modern art

American  

noun

1. art that was produced in the late 1860s through the 1970s and that rejected traditionally accepted forms and emphasized individual experimentation and sensibility.

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Etymology

Origin of modern art

First recorded in 1800–10, for an earlier sense

Example Sentences

The album is experimental, merging modern art with Romanticism.

From Salon • Jun. 5, 2026

He lives in a company-owned apartment full of dark, polished surfaces and bad modern art; she lives in a rundown apartment furnished with termites.

From Los Angeles Times • Feb. 18, 2026

The design would stand out from other new stadiums around the world, many of which look like experimental modern art projects.

From The Wall Street Journal • Jan. 20, 2026

Mr. Crow, a professor of modern art at New York University, has previously written about the relationship between art and politics in 18th-century France and America’s 1960s counterculture.

From The Wall Street Journal • Dec. 21, 2025

She’s on a hot-pink Electra with brightly colored stencils on the fenders that remind me of one of the modern art paintings we saw on our class trip to the Norton Museum last year.

From "Merci Suárez Changes Gears" by Meg Medina