Modern art must not, but often does degenerate in a lkind of simply unimportnat pseudo-intellectualism. For example, Joseph Beuy's Fat Chair is an example for this.
http://www.designboom.com/history/stilllife/08.jpg
what has not been written and said about it! Volumes...! How it expresses this, and how it relates to that, and human nature, and mind, and you know what. Well, every piece of dog dirt you found on the street can be object for such ways of mutated philosophiozing, but fact remains that it is nothing special and no piece of arts at all, and that it has not more and not less buddha-nature than every leaf of grass, every tone, and every enlightened human mind. By this i want to point out that "arts" also include a quality as a criterion to decide wether something is art or not, that would be that not everybody, just somebody can create it. In creating a piece of art, a special skill, artistry, is needed, and this rareness is what adds value to it, like content, expression, message, mood may do as well. If everybody can create a given result of work of craftsmanship, it is nothign special and no art in this meaning. the pictures that kids paint in the kidergarten, are no pieces of art, and that you will find it hard to copy them manually by hand does not chnage that. Last year, we had a project in this city of Münster, were students placed rerally stupoid and often oifnantile papmache-objects somehwere in the city, or scattered some umbrellas around, and called that "ar". this year, they have placed wodden frames around the city in an attempt to make people see, as they put it, and now we have these uglöy wooden frames everyshwere, from 4x4 to 9x9 meters in size, and it really kills the sight iof the given location. This is no art - it is the absence of artistic mindset, and shows that people simply have no idea and relativsed the definition of arts to a degree that finally nothing is left that could be expressed anymore _ and so infantile surrogates get created and are presented as "art". Not everything that somebody creates is automtaically art - just becasue he has created it. That is somehting many artists of today are in desperate need to understand. And even if that shows no soldiarity with every Peter and Paul and may sound elitist: arts require skill. and the skill in "artist's" creation you often seek in vain these days. the frog in that picture is a good example.