EMILY MASON 2023 by Miles McEnery Gallery

EMILY MASON

511 West 22nd Street New York NY 10011

515 West 22nd Street New York NY 10011

525 West 22nd Street New York NY 10011

520 West 21st Street New York NY 10011

THE THUNDER HURRIED SLOW By Dr. Barbara Stehle A 1974 photograph A 1974 issue of Esquire magazine features a group of sixteen men and five women posing in a studio for the photographer Bill King. The image is fabulous and reflects the period. Iconic artists are gathered, and Emily Mason is among them. They embody the 1970s: long hair, short skirts, shades, and free spirits. Some laugh, some smile, some are cool, some aren’t. They are artists, and that means something different to each of them. In the back row, a joyful, 42-year-old Emily Mason stands between Cy Twombly and her husband, Wolf Kahn. In front of Mason and Kahn are the sculptors Jackie Winsor and Marisol. Claes Oldenburg, Richard Serra, Bob Rauschenberg, and Joseph Kosuth are in there, too. Most art movements are represented: pop art, conceptual art, post-minimalism, process art, neo-Dadaism, abstraction, figuration, environmental art, and earth art. There was no one way to be in the 1970s. The period was about self-definition and experimentation. The photograph in the article is titled “Group Portrait with Accountant.” The accountant, Rubin L. Gorewitz, is the smiling man in a tie and dark suit next to Andy Warhol. He is “trying to have a law written classifying artists as ministers of the gospel,”1 so they can get a similar kind of tax benefit. His argument: “The worst artist I know is more spiritual than the best priest or rabbi I know....”2 Totally wild, and yet the parallel between art and spirituality may not be so far-fetched, especially in the case of Emily Mason.

1970s in New York City Emily Mason and Wolf Kahn settled in New York City in 1964. They lived with their two daughters, Cecily (born 1959) and Melany (born 1964), in a loft at 813 Broadway. It was a walk-up at the corner of 12th Street; they were on the top floor. Kahn had a studio in the first room, which faced Broadway and had a skylight. Mason’s “was in the middle with only a skylight and doubled as their bedroom. What remained in the back was given over to the girls.”3

In a short autobiography that Mason wrote in her early seventies, she remembers how, in 1967, after “the landlord came in and took out our bed and stove,”4 the family moved to Stuyvesant Square. She and Kahn kept the Broadway loft as a studio. She wrote: “The ’70s were difficult times as bringing up children, running a household, and continuing to paint all pulled me in different directions.”5 New York was the place to be, but it was expensive. Most artists lived in lower Manhattan because of the affordable rents and studio spaces. The creative map was compact. Artists were located within walking distance of each other. They kept an eye on what the others were doing. They all went to openings, rarely missing a show. In 1975, a student in art history named Lona Foote interviewed Mason. The artist spoke of the fertile environment of the city: “That’s one thing about living in New York. You get to see a lot of what other people are doing, where their heads are at, and being able to talk with each other. You feed off it, one way or another.”6 Artist co-ops flourished, alternative art spaces and new galleries popped up around Soho. Uptown galleries were the territory of more established artists; downtown was for the newcomers. 4

For Mason, as for all women of her generation, it was difficult to find a commercial gallery willing to show her work. Male artists did not face the same hurdles. Mason had long been familiar with the situation. Her mother, the painter and printmaker Alice Trumbull Mason (1904–71), founder of the American Abstract Artists Group, was one of the first American abstractionists, yet she struggled with representation her whole life. Her male peers had galleries, but those galleries didn’t include women on their rosters. Emily, despite being “a second-generation abstract artist,”7 as she called herself, and despite an emerging feminist milieu in the 1970s, still found herself in “a minority position.”8 In the 1970s, women were responsible for only a tiny fragment of the artwork that was owned by institutions and private collectors. The prices commanded by female artists were about a third of what comparable male artists could charge. New York museums were more likely than museums in the rest of the country to include women, but the outlook was still grim. This example is telling: The Whitney Museum Annual of the winter of 1969–70 included just eight women out of 143 artists.9 This paltry 5% representation sparked a series of group actions. Discontent was voiced, but the problem ran deep. Society at large thought of the artist as a man. As Mason noted, “It was sort of an all-male dominated thing.”10

Photograph by Bill King. A version of this image appeared in “Art and Money: Group Portrait with Accountant: Rubin Gorewitz and the Revenge of Art,” Esquire, pp. 124–125., November 1, 1974.

