EMILY MASON
BOOTH #C9
1-5 NOVEMBER 2023 PARK AVENUE ARMORY NEW YORK, NY
525 West 22nd Street New York NY 10011
515 West 22nd Street New York NY 10011
511 West 22nd Street New York NY 10011
520 West 21st Street New York NY 10011
EMILY!MASON"!THE!ALCHEMY!OF!PAINT!AND! THE!ART!OF!LETTING!GO By Dr. Barbara Stehle I have in mind this image of Emily Mason in the bright daylight of her Chelsea studio: the painter looking at her vibrant pale!e of colors poured into tiny cat food containers. She is ge!ing ready. She will work with or without brushes, canvas on the floor, on the wall or held by a corner. There is no one way. Everything is possible. For Mason, painting was an exploration of the alchemy of paint and the art of le!ing go. Sometime in the late 1960s, she began eliminating the superfluous to free her paint from any burdens. This was a lifelong quest; it came to define her art. Her powerful, lyrical abstractions were the results of minimal gestures. At times, Mason barely seemed to touch the canvas. Pigments and oil float, veil, stir, and move across the pictorial space without resistance. In her best pieces, nothing came between Mason and her canvas. The whole process looks like a natural phenomenon, activated by forces that are beyond the artist. This is what Taoists would call being in flow with the universe. Mason would say: “I feel as if I’m a conduit, but of what I don’t know until the paintings are finished.”1 Mason spent a lifetime ge!ing to know her material intimately. Her expertise was that of a master. She combined that mastery with an openness to welcome chance encounters. She was technical and receptive. Always modest, Mason considered painting an art of dialog with the material and not a control of it. When speaking of her creative process, she o"en quoted John Cage’s famous line: “Ge!ing your mind out of the way.”2 While Mason didn’t have a hard conceptual stance like Cage’s, her outlook on art recalls one of the main Taoist principles: that learning can be a!ained by unlearning. Rather than entering the painting process with preconceived ideas, Mason opened herself to the unknown. She would say: “I like to feel that I work on a painting until something magical happens. Until it becomes something outside of myself, a new vision. […] You lose a kind of control, but you gain something else.”3 1. Lona Foote interview with Emily Mason, May 27, 1975. 2. John Warren Oakes interview with Emily Mason, 2005, transcript, 7. 3. Lona Foote interview with Emily Mason, May 27, 1975.
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To achieve suppleness, flow and unhesitant mark making the artist fostered a calm and centered studio atmosphere. She had a regular meditation, yoga and calligraphy practice. The la!er’s demanding principles of directness and flawlessness were something she understood from her experience of oil paint. Mason’s wisdom was that she intuitively knew she was at her best when she stepped back and welcomed the flow. The results are contemplative works of rare beauty. Their power resides in Mason’s strength, one that came from her deep knowledge of paint and bold readiness to forget what she had learned. Her approach o"en reminds me of Lao Tzu’s words:
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“In the pursuit of knowledge, every day something is added. In the pursuit of the Tao, every day something is dropped. Less and less do you need to force things, until finally you arrive at non-action. When nothing is done, nothing is le! undone. True mastery can be gained by le"ing things go their own way. It can’t be gained by interfering.”4
4. Lao Tzu, “Unlearning,” Tao Te Ching, trans. Stephen Mitchell, (New York: Three Rivers Press, 2000), Chapter 48.
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Sundown Crept, 1987 Oil on canvas 60 3⁄8 x 52 1⁄8 inches 153.4 x 132.4 cm
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Migration, 1989 Oil on canvas 34 x 36 inches 86.4 x 91.4 cm
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Latitude Unknown, 2014 Oil on canvas 56 x 44 inches 142.2 x 111.8 cm
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Incoming, 2016 Oil on canvas 40 x 32 inches 101.6 x 81.3 cm
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Off Guard, 2017 Oil on canvas 28 x 20 inches 71.1 x 50.8 cm
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Arch, 2018
Oil on canvas 52 x 54 inches 132.1 x 137.2 cm
CHRONOLOGY 1932 Emily Mason is born in New York City on 12 January to the artist Alice Trumbull Mason and Warwood Edwin Mason, a sea captain for American Export Lines. 1933 Mason’s brother Jonathan (“Jo”) Trumbull Mason is born on 16 November. 1934–37 Mason a!ends the Li!le Red School House in Greenwich Village. 1938 In 1938, Mason’s mother moves the family from Horatio Street in Greenwich Village to Knickerbocker Village, located between the Manha!an and Brooklyn Bridges.
