Masters in Pieces II

Reading through Russell Connor's brilliant Masters in Pieces II is a bit like wandering into a museum late at night where the subjects of the paintings have all slipped out of their frames to go visiting in the tableaux next door. Van Gogh meets Gauguin; Monet meets Manet; the survivors on the Raft of the Medusa have a heavenly hallucination in the form of Cabanel's Venus; Picasso's Girl Before a Mirror sees herself reflected as Sargent's Madame X. It is not a dream; it is the work of a master of the absurd yet lyrical juxtaposition. Witty, irreverent, and revelatory, this collection is a delightful tour of the half-remembered masterpieces we all carry in our heads--masterpieces that may never look the same to us again.