Mason’s influential mother died in 1971. In 1973, she was given a retrospective at the Whitney. It came a year after the museum presented a retrospective of Alma Thomas and a year before it honored Alice Neel.11 The show was a much-deserved recognition of Alice Trumbull Mason and a step forward for all female painters. The honor was bittersweet since the artist was not able to enjoy it. But Emily’s father, Warwood Edwin Mason, a sea captain who died in 1974, was able to see the exhibition. Emily felt liberated by it: “It is difficult to articulate, but I felt a desire to have my mother and her work and career acknowledged before I felt comfortable going out to pursue my own career. That is why my association with the Landmark Gallery in Soho was so important. I began to have the confidence to have a career of my own due to the shows I had there and felt less of a need to hide behind my mother’s lack of reputation.”12 If the 1970s started with challenges, the second half of the decade marked a turning point in Mason’s career. She had two solo shows (in 1977 and 1978) at the Landmark Gallery. (They were followed by a third solo show in 1981.) Founded in 1972, the Landmark Gallery was a co-ed artists’ co-op; in it, a warm solidarity reigned. The gallery ran for 10 years out of 469 Broome Street. The address was a hub. The Soho20, a feminist artists’ group, would also occupy the same building. In showing her art, Mason became more visible, and her art, in turn, grew tremendously.

Art and Domesticity When, in 1958, Mason married the landscape artist Wolf Kahn in Venice, her mother expressed surprise: “You are marrying a representational artist!?”13 Trumbull Mason followed with some personal advice: “Watch your head. Art first.”14 Emily never changed her professional name nor abandoned painting. She persisted despite the demands of domestic life. Asked about feminism in the 1970s, she answered: “I thought it made sense, but I knew I was taking on a lot of things that some women wouldn’t.”15

In the Mason-Kahn marriage, Mason was the primary caregiver and the more flexible partner. But Mason and Kahn were both able to succeed in a way that few artist couples manage: They created a family and found a way to keep two careers active, albeit at different speeds. For over 60 years, they leaned on each other and supported each other’s practices. Mason told Foote in 1975: “It is real good, being married to a painter. We’ve shared this studio together for 20 years, exchanging information on brushes and canvas, new color mixes. We get a lot of good feedback from each other.”16 Balancing art, marriage and motherhood has never been easy. When Wolf started to have success in the early ’70s, it became difficult for Mason to concentrate. On Broadway, people coming to see his work were frequently darting through her studio.17 It would soon be time to find another solution. Kahn’s success brought money, but it also meant that most of the domestic chores fell on Mason. Most female artists of Mason’s generation chose not to have children. But Mason loved being a mother.18 Her daughters were her main preoccupation; it left her little time to work.

With short studio days, Mason could only concentrate on a few large canvases during a school year. But she also began to paint at home whenever she had a moment. She needed a non-cumbersome medium, so she adopted oil on paper. The technique gave her an alternative way to explore the properties of oil paint. Mason made hundreds of them. “In Mason’s hands, the paper’s surface becomes its own environment or weather system—an ever-changing set of relations—with a landscape of forms-qua-continents crossed and surrounded by running liquids,”19 said the artist and writer Mira Dayal. Mason took such joy in these oils on paper that they ended up becoming an essential part of her oeuvre.

A Studio of One’s Own In the spring of 1968, the couple bought a modest hillside farm in West Brattleboro, Vermont. It had no electricity and offered very little comfort, but it included 11 beautiful acres of land. They made renovations as they went. Mason started by repurposing sheds to create her studio: “I combined a blacksmith’s shop and chicken coop into my first summer studio. Over the years, we have each improved our studios and have had ponds dug near them. I find that I get more work done in the quiet and long summer days of Vermont than I do in hectic New York where there always seems to be extra distractions and demands on my time.”20 Mason would paint all summer in Vermont and bring back paintings to her city studio in the fall. She kept up that practice, initiated in the late ’60s, until the end of her life.

