On 4 May 2006 at 18:15, "Anthony DiPierro" wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:

I certainly don't know modern art when I see it. In fact, I think there is a lot of disagreement over what modern art is.

I have a vague, stereotypical, and probably decades out-of-date impression of what "modern art" is, but I have no clue whether it has anything in common with what the art world actually uses the term to refer to, if they actually still use the term at all.

I generally think that giving labels like "modern" to things is a bad idea, since such a label is intrinsically relative. If some particular type of art was labeled "modern art" in the 1950s, should it still carry that label 50 years later when it's not quite so modern? Is the sort of art the avant-garde is making now "postmodern"? What comes *after* postmodern to reflect the generation after *that*? Post-postmodern? And then there's "retro", reflecting art, culture, and design that intentionally goes back to an earlier era... but you've got a lot of earlier eras to choose from, so that doesn't really designate a particular one.