New in paperback   Artist Lee Bontecou (b. 1931) became widely known in the 1960s and 1970s for her welded steel sculptures and plastic and epoxy molded assemblages--powerful constructions that evoked natural phenomena and organic biological life as well as machines and instruments of war.   This critically acclaimed book--available for the first time in paperback-- reevaluates the career of this highly influential artist and focuses not only upon the impact of her early work but also on the import she has exerted on a generation of younger artists. Featuring some 50 sculptures and more than 100 drawings from the late 1950s to 2003, the book presents four essays that reposition Bontecou’s work within the history of recent art, examine its shifting critical reception, discuss the artistic context in which her work was made, and analyze how science underpinned some of her earliest explorations.