By 1979, Mason’s daughters were older, and she had more time for painting. She left the shared Broadway loft and took a large and airy studio on West 20th Street. That same fall, she started teaching at Hunter College. “I love teaching,” she said. “It has proven to be a source of fine friendships as well as a way for me to help young painters develop their own style and confidence.”21 The chair of the art department, Sanford Wurmfeld, offered her a full-time position, but she declined. She wanted only one class.22 Her time was precious, and she needed to spend the bulk of it painting. Mason’s production took off between 1968 and 1979. Her summer was the engine feeding the rest of the year. Having a room of her own offered her a sanctuary where she could work efficiently. The artist found solace in the countryside. While her husband would go sketch with friends in the outdoors, Mason would paint alone in her small studio. She enjoyed working with her doors wide open onto nature. It inspired her greatly. The paintings she made on the farm traveled back to the city with her. Her life in New York and her life in Vermont were intimately linked. They were part of a cycle of exchange and stimulations. 7

Nature and Spirituality Mason’s art and spirituality were intimately tied to nature. She trusted nature to guide her decisions and intuitions. In Vermont, she picked wildflowers and foraged around the property. Her New York studio was filled with a large collection of orchids and other plants. They made the trip with her to Vermont every summer. The artist was a real nature lover: “If I had not become a painter, I would have liked to study plants or do something with nature.”23 Of her undergraduate studies at Bennington College, Mason recalled years later, “I felt at one with the low, dark, purple clouds of November, which hung over the orange fields of Indian grass with the expectation of winter to come.”24 Mason was gifted with a deep perception of the world around her. She remembered the palette of landscapes forever. She let them live in her and organically emerge later in her paintings. Mason did not want to copy nature but to welcome its spirit. She wanted to emulate its power of evocation. The artist defined her approach with these words: “My work, while never a depiction of nature, is analogous in its process to the workings of nature and, in its result, aims for the beauty of the interior of a great storm or a day lily.”25

Two works from 1972, Hear the Wind Blow and And the Sea Beyond, powerfully represent how Mason transfigured the poetics of nature through art. Both paintings share a luminous palette of oranges and purples, a painterly space of vibrant light and deep shadows. Compositionally, Mason uses a rock-like form (one red, one purple) to structure the painting. “I like building up and taking down, putting a little archeology into it,”26 she once said. The results are contemplative works of rare beauty. They are painterly meditations, evoking joy and melancholy all at once.

A Philosophy of Flow Mason’s daily practice was an exploration of the alchemy of paint. “Mason wholeheartedly believed in the transcendental possibilities of abstract painting,”27 the art critic David Ebony has observed. People who knew the artist described her love for experimentation. She thought of painting as an adventure, a practice that took her places she had never been.28 In 1975, she shared: “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.”29 8

Most people think of Mason as an Abstract Expressionist. It is true that very early on, Mason had demonstrated an ease with color that recalled that of a Frankenthaler. But Abstract Expressionism is too reductive a category for an artist whose range went far beyond. In the 1970s, works like Defiant of a Road (1972) or Masonry (1978) show Mason moving away from the New York School. Their architectural constructions and geometric transparencies called on the research of West Coast artists like Richard Diebenkorn. Paintings like A Paper of Pins (1974) have the soft, colorful beauty of old Italian fresco paintings. Over the years, other references came along to inform her art. Henri Matisse was one of them. Mason was someone who did not limit herself. She kept on expanding her reach. At some point in the late 1960s, Mason’s oils demonstrated a flow and thinness reminiscent of Taoist paintings. She had started to eliminate the superfluous to free paint from any burdens. This would be a lifelong quest, and it came to define her art. Mason would create powerful lyrical abstractions with the most flawless, minimal gestures. At times, she barely seemed to touch the canvas. Selflessness, naturalness, and harmony are noticeable in her work. In her best pieces, nothing came between her and the canvas. 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.”30

