Thank you, readers, for your thoughtful and knowledgeable responses to our recent contests.

Our Josef Albers fill in the blanks contest of March 21^st, 2014, however, may have been overly challenging.  We asked you to complete the following statement by Albers:

“Even if I would know the answer to your question, I would not give it to you because then I deprive you of finding out it yourself.  I have to expose you to ________ and ________.”

And though we’ve had some wonderfully clever and original responses, none of them has been correct.

So we’re re-opening the contest, and turning it into a multiple choice!  The first person to submit the correct answer to yaleartbooks@gmail.com wins either a free download of the Josef Albers Interaction of Color app for iPad or a copy of the recently-published 50^th anniversary paperback edition of Interaction of Color. (Entrants must have a mailing address in the US or Canada.)

A. “subtlety” and “creativity”
B. “discovery” and “invention”
C. “process” and “practice”
D. “reds” and “blues”
E. “effort” and “rigor”

And congratulations to the following winners of other recent contests!

Contest to win a free copy of Building Seagram by Phyllis Lambert (Feburary 12^th, 2014):

Our winners were Gregory M., who wrote:

My memory of the Seagram Building arose from a brief period in my law career while a clerk for a law firm near the Seagram.  The law partners’ office looked out onto the visage of the Seagram.  It was only on those occasions when they asked for me to attend to their daily business in their offices that the building presented itself, as a gift. Surrounded by corporate attorneys in the rarefied air of the midtown law firm, the Seagram reminded one of the stately beauty of the city below.  From the 45th floor of the firm, the sense of transcendence amplified the visage of the Seagram. Can there be a model for a Cityscape which would omit this design? Only would the Seagram’s architect judge otherwise, and, decide, perhaps, the city below serves as the grand settee to New York’s sweeping embrace.

and Don Q., who offered:

In 1969 there was a lot to absorb in NYC for a somewhat-hick, college architectural intern during the “Summer of Love,” which included many nights at the Fillmore East and culminated in an August trip to Woodstock nation. Hardly countercultural, the Seagram Building is also a vivid presence from that summer, if I remember it only as a passerby. I spent a lot of time at the Museum of Modern Art, either going to exhibitions or watching films in the basement auditorium. These visits always involved taking the Lexington Ave. 6 train from my apartment in the East Village to the 51st Street station. Invariably, I would walk west on the slight uphill incline of 52nd Street, knowing what awaited at Park Avenue. Mies was revered, godlike, among my architectural professors and every trip past this masterwork, with a stop in the wide plaza, became a little pilgrimage for me. The architectural homage tour then switched to 53rd Street, continuing past the catty-cornered Lever House and often included a visit to the water wall in Paley Park. I never set foot in the Seagram lobby, much less visited the Four Seasons that summer. Just standing in front this edifice made me feel like a real adult—slightly cosmopolitan—and a rational human being.

What do you see?  A Miró giveaway (February 28^th, 2014):

Our winners were Christian V., whose vision was:

When I first looked at the Miró, it occurred to me that it might be the different planes of celestial bodies, the crescent moon on the lower right hand side being the first indicator of that. The larger plane in the upper side is the sun and around its orbit the other two circles somewhat tied in via the curvilinear lines are Mercury and Venus. The larger sphere I have identified as the sun is mostly comprised of warm colors in stark contrast to the blue moon. The central sphere would be the Earth, coincidentally made up mostly of green and blue and the intersection of the sphere I have identified as the sun and the Earth is green–thereby alluding to the fact that the Earth’s greenery is the product of the sunlight on the Earth. The lower part of the canvas are allusions to the other planets that are mostly gas giants, thereby not necessarily needing the spherical shape of the other bodies, the one exception being the darker black sphere that would be the fourth terrestrial planet, Mars.

and Gerri S., whose imagination held the following:

I see a mother of five girls (circa 1950s), garbed in party dress and hat, holding a pet parakeet in one hand, and in the other, a metal spoon that she just tapped 3 times in quick succession against the edge of a ceramic mixing bowl to shake off the remains of batter for a cake she is making for the party.  That three-tap sound fixed itself into the brain of her youngest daughter, to be transformed 50 years later into a signature for emails she sends to her sisters, known as the Three Tap Tribe.

tap˘tap˘tap˘

Enchanted by glass, we’re giving away copies of the new book on René Lalique (April 10^th, 2014):

The first three people to correctly identify Edith Bolling Wilson as the First Lady who sat for a portrait in which she’s wearing a dazzling Lalique brooch were Lennart B., Jennifer J., and Elizabeth H.

Look for more opportunities to win beautiful books soon!