"Why isn't she more famous?"The question has bugged me since "Why I first saw the work of Emily Mason, one of the most ravishing post-New York School abstract painters, and my nominee for the most underrated. Not that these things are ever very fair; it's just bizarre that an artist who knew everyone, and whose family everyone knew, ended up so close to unknown.
Her distant ancestor John Trumbull painted a portrait of Alexander Hamilton that should look familiar to anyone who's handled a ten-dollar bill, and her mother, the abstract painter Alice Trumbull Mason, hung out with Jackson Pollock and Helen Franken-thaler. Many artists have deserved glory, but few of them had Elaine de Kooning for a babysitter. Where's nepotism when you need it? The simplest explanation is that Mason, who died in 2019, at the age of eighty-seven, was born a generation too late for stardom. By the time she'd come into her own-the early Reagan years, I would say-abstract painting's stock was sagging. To make matters worse, she shows every sign of having been the most embarrassing thing an American painter can be: sane. When deciding who belongs in the pantheon, we like a wild life at least as much as good art, and on this count, alas, Mason failed to delivernot a single affair with Clement Greenberg or drunken piss at a party. "One of the least angry people I've ever known," the critic David Ebony said, "and least bitter about things that had gone wrong for her in the art world." I'm not trying to be rude, but she and the artist Wolf Kahn, her husband of sixty-plus years, appear to have had a happy, stable marriage. The juiciest gossip I could find: at first, Mason's mother was surprised that she'd chosen to cohabit with a figurative painter.
Denne historien er fra January 29, 2024-utgaven av The New Yorker.
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Denne historien er fra January 29, 2024-utgaven av The New Yorker.
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YULE RULES
“Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point.”
COLLISION COURSE
In Devika Rege’ first novel, India enters a troubling new era.
NEW CHAPTER
Is the twentieth-century novel a genre unto itself?
STUCK ON YOU
Pain and pleasure at a tattoo convention.
HEAVY SNOW HAN KANG
Kyungha-ya. That was the entirety of Inseon’s message: my name.
REPRISE
Reckoning with Donald Trump's return to power.
WHAT'S YOUR PARENTING-FAILURE STYLE?
Whether you’re horrifying your teen with nauseating sex-ed analogies or watching TikToks while your toddler eats a bagel from the subway floor, face it: you’re flailing in the vast chasm of your child’s relentless needs.
COLOR INSTINCT
Jadé Fadojutimi, a British painter, sees the world through a prism.
THE FAMILY PLAN
The pro-life movement’ new playbook.
President for Sale - A survey of today's political ads.
On a mid-October Sunday not long ago sun high, wind cool-I was in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, for a book festival, and I took a stroll. There were few people on the streets-like the population of a lot of capital cities, Harrisburg's swells on weekdays with lawyers and lobbyists and legislative staffers, and dwindles on the weekends. But, on the façades of small businesses and in the doorways of private homes, I could see evidence of political activity. Across from the sparkling Susquehanna River, there was a row of Democratic lawn signs: Malcolm Kenyatta for auditor general, Bob Casey for U.S. Senate, and, most important, in white letters atop a periwinkle not unlike that of the sky, Kamala Harris for President.
