I watched a documentary on the Museum of Modern Art the other day and it was not only a fascinating history of both the museum and the artists it has collected through the years but it also posed several questions about that art. Specifically questioning what is modern art? I highly recommend this documentary to everyone but I viewed it on my Roku from a long-forgotten video site so you may have to do some digging to find the video for yourself.
One thing struck me while watching the video: modern art in many ways was involved with altering the way we see things. Not just a group of prostitutes, but a collection of planes and lines, or a collection of colors, or some other way of categorizing the visible other than what might be captured in a photograph. Pablo Picasso’s Les demoiselles d’avignon was considered to be perhaps the one painting that forever changed the world of art.
A Celebration of Reading 