Art.....

[Morley]

Sounds like that could be an interesting book. One might say seeing an existential dimension to impressionism's search for an immediacy of the moment.

Huck, I don't know how interested you are in this, but Smee does a pretty good job. In his The Art of Rivalry, he talks about the dynamic that existed between some of your favorites: Freud & Bacon, Pollock & de Kooning, Manet & Degas, and Picasso & Matisse. Like Jerry Saltz and Robert Hughes, Smee's approaches and style are some that I find enlightening and easily accessible.




edit to add: I also really like Michael Kimmelman's The Accidental Masterpiece. It mentions pieces, and employs a perspective on art, that I would never have considered otherwise.