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1942 Mason’s mother rents the family a bungalow near Fishkill, New York for the summer of 1942. She and the children plant what was known during the war years as a Victory Garden, or a vegetable garden. Later, Mason would fondly recall her mother teaching her to make ketchup from their tomatoes: “To this day, I cannot stand commercially made ketchup.” 1942-45 Mason spends part of her childhood summers in Friendship, Maine, with her aunt Mary McGarvey. Due to a circulatory condition, Mason’s father becomes the port captain for the American Export Line, allowing him to be home with the family and no longer away at sea. The family moves to West 85th Street near Riverside Drive, and Mason is enrolled in Public School No. 9. 1946–50 Mason a!ends the High School of Music and Art. In June 1950, she graduates from the High School of Music and Art and enrolls in Bennington College in Bennington, Vermont.
1951-52 Mason transfers from Bennington College to The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in New York. In the summer, Mason a!ends the Haystack Mountain School of Cra"s in Maine, where she is particularly influenced by Jack Lenor Larsen’s lecture on analogous color. 1954–55 In the summer of 1954, Mason travels throughout Europe. The trip has an enormous impact on Mason and shapes much of her understanding of Western art. In France, she sees the recently discovered Lascaux Caves. In Italy, she sees Gio!o’s frescoes in the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua, the mosaics in Ravenna, and the Uffizi Gallery in Florence. Mason graduates from Cooper Union in 1955. In the summer of that year, she a!ends the summer program at the Yale Norfolk School of Art in New Haven, Connecticut. 1956 Mason is awarded a Fulbright grant to study in Venice. In April, at a meeting of the Artist’s Club, she meets the artist Wolf Kahn. Mason spends the summer with him in Provincetown, Massachuse!s, where she observes a critique given by Hans Hofmann at his school. The following fall, Mason sets sail for Venice along with other Fulbright scholars. The group studies Italian for a month in Perugia, where Mason’s roommate is Lee Bontecou. When the course is over, Mason travels to Venice and enrolls in the Accademia di Belle Arti, where she studies with Bruno Sae!i. In December, Mason meets Kahn in Le Havre, France, and they stop briefly in Paris before returning to Venice together. 1957 In Venice, Mason and Kahn rent the large central room of a palazzo on the Giudecca. During the winter they live and paint in a small room. Mason and Kahn marry in March at the municipal building near the Rialto Bridge. In the spring, the couple travels to Rome to visit friends Gretna Campbell, Louis Finkelstein in Frascati, and Lee Bontecou in Trastevere. Mason’s paintings earn her a second year of the Fulbright Grant.
1958 Mason and Kahn spend April in Greece before spending another summer in Venice. In November, Mason and Kahn set off for the United States, stopping first in Paris and then in Spain. In Madrid, they visit the Prado Museum. A"er a brief stay in Granada, they depart for New York City from Gibraltar. Mason’s brother Jonathan disappears in Portland, Oregon, and a"er many months his body is found in the Puget Sound. 1959 Back in New York, Mason and Kahn live in a lo" on Broadway and 12th Street. In September, Mason gives birth to their first daughter, Cecily. At the end of the year, Mason joins the Area Gallery on Tenth Street, an artist-run space. 1960–62 Mason’s first solo exhibition opens at the Area Gallery in 1960, featuring the work made in Venice. Another two shows follow in 1961 and 1962. In the fall of 1962, Mason returns to Italy with her family, where they se!le in Milan for the winter. 1964 In March, Mason gives birth to her second daughter, Melany, in Rome. 1965 The family returns to New York, living and sharing studio space at their Broadway lo". 1967 Mason and Kahn move to a new apartment on East 15th Street. Their Broadway lo" is now used only as a shared studio. 1968 In the spring, Mason and Kahn purchase a farm in West Bra!leboro, Vermont. Mason uses the property’s combined blacksmith shop and chicken coop as a studio. 1971 Emily’s mother, Alice Trumbull Mason, passes away on 28 June, succumbing to alcohol-related complications.
1973 In April, Mason and her family travel to Kenya. They visit Nairobi, the Samburu National Reserve, Lake Naivasha, Malindi, Lamu Island, Masai Mara National Reserve, and Marsabit. 1974 Mason’s father, Warwood Edwin Mason, dies in February. 1977 An exhibition of Mason’s work opens at the Landmark Gallery in New York. Two more exhibitions follow in 1978 and 1981. 1979 Mason moves into a studio of her own at West 20th Street. In the fall, Mason begins teaching at Hunter College, where she continues to teach for more than 30 years. Mason is awarded the Ranger Fund Purchase Prize by the National Academy of Design. 1984 A solo exhibition of Mason’s work opens at the Grace Borgenicht Gallery in New York. Mason exhibits with Borgenicht in 1987, 1990, and 1992. 1985 The Associated American Artists gallery commissions a print edition from Mason. She employs a technique suggested by the printmaker Anthony Kirk, using carborundum to establish an image from which to print. Mason and Kahn travel to Albuquerque, New Mexico to work at the renowned Tamarind Institute where she creates an edition and a portfolio of monoprints and monotypes. 1987 Mason continues her experiments in printmaking, creating two portfolios of monotypes at the Garner Tullis Workshop in Santa Barbara, California.
