At Work in Paris: Raymond Mason on Ar

In this memoir, Mason conjures up the golden age of the Parisian art world. The cultural impresarios Jean Cocteau and Andre Malraux, the dealers Claude Bernard, Aimee Maeght and Pierre Matisse, and the interactions of visiting British artists Henry Moore and Francis Bacon with the locals - all figure in Mason’s account as he pays a by-no-means uncritical tribute to the masters of European modernism. By turns humorous and passionate, Mason also reflects on a variety of other subjects, including Parisian architecture, the development of his own oeuvre, and the work of artists from Hogarth to Rodin.