If modernism wasn’t the end point of art history and the ultimate form of artistic expression, then what was it? If we don’t let it bully its way to the front of the line and center stage, crowding out everything that came before, during, and whatever comes after, what does it look like? And what will it look like as it recedes farther and farther... See more

And while we take our parents to the Met to appreciate old art, tradition, and “good technique,” we go to MoMA because modernism is cool, still — a sequence of revolutionary gestures, shocks, and succession stories that, we think, tell us something about radicalism and experimentation.

That reputation and those succession dramas are not an accident... See more

This kind of change has happened before, of course — a movement conquering the world, then passing into the past. Usually, it happens much faster. The heyday of tremendous rococo artists like François Boucher, Jean-Honoré Fragonard, and Antoine Watteau lasted just 15 years, at which point neoclassicism deemed it girlie and gauche. Instead, artists... See more

In modernism, only newness was given value. Everything old was considered passé, inadequate to address the times, which meant modernism claimed not just a monopoly on newness but also on importance. One Dadaist said, “Art is dead.” Case closed.Of course, all art was once new. Cave painters painted over older cave paintings; Roman pots sport artist... See more