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

Many modern art historians, such as Dr Bendor Grosvenor, accept the label on this drawing is correct and that it is a surviving contemporary likeness of her.

From BBC • May 1, 2026

“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

Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset called modern art, way back in 1925, “antipopular.”

From The Wall Street Journal • Jan. 18, 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

But in Miss Penelope Lumley’s day, modern art had not yet been invented, and a painting of a sheep was universally expected to show legs, wool, and a fluffy tail.

From "The Interrupted Tale" by Maryrose Wood