Mason meditated and did yoga. Rigor and lightness were equal parts of her being. Her studio was calm and centered.31 Like a Taoist cultivating a state of being in order to create, she worked to achieve a certain energetic state in herself. Mason often quoted the composer John Cage’s famous line, “Getting your mind out of the way.”32 Cage was a student of Eastern philosophy who was deeply influenced by Buddhism and its concept of vacuity. 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 attained by unlearning, “In the pursuit of the Tao, every day something is dropped.”33 In her teaching, she pushed students to use their nondominant hand to develop a freer manner. She was fascinated by the capacity of the right side of the brain to liberate us. Like many artists of her generation, Mason welcomed chance as a creative principle. She recognized that painting was an art of dialogue with the material and not control of it. A friend, the ceramicist Malcolm Wright, remembers watching her hold a corner of a painting, moving colors around. “Random things would happen; she was willing to make a mess, to take risks,”34 he said. Mason herself noted, “When I paint with oil, I am constantly learning.”35 With great modesty, she applied herself to separating her art from her ego. She cultivated the art of letting go. She intuitively knew she was at her best when she welcomed the flow.

Poetry and Painting Mason’s paintings have often been compared to visual poems.36 Her mother, Alice Trumbull Mason, had been a poet as well as a painter. Emily was raised with a love of words and a love of paint. She reflected, “To me, painting is another kind of writing.”37 The parallel is potent and brings us back to Asia. In ancient China, painting was considered silent poetry, and poetry was considered painting with sound.38 Calligraphers would learn poetry by heart before letting their brush dance its text. The artists would channel the poem’s rhythm and meaning through their marks. The whole process, down to the interaction with the viewer, would be considered the work of art. Emily Mason was fascinated by calligraphy and tried it herself. It seems to me that it was a natural extension of her artistry. Suppleness, flow, and unhesitant mark making was something she was familiar with. If Mason never inscribed poetry in calligraphy, she nevertheless had an unrelenting passion for it. She had been named after Emily Dickinson; the poet became her spiritual godmother. As life would have it, Mason passed away on Dickinson’s birthday, with Kahn reciting

“‘Hope’ Is the Thing with Feathers” to her at her bedside. “She quite literally was born and died with Dickinson as part of her being,”39 said Steven Rose, her assistant in her late years. Mason lived and worked with the constant presence and influence of poetry. She always had one or two volumes of Dickinson’s work on hand. She would read and learn poems by heart. “She would commit the poem to memory through speaking it aloud and also rewriting on scraps of paper,” Rose said. “At home, Wolf and Emily would regularly recite a poem to each other from memory over breakfast or dinner. It was their entertainment and a way they communicated their affection.”40 Unlike the ancient Chinese, Mason would not start a painting with a specific poem in mind. It was once the painting was finished that she would make connections. Mason collected a list of verses and quotes from multiple authors that she found interesting, and once it was time to name a painting, she would pull out the list. “This was a late-fall ritual in the studio,” said Rose. “So many of her paintings have Dickinson connections in this way.”41 Thus, poetry brought closure to the creative process. It was the last word in a painting. 10

Reflecting on her love for Emily Dickinson, Mason said: “Her cadence, her observation of nature corresponds to the way I paint somehow. I am not quite sure how.”42 In the selection for this show, seven paintings bear Dickinson’s quotes.43 The Thunder Hurried Slow (1978) is one of them. The title poetically embodies the paradox of true power. Mason chose this verse from “A Thunderstorm,” a poem also known by its first line, “The wind begun to rock the grass.” It calls on elemental forces and nature’s capacity to transform. It captures Emily Mason in the 1970s perfectly: a moment of awakening and change, a tremendous rising.

Notes 1. “Art and Money: Group Portrait with Accountant: Rubin Gorewitz and the Revenge of Art,” Esquire, November 1974. 2. Ibid. 3. Michael Rubenstein, “Emily Mason Obituary” (presentation at the Century Association in New York, 2019). 4. First-person chronology written by Emily Mason (2003), Emily Mason Archives, Emily Mason|Alice Trumbull Mason Foundation, Brooklyn, NY. 5. Ibid. 6. Lona Foote interview with Emily Mason, May 27, 1975.

