Consistently Cool

Emily Mason passed away in 2019 at the age of 87. She left behind two daughters, four grandchildren, innumerable adoring friends, and one of the most sustainedly dazzling bodies of work in postwar American painting. Despite this legacy (or should that be “because of?”), she was never a superstar. While Pop, Minimalism, and various strains of Post- and Neo- got the most column inches, she stuck to lyrical abstraction. She experimented, but never too flashily—once she discovered