The most intriguing part of this weeks reading, for me,  was section on Modernism. In AAD 251, I remember reading about Modernism, focusing specifically on the idea of the “Artworld”, and it struck me as being very bizarre. I think often times the idea of “art”, by which I mean as a very specific profession or culture and not as the universal truth that Dissanayake suggested, is expressed through is Modernism lens. Every representation of an artist or an art gallery is characterized by some pretentious curator or critic who uses “art” to separate him/her and his/her people from the average Joe.  The idea that “art became [so] esoteric and outrageous, the role of the critic became not only helpful but integral to the reception of works of art” strikes me as hilarious (p.18). The concept of “high” art being to unrecognizable, an expert is necessary in order to classify it and communicate it’s artistic value to high society the “Artworld” claims to cater to is ironic. The Modernism movement in art history goes so far to say that “what is said (or written) about a work is not only necessary to its being art, but is indeed perhaps more important that the art itself” (p. 19). This idea that art is art because some pseudo-authority figure deems it to be art goes against Dissanayake’s claim that “art must be viewed as an inherint universal (or biological) trait of the human species” (p.15), later in the reading going so far to say that human “deserve to be called aestheticus, or artistic just as much as they deserve to be called sapien or wise” (p.16). If art is literally in the DNA of humans, this notion that art answers to a higher authority that serves as a function of higher society is wrong. Art is a human experience; all humans. It’s more than the medium in which an artist chooses to express emotions. Art can be as intricate and glorious as the Sistine Chapel, or as simple and intimate as a love note.