Emily Mason: The Fifth Element
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 ofArt  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.)Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.--This text refers to an alternateHardcoveredition.