Book of the day >  The Art of Impossible: The Bang & Olufsen Design Story. Thames & Hudson. “Founded in 1925 by Danish innovators Peter Bang and Svend Olufsen, Bang & Olufsen is one of the world’s foremost consumer electronics companies. For nearly a century, their audio products, television sets, and telephones have broken the established rules and conventions of product design, dictating visual trends and altering irrevocably the appearance of our homes in the process.

This book delves into the stories of each breakthrough, iconic Bang & Olufsen design. Overviews of both the materials and the manufacturing processes used for each Bang & Olufsen model are complemented by profiles on the designers behind each innovative creation. Throughout, the company’s underlying philosophy remains unwavering: design must always serve a purpose. Featuring an extensive archive of sketches and prototypes, 300 specially commissioned photographs of individual products in various interior settings, as well as an exclusive insight into the models that never found their way onto the market, this is the definitive publication on a company whose design inventions are in a league of their own.”

Book of the day > Hannah Ryggen: Weaving the World. Walther König. The first substantial monograph on the Swedish-born, Norwegian modernist textile artist Hannah Ryggen, considered to be one of the most significant Scandinavian artists of the twentieth century. It includes works from her entire oeuvre, with an emphasis on tapestries from the 1930s pertaining to her political and social engagement.  She was the first female Norwegian artist to be represented at the Venice Biennale in 2012 six of her principal tapestries from the 1930s were exhibited at dOCUMENTA (13) in Kassel.  Self-trained, she worked on a standing loom constructed by her husband, the painter Hans Ryggen.  She lived on a farm on a Norwegian Fjord and dyed her yarn with local plants. Her tapestries are visual responses to major and minor events, conflicts and processes; she captured the world in her weaving. In the early 1930s, she addressed fascism and the destructive consequences of Nazi power. A pacifist who subscribed to Scandinavian feminist and leftist journals, she was active in the Norwegian Communist Party and international workers’ movements. Violence and abuse are visualised in an idiom reminiscent of modern, critical history painting. Her narrative drive goes hand in hand with a free accentuation of abstract patterns, shapes and colours. 

Book of the day  > Gregory Crewdson: Cathedral of the Pines. Aperture. “Cathedral of the Pines presents Gregory Crewdson's first new body of work in over five years. The series marks a return to Crewdson's classic style of storytelling via the single image, using light and color to create newly intimate, psychologically charged imagery. It also marks a time of transition for the artist, including a retreat from New York to a remote home and studio in western Massachusetts-a period of time during which Crewdson chose to remain socially withdrawn, instead committing to daily, long-distance, open-water swims and cross-country skiing on wooded paths. Cathedral of the Pines is named after one of these trails, deep in the forests of Becket, Massachusetts, the site where he found the inspiration to make these new pictures. It was there that he felt darkness lift, experienced a reconnection with his artistic process, and moved into a period of renewal and intense creative productivity. The photographs are accompanied by an essay by Alexander Nemerov, who addresses the work in relation to the American past, focusing in particular on the way the images draw space and time down to ceremonial points, in which ‘all that ever happened in these places seems crystallized in his tableaux, as if the quiet melancholy of Crewdson's scenes gathered the unruly sorrows and other little-guessed feelings of people long gone who once stood on those spots.’”

Books of the day > Short Stack Editions. “Short Stack is a series of small-format cookbooks authored by America’s top culinary talents. Each edition is a collectible, single-subject booklet packed with recipes that offer ingenious new ways to cook our favorite ingredients. In creating Short Stack, we drew from our experience working in cookbook and magazine publishing. Like the best cookbooks, Short Stack Editions consist of original recipes created and rigorously tested by a single author with the home cook in mind. They are beautiful objects meant to be collected, gifted and, most importantly, cooked from. And, like the best food magazines, Short Stack editions are concise, affordable and built for function. Each Short Stack focuses on a single ingredient and is written by a single author. Every volume consists of 20 to 25 recipes, but beyond that, no two volumes are alike. In any given Short Stack Edition, there is a wide spectrum of recipes, ranging from sweet to savory, and breakfast to dinner. Our authors have decades of experience working as cookbook authors, food writers, chefs,food stylists and more. Short Stack is a contemporary offering of old-school craftsmanship. Each book is printed in New York City on high-quality paper and hand-stitched with baker’s twine. Our production process is intimate and specialized. All of Short Stack’s covers and illustrations are original artwork designed by our creative director, Rotem Raffe.” Choose between Eggs, Tomatoes, Strawberries, Buttermilk, Grits, Sweet Potatoes, Broccoli, Honey, Plums, Corn, Apples, Brown Sugar, Lemons, Prosciutto di Parma, Summer Squash, Peaches, Chickpeas, Chocolate, and Maple Syrup.  Or buy a complete set! 

Book of the day > The Age of Collage Vol. 2 Art - Contemporary Collage in Modern Art. Gestalten. “The Age of Collage Vol. 2 documents current developments in the world of collage and reveals why this technique is as fresh as ever. A comprehensive collection of examples ranging from subversive to museum-worthy, this striking showcase positions collage between provocation and commerce. Presenting the work of more than 70 collage artists—from established names including John Baldessari and Richard Prince to up-and-coming talents such as Lola Dupré and Mat Maitland—the book explores the seemingly endless creative possibilities that result when disparate images are brought together in unexpected ways.”

