“de Kooning: An American Master” By Mark Stevens & Annalyn Swan Knopf, 2004 752 pages, $35 With typical existentialist panache, Francis Bacon coined the phrase “exhilarated despair,” an oxymoron that rings true for Willem de Kooning, whom Bacon admired. Not so much for his work, necessarily, which runs the gamut of emotions and sensations (although … Continued