Review by Choice Review
This first comprehensive book about American abstract painter Mason shows her five decades of work, including large canvasses, small Clayboards, and prints identified by techniques of layering and overlapping bright colors, colors often anchored in geometric shapes. A "consummate colorist," her work is imbued with a "perpetual efflorescence of color that warms an infinite and infinitely welcoming place." Ebony's title comes from his essay within the book that links the four earthly elements displayed in nature and in her work--earth, air, fire, and water--and adds that in her best work, she invokes the fifth element, ether, an element not found on Earth; on it hang the heavens. She is inspired by her observation of nature (in New England and through travels to Italy, Greece, and Africa) and also by poetry. The 78 full-page color reproductions of her paintings and six of her prints, along with Ebony's essay and a second essay by Diana Lischer-Goodband about her printmaking, make this a delightful book to browse and read. Mason is the granddaughter of portrait painter John Trumbull and the wife of German-born artist Wolf Kahn, and a Fulbright scholar who continues to contribute to the academic world by teaching at Hunter College. Summing Up: Essential. Lower-division undergraduates through professionals. N. M. Lambert University of South Carolina Upstate
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
In this handsome book, five decades of paintings by the contemporary American abstract artist Emily Mason are presented in 86 full-color illustrations that capture the extraordinarily vibrant quality of her work. In his short text, Ebony, associate managing editor of Art in America, succinctly characterizes Mason's visionary style and traces her career, showing how she became involved in New York City's Abstract Expressionist art scene in the 1950s and '60s, and went on to develop her own innovative artistic vocabulary. Mason's abstractions, often inspired by nature and poetry, have underlying geometric structures, but her emphasis has always been on color. Overlapping and layered shapes in glowing yellows, brilliant reds, vivid oranges, rich blues, jewellike greens and deep purples shift and flow into each other and have an otherworldly luminosity that evokes for Ebony the Aristotelian fifth element-ether. The book concludes with a selection of prints made by applying ink and a paste of silicon and carbon to glass plates; in these works Mason's ethereal colors reach new heights of intensity. The beautifully produced volume, the first comprehensive account of Mason's work, is a splendid tribute to an artist whose paintings deserve to be better known. (Feb.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
This book showcases the art and career of Emily Mason (art, Hunter Coll.), an abstract painter active in New York City since the 1950s and daughter of the artist Alice Trumbull Mason. Mason incorporates into her work elements of abstract expressionism, analogous color theory, references to the natural world, and personal intuition and instinct. The result is a boldly colorful, luminous, and daring approach, illustrated here in 86 color plates. Ebony (associate managing editor, Art in America) discusses Mason's career and its influences in the title essay. Other contributors include Robert Berlind (art & design, Purchase Coll. at SUNY) and Diana Lischer-Goodband, a columnist for Vermont's Brattleboro Reformer (unfortunately, the book provides no information on these contributors). Included are a chronology of Mason's life and work and a list of illustrations. As the first comprehensive overview of Mason's oeuvre, this is an important contribution to the literature on contemporary women artists. Highly recommended for academic and art libraries.-Martha Smith, Elmira Coll. Lib., NY (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