7. Karl E. Fortess, interview with Emily Mason in her New York studio, December 1, 1972, 20. 8. Ibid. 9. See 1969 Annual Exhibition: Contemporary American Painting: Dec 16, 1969–Feb 1, 1970 (New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1969). 10. John Warren Oakes interview with Emily Mason, 2005, transcript, 4. 11. See Barbara Stehle “Thresholds of Modernism, Alice Trumbull Mason’s Shutter paintings,” Woman’s Art Journal 43, no. 2 (Fall/Winter 2022): 25.

12. First-person chronology written by Emily Mason (2003), Emily Mason Archives, Emily Mason|Alice Trumbull Mason Foundation, Brooklyn, NY. 13. Sandy Wurmfeld, in an interview with the author, September 18, 2023. 14. Karl E. Fortess interview with Emily Mason in her New York studio, December 1, 1972, transcript, 21. 15. John Warren Oakes interview with Emily Mason, 2005, transcript, 4. 16. Lona Foote interview with Emily Mason, May 27, 1975. 17. Cecily Kahn, in an interview with the author, September 16, 2023. 18. Melany Kahn, in an interview with the author, September 17, 2023. 19. Mira Dayal, “Emily Mason’s Works on Paper, 1978–1989” (New York: Weber Fine Arts, Miles McEnery Gallery, and Emily Mason|Alice Trumbull Mason Foundation, 2023), 2. 20. First-person chronology written by Emily Mason (2003), Emily Mason Archives, Emily Mason|Alice Trumbull Mason Foundation, Brooklyn, NY. 21. Ibid. 22. Sandy Wurmfeld, in an interview with the author, September 18, 2023. 23. Karl E. Fortess interview with Emily Mason in her New York studio, December 1, 1972, transcript, 24. 24. First-person chronology written by Emily Mason (2003), Emily Mason Archives, Emily Mason|Alice Trumbull Mason Foundation, Brooklyn, NY. 25. Emily Mason, quoted in David Ebony and Christina Weyl, Emily Mason: The Light in Spring, ed. Ani Boyajian (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 2015). 26. Lona Foote interview with Emily Mason, May 27, 1975. 27. David Ebony, “In Memoriam: A Tribute to Emily Mason (1932–2019),” Brooklyn Rail, February 2020. 28. John Warren Oakes interview with Emily Mason, 2005, transcript, 8. 29. Lona Foote interview with Emily Mason, May 27, 1975. 30. Ibid. 31. Janis Stemmermann, in an interview with the author, September 19, 2023. 32. John Warren Oakes interview with Emily Mason, 2005, transcript, 7.

33. L ao Tzu, “Unlearning,” Tao Te Ching, trans. Stephen Mitchell (New York: Three Rivers Press, 2000), Chapter 48. 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 left undone. True mastery can be gained by letting things go their own way. It can’t be gained by interfering. 34. M alcolm Wright, in an interview with the author, September 19, 2023. Wright had spent many years in Japan and felt a kinship with Mason. 35. Karl E. Fortess, interview with Emily Mason in her New York studio, December 1, 1972, 14. 36. Elisa Wouk Almino, “‘That Magical Thing’: The Poetry of Emily Mason” (New York: Miles McEnery Gallery, 2019). 37. Lona Foote interview with Emily Mason, May 27, 1975. 38. I am very grateful for my conversation with Clare Chu, award-winning poet and expert in Chinese art. Our conversation on September 20, 2023, greatly informed this part of the text. 39. Steven Rose, in an email to the author, October 3, 2023. 40. Ibid. 41. Ibid. 42. Elisa Wouk Almino, “‘That Magical Thing’: The Poetry of Emily Mason” (New York: Miles McEnery Gallery, 2019), 3. 43. T hese paintings include And the Sea Beyond (1972), Defiant of a Road (1972), Hear the Wind Blow (1972), Like Some Old Fashioned Miracle (1972–74), Lists of Clay (1978), The Thunder Hurried Slow (1978), Velvet Masonry (1978).

