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.

---

Etymology

Origin of modern art

First recorded in 1800–10, for an earlier sense

Example Sentences

“So are people that have been obsessing on modern art and modernism all their lives — they’re gonna be confounded by it.”

From Los Angeles Times • Apr. 8, 2026

I like to think that the role of a modern art museum is to be that space precisely between the immediate past and the future.

From The Wall Street Journal • Mar. 12, 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

Abdoulaye N was previously a guard at the Center Pompidou in Paris, an arts centre containing Europe's largest museum of modern art.

From BBC • Nov. 6, 2025

In the history of modern art, that honor belongs to Les Demoiselles d’Avignon.

From "The Mona Lisa Vanishes" by Nicholas Day