As public interest in modern art continues to grow as witnessed by the spectacular success of Tate Modern & the Bilbao Guggenheim there is a real need for a book that will engage general readers offering them not only information & ideas about modern art but also explaining its contemporary relevance & history. This book achieves all this & focuses on interrogating the idea of modern art by asking such questions as: What has made a work of art qualify as modern (or fail to)? How has this selection been made? What is the relationship between modern & contemporary art? Is postmodernist art no longer modern or just no longer modernist
- in either case why & what does this claim mean both for art & the idea of the modern? Cottington examines many key aspects of this subject including the issue of controversy in modern art from Manets Dejeuner sur LHerbe (1863) to Picassos Les Demoiselles & Tracey Emins Bed (1999); & the role of the dealer from the main Cubist art dealer Kahnweiler to Charles Saatchi.