Is Modern Art Truly Considered Art?

If ‘statements’ or ‘concepts’ are really the core of ‘modern art’, does it make it really art? Is Duchamp’s fountain a piece of art just as Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa?

Well, if we look at the definition of art, it is, indeed, ‘the expression or application of human creative skill and imagination, typically in a visual form such as painting or sculpture, producing works to be appreciated primarily for their beauty or emotional power’, according to Oxford Language. Nothing about that is found is Duchamp’s urinal.  

Nevertheless, let’s examine what ‘statement’ means, since it became a main word in modern art’s jargon. According to Oxford language, it is ‘a definite or clear expression of something in speech or writing’. As we can see, art is the core of beauty, and statements are the core of written or expressed speech. So the question is, what ‘statement’ could lie underneath the famous urinal? Well, I cannot bring an accurate answer to this question , but I am pretty sure that it doesn’t have even a glimpse of beauty. Because again, beauty is ‘a combination of qualities, such as shape, color, or form, that pleases the aesthetic senses, especially the sight’, according to Oxford Language, and which hits me, because shape, color, forms, are at the core of art elements.

To conclude, in my personal opinion, this is enough to say that looking at one of the top leading so-called masterpieces in Modern Art, Duchamp’s Fountain (a porcelain urinal), makes me realize that Modern Art is stripped of its beauty.