Defining Modernism

Like most things in art I find it difficult to actually define what Modern art is. I do know however that Modern art began as a way to criticize the art of the past and to push the limits of what art really is. Because of these intentions tend to have an "it is what it is" attitude. A Modernist painting would be all about the paint. It simply has the color of the paint, the shape of the paint and it doesn't look like much more than paint. This is a stark contrast to the goals of painters of the past who would do everything they could to create the illusion that the paint was not paint but a landscape or a person or whatever it was that they were painting. This is what made Modernism so important to the path that art has taken.