A global hegemony of clean lines

Phaidon Press invented the art book. It was in 1930s Vienna that Bela Horovitz and Ludwig Goldscheider established the format of the illustrated monograph: a short essay by an expert, usually an Austrian art historian hired for a modest fee, followed by a sumptuous range of high-quality repro.

They left before the Anschluss and arrived in London, bringing their distinguished backlist with them. Effete British art history was immediately fortified by stern German-language methodology.  After several changes of ownership, direction and fortune, not all of them good, Phaidon is now perhaps the outstanding international publisher of illustrated books.

Production values have always been a Phaidon priority, but the comfortable, formulaic old monograph has gone, to be replaced by the high-concept book. In a revealing way this pantomimes the changing status of art: once the concern of sophisticated coteries, art is now indistinguishable from the trashy global luxury business lashing about in its garish pools of excess. If you think £125 is expensive for a book, you are not its target market.

20th-Century World Architecture is high-concept indeed. So much for 20th-century architecture advocating lightness and efficiency. This galumphing monument weighs as much as a stack of concrete roofing tiles and is no more comfortable to handle. It has 3,800 photographs and 1,300 line drawings. To drop it would be to risk serious injury. One hundred and fifty ‘experts’ have selected 757 representative buildings. In this way, an uncontroversial consensus has been achieved in the selection.

It is arranged as a catalogue of individual buildings, continent by continent: Oceania, Asia, Europe, Africa, North America and South America. There is a mass of pre-ambling and original computer-generated cartographics but, while you are offered positional co-ordinates of sites, the more valuable accurate road maps and functional directions for the curious traveller are not included.