"When I realised a few years ago that people no longer had any reference to the history of modernism in mind when they said "modern art", I was shocked. I blamed it on Tate Modern for adopting such a grand name and then filling its opening displays with the brashly new back in the early noughties.
[...]
And this is the problem that dogs the art critic in the 21st century.
Our glibly high evaluation of today's art, casually calling it "modern art" as if it could ride roughshod over the achievements of the last century, and we could cherry pick modernism's history to find phoney lineages for whatever we want to plug, is a massive lie.
The arts in the period between 1880 and 1920 reached heights of achievement unseen since the Renaissance.
The avant garde in its prime was all greatness, all glory. With the best will in the world, and however much we find to admire and to hope for, our time is mannerist in comparison.
Modern art? I wish it would come back."
Jonathan Jones I love you!
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