One day from a land not far away to the king’s court came a painter already known and admired for his skills. He was very much surprised when learned about the powerful gild of painters, since in his land there was not such a guild and painters were free. When he told the king about this, king immediately assembled his council and issued a decree that painting is not a craft but a liberal art thus free of any guild. It is after this decree that the painting instead of being a skill became a product of the mind. It no more belonged to the glass or cabinet making and slowly became associated with poetry and even philosophy.
Once upon a time, there lived an adventurous young man. Being an explorer and ethnographer at heart, he longed to travel and make great discoveries. Then it happened one day that he heard a tale about some curious developments among the natives of the Old World. A new style in the making and decorating of art objects, it was said, had been spreading among the craftsmen of various tribes. The movement was already dying out, however, and soon it would slip into oblivion. Intrigued, the explorer immediately organized a series of expeditions across the ocean. He visited all the important places, collected paintings and other exotic objects from the natives and recorded the stories they told. Impressed with what he saw and heard, he brought back many artifacts and decided to establish an ethnographic museum, naming it the Museum of Modern Art.
What was Modern Art? 