Modern art is a cow cut in half with a chainsaw, floating in a glass tank. It is a house cast in concrete, or the London Underground map with all the station names changed. But what does it all mean? What is modern art? Why do we like/hate it? Can anybody do it? Is it always modern? Who started it? This is the story of modern art and our modern attitude to it. It combines hard information on major artists and movements - what really happened - with ordinary reflections. Modern art is intimidating and confusing to many, but Matthew Collins seeks to cut through this barrier by asking all the puzzling questions. He compares Goya to Duchamp and Picasso, Rothko to Yves Klein, and he looks at the role of African tribal art in the rise of modernism and punk rock in the rise of post-modernism.