What does modern art mean?
Modern art is not about any one thing. In its complexity, it reflects the many concerns of modern life. Abstract art, for example, with its seeming jumble of colors, lines, and shapes, might not describe anything recognizable, or it might depict real objects in a distorted way. Often, modern art does not try to tell a story. Instead, it may evoke feelings, impressions, and ideas that are hard to put into words, much as music does. Around the beginning of this century, many artists turned away from one of art’s traditional aims of imitating nature, toward other goals of exploring ideas about art itself, or tapping their own feelings, or expressing the changes in the world they experienced. Photography, developed in the 1830s and perfected by the early 1900s, also freed artists from the need to copy what they saw. Why does some modern art look so easy to make? Modern art can look very simple, just a few lines, or it may seem messy and slapdash. The oftenheard comment “my four-year-old ch
