Editing Art (section)

===Arrival of Modernism===
[[File:Piet Mondriaan, 1930 - Mondrian Composition II in Red, Blue, and Yellow.jpg|thumb|''[[Composition with Red Blue and Yellow]]'' (1930) by [[Piet Mondrian]] (Dutch, 1872–1944)]]
The arrival of [[Modernism]] in the late 19th century led to a radical break in the conception of the function of art,<ref>[[Griselda Pollock]], ''Differencing the Canon''. Routledge, London & New York, 1999. {{ISBN|0-415-06700-6}}</ref> and then again in the late 20th century with the advent of [[Postmodern art|postmodernism]]. [[Clement Greenberg]]'s 1960 article "Modernist Painting" defines modern art as "the use of characteristic methods of a discipline to criticize the discipline itself".<ref name = "Frascina">''Modern Art and Modernism: A Critical Anthology''. ed. Francis Frascina and Charles Harrison, 1982.</ref> Greenberg originally applied this idea to the Abstract Expressionist movement and used it as a way to understand and justify flat (non-illusionistic) abstract painting:
<blockquote>Realistic, naturalistic art had dissembled the medium, using art to conceal art; modernism used art to call attention to art. The limitations that constitute the medium of painting—the flat surface, the shape of the support, the properties of the pigment—were treated by the Old Masters as negative factors that could be acknowledged only implicitly or indirectly. Under Modernism these same limitations came to be regarded as positive factors, and were acknowledged openly.<ref name = "Frascina" /></blockquote> After Greenberg, several important art theorists emerged, such as [[Michael Fried]], [[T. J. Clark (historian)|T.&nbsp;J.&nbsp;Clark]], [[Rosalind Krauss]], [[Linda Nochlin]] and [[Griselda Pollock]] among others. Though only originally intended as a way of understanding a specific set of artists, Greenberg's definition of modern art is important to many of the ideas of art within the various art movements of the 20th century and early 21st century.<ref name="Harris2005">{{cite book|author=Jonathan P. Harris|title=Writing Back to Modern Art: After Greenberg, Fried, and Clark|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=_TzAIu3LziIC|year=2005|publisher=Psychology Press|isbn=978-0-415-32429-8|access-date=28 May 2018|archive-date=5 August 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190805225429/https://books.google.com/books?id=_TzAIu3LziIC|url-status=live}}</ref><ref name="Holt2001">{{cite book|author=David Kenneth Holt|title=The Search for Aesthetic Meaning in the Visual Arts: The Need for the Aesthetic Tradition in Contemporary Art Theory and Education|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=VWedB7SA-KMC|year=2001|publisher=Greenwood Publishing Group|isbn=978-0-89789-773-0|access-date=28 May 2018|archive-date=5 August 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190805225429/https://books.google.com/books?id=VWedB7SA-KMC|url-status=live}}</ref>

[[Pop art]]ists like [[Andy Warhol]] became both noteworthy and influential through work including and possibly [[cultural critic|critiquing popular culture]], as well as the [[art world]]. Artists of the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s expanded this technique of self-criticism beyond ''high art'' to all cultural image-making, including fashion images, [[comics]], [[billboards]] and [[pornography]].<ref name="Gemünden1998">{{cite book|author=Gerd Gemünden|title=Framed Visions: Popular Culture, Americanization, and the Contemporary German and Austrian Imagination|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=7Mpfn_pue34C|year=1998|publisher=University of Michigan Press|isbn=978-0-472-08560-6|page=43|access-date=28 May 2018|archive-date=5 August 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190805225428/https://books.google.com/books?id=7Mpfn_pue34C|url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|title=The New Yorker|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=9BcnAQAAIAAJ|year=2004|publisher=F-R Publishing Corporation|page=84|access-date=28 May 2018|archive-date=5 August 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190805225428/https://books.google.com/books?id=9BcnAQAAIAAJ|url-status=live}}</ref>

Duchamp once proposed that art is any activity of any kind-everything. However, the way that only certain activities are classified today as art is a social construction.<ref name="Duchamp Interview Clip">{{YouTube|haon2DXWvLk|Duchamp Two Statements}}{{Dead link|date=May 2016}}</ref> There is evidence that there may be an element of truth to this. In ''[[The Invention of Art: A Cultural History]]'', Larry Shiner examines the construction of the modern system of the arts, i.e. fine art. He finds evidence that the older system of the arts before our modern system (fine art) held art to be any skilled human activity; for example, Ancient Greek society did not possess the term ''art'', but [[techne]]. Techne can be understood neither as art or craft, the reason being that the distinctions of art and [[craft]] are historical products that came later on in human history. Techne included painting, sculpting and music, but also cooking, medicine, [[horsemanship]], [[geometry]], carpentry, [[prophecy]], and farming, etc.<ref name="BurgueteLam2011">{{cite book|author1=Maria Burguete|author2=Lui Lam|title=Arts: A Science Matter|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=zKmND2ImrGUC|year=2011|publisher=World Scientific|isbn=978-981-4324-93-9|page=74|access-date=28 May 2018|archive-date=5 August 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190805225428/https://books.google.com/books?id=zKmND2ImrGUC|url-status=live}}</ref>