![[IMAGE OF ANDY WARHOL'S MARILYN MONROE PAINTING]](Warh-MM3.jpg)
Some say modern art began with Manet; others, with Degas. I say modern art began with Copernicus. Art has always been about the relationship between what we see and what exists irrespective of our seeing it. When Copernicus declared in 1543 that the Earth revolved around the Sun rather than vice versa, he was condemned vehemently for undermining a truth plainly and visibly seen. From Copernicus it was an inexorable progression to Western Civilization's later revolutionaries: Columbus, Darwin, Freud, Einstein and Heisenberg. Art tracked this progression, from the breakdown of color by Monet, to the breakdown of line by Cézanne, to the breakdown of brush stroke by Seurat, to the breakdown of perspective by Picasso, to the breakdown of hue by Mondrian, to the breakdown of logic by Dali. Art was ultimately stripped naked by Pollock, and it has been struggling to "redress" the issue ever since. In this it has tracked the world at large, groping to find a center post-Copernicus, an outer edge post-Columbus, its origin post-Darwin, rationality post-Freud, solidity post-Einstein and certainty post-Heisenberg. Artistic movements since the 1950's have had such short lifespans because they are themselves shortcuts, speaking in a glib vernacular. Warhol's Marilyn Monroes (pictured above) tweak the nose of popular culture, O'Keeffe's flowers tweak the nose of patriarchal linearity, Haring's graffiti (pictured in background) tweak the nose of the art business elite. The most important of today's artists can but snipe. I long for an art that can construct as much as it can deconstruct. Birth and death are easy; it is resurrection that is the miracle.
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