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1997 Mason begins to show at the MB Modern Gallery in New York. She exhibits there in 1998, 1999, and 2001.
2018 Emily Mason: To Another Place, a retrospective of Mason’s career opens at the Bra!leboro Museum of Art in Vermont.
2001 Mason begins exhibiting at David Findlay Jr. Gallery, New York, where she shows regularly through 2015.
2019 Mason has her second exhibition at Miles McEnery Gallery in New York.
2004 A solo exhibition of Mason’s paintings opens at LewAllen Galleries in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where she shows regularly through 2020. An exhibition of Mason’s prints opens at the Scuola Internazionale di Grafica in Venice, Italy.
Mason and Kahn are each awarded the honorary degree of Doctor of Arts from Marlboro College in Vermont. Color/Gesture: Early Work by Emily Mason, an exhibition featuring Mason’s early paintings on paper, opens at the Bennington Museum.
2005 Mason’s first monograph, Emily Mason: The Fi!h Element, is published by George Braziller Press, featuring a comprehensive presentation of her career.
Mason passes away in Bra!leboro, Vermont on 10 December and is laid to rest on the hill behind her house.
A solo exhibition of Mason’s prints opens at the Bra!leboro Museum and Art Center in Vermont.
2020 Mason is honored as a Centurion Master by Century Association and is celebrated with a survey of her canvases and works on paper.
A solo exhibition of Mason’s paintings opens at the Ogunquit Museum of American Art in Maine. 2008 Contemplating Color, a traveling exhibition of Mason’s paintings organized by LewAllen Galleries, is shown at LewAllen Galleries in Santa Fe and at The Art Museum of South Texas in Corpus Christi. 2015 Mason’s second monograph, Emily Mason: The Light in Spring, is released by University Press of New England, featuring prints and paintings since 2005. 2016 Mason begins exhibiting at Ameringer | McEnery | Yohe in New York. 2017 Inventing Downtown: Artist-Run Galleries in New York City 1952-1965 opens at the Grey Art Gallery at New York University featuring work Mason had shown with the Area Gallery in the 1960s.
She Sweeps with Many-Colored Brooms: Paintings and Prints by Emily Mason opens at the Bruce Museum in Greenwich, Connecticut. 2021 Chelsea Paintings, a post-humous, historical exhibition featuring work made by Mason in her lo" studio opens at Miles McEnery Gallery, New York. Mason’s work and legacy is represented by Miles McEnery Gallery to the present day. 2023 A New Surface, a New Problem: Paintings on Paper by Emily Mason, an exhibition featuring Mason’s last decade of paintings on paper, opens at Weber Fine Art in Greenwich, Connecticut. The Thunder Hurried Slow, an in-depth, historical exhibition featuring Mason’s canvases from the 1970s, opens at Miles McEnery Gallery in New York.
SELECT COLLECTIONS Alexander Foundation, New York, NY Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin, OH Art in Embassies, US Department of State, Washington, D. C. Bates College, Lewiston, ME Bennington Museum of Art, Bennington, VT Boston Mutual Life, Canton, MA The Century Association, New York, NY Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH Felton International, New York, NY Moore Free Library, Newfane, VT Morgan Stanley, New York, NY Morgan Stanley, Tokyo, Japan National Academy Museum, New York, NY New Britain Museum of American Art, New Britain, CT Portland Museum of Art, Portland, ME Rockefeller Group, New York, NY Rutgers University Archives, New Brunswick, NJ Springfield Museums, Springfield, MA University of New Hampshire, Museum of Art, Durham, NH University of New Mexico Art Museum, Albuquerque, NM Washington County Museum of Art, Hagerstown, MD Watkins Corporation, London, United Kingdom Wheaton College, Norton, MA
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Published on the occasion of the exhibition
Pp. 2, 6-7: © 2023 Emily Mason|Alice Trumbull Mason Foundation/ARS. Publications and Archival Associate Julia Schlank, New York, NY Special thanks to The Emily Mason|Alice Trumbull Mason Foundation, New York, NY
BOOTH #C9 1-5 November 2023 Park Avenue Armory New York, NY Miles McEnery Gallery 520 West 21st Street New York NY 10011 511 West 22nd Street New York, NY 10011 515 West 22nd Street New York, NY 10011 525 West 22nd Street New York, NY 10011 tel +1 212 445 0051 www.milesmcenery.com Publication © 2023 Miles McEnery Gallery All rights reserved Essay © 2023 Dr. Barbara Stehle
Catalogue layout by Sean Kennedy, New York, NY Photography by Dan Bradica, New York, NY ISBN: 979-8-3507-2174-4 Cover: Emily Mason, Incoming, (detail), 2016