Lignite, 1968 Oil on canvas 50 x 41 inches 127 x 104.1 cm

Pleasure Garden, 1970 Oil on canvas 52 x 44 inches 132.1 x 111.8 cm

And the Sea Beyond, 1972

Oil on canvas 50 x 48 inches 127 x 121.9 cm

Defiant of a Road, 1972 Oil on canvas 52 1/4 x 40 1/4 inches 132.7 x 102.2 cm

Hear the Wind Blow, 1972 Oil on canvas 50 x 40 inches 127 x 101.6 cm

Like Some Old Fashioned Miracle, 1972–1974

Oil on canvas 24 x 24 inches 61 x 61 cm

A Paper of Pins, 1974 Oil on canvas 52 1/4 x 44 1/4 inches 132.7 x 112.4 cm

Quiet Fog, 1976 Oil on canvas 22 x 18 inches 55.9 x 45.7 cm

Greener Lean, 1978 Oil on canvas 42 x 50 inches 106.7 x 127 cm

Lists of Clay, 1978 Oil on canvas 50 x 30 inches 127 x 76.2 cm

Masonry, 1978 Oil on canvas 52 x 44 inches 132.1 x 111.8 cm

The Thunder Hurried Slow, 1978 Oil on canvas 54 x 54 inches 137.2 x 137.2 cm

Velvet Masonry, 1978 Oil on canvas 22 x 28 inches 55.9 x 71.1 cm

Powder Blue, 1979

Oil on canvas 34 x 46 inches 86.4 x 116.8 cm

Untitled, 1979

Oil on canvas 54 1/2 x 50 inches 138.4 x 127 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. 1934–1937 Mason attends the Little 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 Manhattan and Brooklyn Bridges. 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 attends the High School of Music and Art. In June of 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 attends the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts 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 Giotto’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 attends 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, Massachusetts, 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 Saetti. 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. After a brief stay in Granada, they depart for New York City from Gibraltar. Mason’s brother Jonathan disappears in Portland, Oregon, and after many months his body is found in the Puget Sound. 1959 Back in New York, Mason and Kahn live in a loft 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 10th 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 settle 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 loft. 1967 Mason and Kahn move to a new apartment on East 15th Street. Their Broadway loft is now used only as a shared studio.

1968 In the spring, Mason and Kahn purchase a farm in West Brattleboro, 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.

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. 45

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.

1987 Mason continues her experiments in printmaking, creating two portfolios of monotypes at the Garner Tullis Workshop in Santa Barbara, California. 1997 Mason begins to show at the MB Modern Gallery in New York. She exhibits there in 1998, 1999, and 2001. 2001 Mason begins exhibiting at David Findlay Jr. Gallery, New York, where she shows regularly through 2015.

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.

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.

2005 Mason’s first monograph, Emily Mason: The Fifth Element, is published by George Braziller Press, featuring a comprehensive presentation of her career.

2018 Emily Mason: To Another Place, a retrospective of Mason’s career, opens at the Brattleboro Museum of Art in Vermont.

A solo exhibition of Mason’s prints opens at the Brattleboro Museum and Art Center in Vermont. 46

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.

2019 Mason has her second exhibition at Miles McEnery Gallery in New York. 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. Mason passes away in Brattleboro, Vermont on 10 December and is laid to rest on the hill behind her house. 2020 Mason is honored as a Centurion Master by The Century Association and is celebrated with a survey of her canvases and works on paper. She Sweeps with Many-Colored Brooms: Paintings and Prints by Emily Mason opens at the Bruce Museum in Greenwich, Connecticut.

SELECT COLLECTIONS 2021 Chelsea Paintings, a posthumous, historical exhibition featuring work made by Mason in her loft studio opens at Miles McEnery Gallery in 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.

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

Published on the occasion of the exhibition

EMILY MASON

THE THUNDER HURRIED SLOW: PAINTINGS, 1968–1979 14 December 2023 – 3 February 2024 Miles McEnery Gallery 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 Publications and Archival Associate Julia Schlank, New York, NY Special thanks to The Emily Mason|Alice Trumbull Mason Foundation, New York, NY Photography by Dan Bradica, New York, NY Catalogue layout by McCall Associates, New York, NY ISBN: 979-8-3507-2141-6 Cover: The Thunder Hurried Slow, (detail), 1978 Endsheets: Masonry, (detail), 1978