@RMiddleton

I can understand that some may hate (be disappointed in) abstract art.

I used to be among its haters, or at least among those to whom it simply didn't make sense. The late and lamented Edmund Capon fixed that for me, as I never tire of relating.

As directory of the Art Gallery of NSW, he put on an exhibition somewhere in the 2000s that explained it. You followed a trail through various eras, including impressionism and that newfangled medium of photography (could it truly be said to be "art"?). There were summaries for each, that laid out what each movement arose from - what inspired it, and what it was responding to or reacting against.

By the time I got to the abstract art at the end, it actually made sense to me. Now I could see the pile of building-site materials in that assortment of overlaid rectangles of colour.

Not a book, but certainly influential. It taught me to see artworks as nodes in a network of influences, rather than as isolated things in themselves.

Bonus aside: it was prompted by one of his assistants, who suggested the idea. He rejected it initially, saying they'd already done it in 198x.
"Edmund," she said, "I was two years old then."