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In New Book, Art Critic Sebastian Smee Explores Four Friendships In Modern Art

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A woman takes a pictures of a painting titled "Two Odalisques, One Undressed, Ornamental Background and Checkerboard" dated 1928 by French artists Henri Matisse (1869-1954), right, next to a painting by Pablo Picasso titled "Nude in front of a Garden," left, during a press preview of the exhibit "The Oasis of Matisse" at Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, Netherlands in 2015. (Peter Dejong/AP)
A woman takes a pictures of a painting titled "Two Odalisques, One Undressed, Ornamental Background and Checkerboard" dated 1928 by French artists Henri Matisse (1869-1954), right, next to a painting by Pablo Picasso titled "Nude in front of a Garden," left, during a press preview of the exhibit "The Oasis of Matisse" at Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, Netherlands in 2015. (Peter Dejong/AP)

"There is, I believe, an intimacy in art history that the textbooks ignore. This book is an attempt to reckon with that intimacy."

That's how Pulitzer Prize-winning art critic Sebastian Smee explains the premise of his new book, "The Art of Rivalry: Four Friendships, Betrayals, and Breakthroughs in Modern Art."

In it, he details four intimate, fraught relationships between eight modern artists who are all now household names: Edouard Manet and Edgar Degas; Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso; Jackson Pollock and William de Kooning; Lucian Freud and Francis Bacon.

Sebastian Smee will be speaking about his new book Sept. 1 at Harvard Book Store.

Guest

Sebastian Smee, Pulitzer Prize-winning art critic for The Boston Globe. His new book is "The Art of Rivalry: Four Friendships, Betrayals, and Breakthroughs in Modern Art." He tweets @SebastianSmee.

This segment aired on August 15, 2016.

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