissa Urcan last year with the two surviving authors we get a look at the work 35 years on:

"Melissa Urcan: I would first like to ask you about the weight of Learning from Las Vegas, now almost 35 years old. Do you feel tied to the association of your work to this book, or is it something you continue to draw from?

Robert Venturi: Since then we have written an essay called "Las Vegas After Its Classic Age," which emphasizes that Learning from Las Vegas in the context of now is completely historical. If you had written a book on the Renaissance in Florence, it would have taken maybe 100 years to say, "Oh that's historical." Now you can say 35 years have gone by very fast. But Learning from Las Vegas is still relevant in many ways, such as in its recognition of the relevance and significance of iconography and signage more than of space. Las Vegas got us in a lot of trouble, but we learned a lot from it.

MU: The Strip in Las Vegas appears to be where you spent the most research time. In this book you had the premonition of the building and sign eventually merging. Did you have any idea how big the entire city would become?

Denise Scott Brown: We did concentrate on the Strip, but not only on the Strip. We studied patterns of land use throughout Las Vegas. And we mapped all the strips of Las Vegas, not just the famous Strip.

RV: In the essay "Las Vegas After Its Classic Age," we say the obvious-that the Strip evolves into the Boulevard. The former Strip is now officially "the Boulevard." I love the use of the word "scenography"-in a sense Las Vegas is now City as Scenography; it's a Disneyland. Most cities are to some extent scenographic, but few are as explicitly theatrical.

VALUE? The book has been reprinted and can be picked up for $30 but the 1972 first is now quite scarce. There are 4 copies on ABE at between $1800 and $4500. A copy appeared in auction at Bloomsbury in London last week, singly lotted for the first time in its book auction history. It was a reasonable copy in d/w and made £950 in a rather costly art book sale.

Incunabula of Art Nouveau, 1883

A. H. Mackmurdo. WREN"S CITY CHURCHES. G.Allen, Orpington 1883.

Current Selling Prices
$1250-$3000 /£650-£1600

ART / ARCHITECTURE/ ART NOUVEAU
An amazing book or at least an amazing title page (above) representing the first flowering of art nouveau in Britain and posssibly Europe, the only thing preceding it is thought to be some 'free flowing' wrought iron styles. Described thus in Rheims's Flowering of Art Nouveau “This title page is generally regarded as the first manifestation of Art Nouveau. It contains all the elements which were to emerge triumphant ten years later: broadly stylized flowers, undulating stems, leaves rising like flames, integration of the type design with the decoration, and an arresting distribution of black and white, giving the background a positive decorative value.”---Without the title page the book would be an unnoticed but useful work on the great Wren.

Arthur Heygate Mackmurdo (December 12, 1851 – March 15, 1942) was a progressive English architect and designer, who influenced the Arts and Crafts Movement, notably through the Century Guild, which he set up in partnership with Selwyn Image in 1882. Mackmurdo was a pupil of John Ruskin from 1873, whom he had accompanied to Italy and had apprenticed in the architectural office of James Brooks at 28 Southampton Street in London. Brooks was known for his Gothic revival churches. As they say at the Victorian Web:

Mackmurdo's infiuence on Continental Art Nouveau has also been recognised as seminal, especially through the curvilinear ornament of his title page for Wren's City Churches (1883), which echoes his chair-back of the previous year. Mackmurdo's architectural work, taken up again after 1888, included the Savoy Hotel (1889), a house in Chelsea for the artist, Mortimer Menpes with the most remarkable Japanese-style interior, and his own houses in Essex.

He edited with Herbert Horne The Century Guild Hobby Horse (1886- 1892. 28 issues) the key journal of the Arts and Crafts movement. Contributors include Selwyn Image, Ford Madox Brown, William Strang,G F Watts, W M & C G Rossetti, John Ruskin, E Burne-Jones, Oscar Wilde, J A Symonds, Mathew Arnold, J Todhunter, K Tynan, L Johnson, A Dobson, W S Blunt, A W Pollard, L Binyon, William Morris, G. F. Watts, John Ruskin,etc.

It has been handsomely reprinted in Japan by Yushoda at 280000 yen (circa £1200) An original complete run in nice shape could be £3K+. A lacklustre incomplete (20 issues) set (The Boston edition) was bought in on a feeble minded estimate of $8000/$12000 at Sotheby's 2001. Clean individual issue can make £100 to £200, less if soiled and used which they can often be (they were large and white.)

I was told about the book by the legendary dealer/ runner Andrew Henderson a lanky figure often seen in auction rooms in the 70s and 80s. He had taught art and had impeccable taste when it came to books and would occasionaly sniff them heartily, possibly to detect mould. I was just looking through old ABPC records to see the kind of things he bought. A partial list would include - Blake, Ricketts, Beerbohm, William Nicholson, James Guthrie, Christopher Dresser, Repton, Inigo Jones, Eragny Press, James Joyce letters, Waugh, Francis Crease, Greene 'Bear Fell Free', Bomberg, Gimson, Gaudier Brzeska, William Allingham, the occasional Rackham and Henry Shaw.

Although he was said to have a billionaire end user client he often took a while before he could drum up the money to clear his lots. He once caused gasps in the room by outbidding allcomers, including the phone, on an early 12 page Joyce letter ( apparently practically a mission statement.) He paid about £12,000 + commission which in the early 1980s would have got you a flat in Battersea.

VALUE? There is a copy for sale with many unpleasant ex library traits at $1500 and it's the only one. Who was it who said that the enemies of books were fire, water, servants, children and librarians? I have had the book twice and seen it 6 or 7 times and our last copy was a large paper one - "One of an undesignated number of copies on large paper. (Taylor p. 34) A.P.C., inscribed on front blank: ‘John Frazer, from his friend the author. Arthur Mackmurdo. May, 1884.’ Sold in 1996 for £1400. Might be yesterday's book, however there hasn't been a decent copy around for about 8 years. In the late 90s ordinary copies made about £400 to £600 in terrestrial auctions. In 1987 a 'fine' copy was catalogued by Charles B Wood III at $1600. The book is, so far, unknown to ebay, although Mackmurdo's furniture is regularly traded there.

The Architectural Style of A. Hays Town.

THE ARCHITECTURAL STYLE OF A. HAYS TOWN. 106 PRELIMINARY SKETCHES. Amdulaine, St. Gabriel, LA, 1985.

Current Selling Prices
$1500+ / £800+ ISBN 0961578009


ARCHITECTURE
Large quarto coffee table art book with 106 colour sketches. Creole Architecture, AHT worked in Baton Rouge. In April 06 there was a fine copy at $2500 which must have sold. I guess if you have a house by the chap you have to have the book and you might also have the cash. There is, however, a perfectly good book on his Louisiana houses by Philip Gould at $30, nice pics but no floor plans.

VALUE? The $2500 copy could have been a lucky chance and it might show up on ebay at $50 but I doubt it. A copy (fine in fine) is for sale at $1800, another copy spotted at $3500-- "a unique opportunity to buy this rare book." Louisiana seller. The same book is relisted by a relister at $5500. The Hindus have a phrase for this 'jiva jivasya jivanam' - one living entity is food for another. [Want level 25-50 Highish]