...But is it Art?

Art.

There's a lot of controversy in that word. What is "art" anyway? Even if you set aside performing arts like music and dance, you'll still find argument over the meaning of art. There was a time when art meant realistic reproduction of flowers on a table, a woman with her dog, or Christ's last supper. More recently, artists shifted their focus from realistic representation to the capture of fleeting impressions of a scene, but they still attempted to represent reality in a literal way.

Then the Modern artists came in and turned everything upside down. Picasso deconstructed his subjects into cubes and colors, Miro represented reality in psychological terms, and Warhol completely demolished the concepts of art and artist.

It's easy enough to look at the books in the library or search the Artstor collection to see images by Modern artists, but you need to see the actual works up close to get a sense of how they work in reality. It's one thing to pass by the replica of Picasso's "Girl Before a Mirror" hanging upstairs in the library, but it's entirely different to see the size of the original, to get close enough to see the brush strokes, the subtle changes in hue, and how thick the paint is on the canvas. Fortunately, the Picasso to Warhol exhibit at the High Museum offers a selection of works from 14 artists including Henri Matisse, Piet Mondrian, Alexander Calder and Jackson Pollock. Several works from each artist show how they each developed stylistically within their own careers, and relates them to major 20th century artistic developments including Cubism, abstraction and Surrealism.
I have to admit that standing in front of Jackson Pollock's work did not suddenly elicit a deep love of his paintings, but I did get a better grasp of his direct physical involvement with the material he used when I saw the scale of the work and his handprints on the canvas. And, while I've always questioned the validity given to Warhol's factory approach that separated the art from the artist, I do see how his reconstruction of everyday commercial logos cleverly poses the question, "but is it art?"

If you don't have time to visit the Museum of Modern Art in person, the Picasso to Warhol exhibit at the High Museum is the next best thing.