Book of the day > Luc Tuymans: Intolerance. Ludion. “Belgian painter Luc Tuymans, one of the key figures in the 1990s revival of figurative painting, is also one of contemporary art's great history painters, tackling historical traumas and their representations in a restrained-though resolutely painterly-style and pale, muted palette. Far from accepting painting as obsolete or inadequate, throughout his career Tuymans has used painting to engage with the most painful, urgent subjects of the past and present, from the aftermath of the Second World War and Belgium's colonial past to the War on Terror. "I still indulge in the perversity of painting," said Tuymans, "which remains interesting." Luc Tuymans: Intolerance, published to accompany a major retrospective at the Qatar Museums in Doha (the artist's first show in the Gulf region), surveys Tuymans' work from the past 25 years. Comprehensive and richly illustrated, it contains more than 800 reproductions: studies, archival material and installation photographs, as well as 60 drawings and 100 paintings (including Tuymans' new body of work, The Arena, created for the exhibition). Also included are texts by Jan Avgikos, Nicholas Cullinan, Jenevive Nykolak, Nicholas Serota and exhibition curator Lynne Cooke, offering new insights into Tuymans' oeuvre from the past three decades.”

Book of the day > Walker Evans: Depth of Field. Prestel. “This resplendent volume is the most comprehensive study of Walker Evans’s work ever published, containing masterful images accompanied by authoritative commentary from leading photography historians.

The name Walker Evans conjures images of the American everyman. Whether it’s his iconic contributions to James Agee’s depression-era classic book, 'Let Us Now Praise Famous Men', his architectural explorations of antebellum plantations, or his subway series, taken with a camera hidden in his coat, Evans’s accessible and eloquent photographs speak to us all. This comprehensive book traces the entire arc of Evans’s remarkable career, from the 1930’s to the 1970’s. The illustrations in the book range from his earliest images taken with a vest pocket camera, to his final photos using the then new SX-70 because his regular equipment became too heavy to carry around. The book includes commentary from three of Evans’s longtime friends, photographers Alan Trachtenberg, Jerry Thompson and John T. Hill. Their insight and first-hand experience give depth to their critical writings on Evans’s work. In addition to offering a broad perspective on Evans’ work, the book also clarifies the photographer’s “anti-art” philosophy. Eschewing aesthetic hyperbole, Evans wanted his pictures to resonate with a wide audience. At the same time, his natural curiosity made him one of the most inventive photographers of all time. What these photographs and writings attest to is a huge and timeless talent, which came not from a camera, but from Evans’s uniquely hungry eye.”

Book of the day > Something to Take My Place: The Art of Lonnie Holley. Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art, College of Charleston.” Lonnie Holley, acclaimed by The New York Times as “the Insider’s Outsider,” is best known for his assemblage sculptures incorporating natural and man-made materials, often cast off or discarded; he has recently also begun to make music, through the Dust-to-Digital label. Legendary for his environmental assemblage that spread over two acres of his property in Birmingham, Alabama—now destroyed—Holley scavenges and repurposes found objects in the service of a personal philosophy of renewal and rejuvenation. This is the first monograph on Holley’s work in more than a decade. Illustrated with reproductions of more than 70 of Holley’s sculptures, it provides a comprehensive overview of Holley’s art, life and philosophy, with essays by Mark Sloan, Leslie Umberger, Bernard L. Herman and an “as-told-to” autobiography recorded by noted oral historian Theodore Rosengarten.”

Book of the day > Daisuke Yokota: Color Photographs. Harper’s Books / Flying Books. “Illustrated with 83 images of the artist's abstract color photography, a body of work distinct from the black and white images for which he is known. Through means of darkroom experimentation, Yokota layers sheets of unused large format color film and applies unorthodox developing methods before scanning the results. The mixing and manipulation of the film's chemicals produces vibrant and liquescent compositions that create forms reminiscent of fractal geometry and telescope images of the cosmos.”

Book of the day > Fortuny: His Life and Work. Skira|Rizzoli. “This comprehensive monograph captures the fashions, art, and fantasy of one of the world’s most original fashion designers. Mariano Fortuny is an exceptional figure in the history of art and design. Born in Spain and raised in Paris, he is most associated with Venice—he was often called the "magician of Venice"—where he lived and worked at the legendary Palazzo Fortuny until his death in 1949. Fortuny excelled not only in fashion, but also as a painter, printmaker, photographer, textile designer, set designer, lighting engineer, and inventor—all covered in-depth in the book. However, Fortuny’s creativity has had its most enduring legacy in the fashion world, and this comprehensive monograph includes much archival and previously unpublished material. Inspired by classical antiquity, Fortuny’s legendary designs were fashion’s first step toward modernity. His dresses featured finely pleated silks, often adorned with glass beads or similar objects, which flowed seductively over the female form, revealing its natural curves. His velvet capes were instantly popular, and the Delphos gown was favored by notable clients such as Eleanora Duse and Isadora Duncan. Fortuny’s designs remain the ultimate example of fashion as art and continue to inspire twenty-first-century designers.”