Van Gogh and Gauguin were post impressionists, hardly moedern.
The downward spiral of modern art began with Impressionism, a stupid theory of art.
“Don't talk to me about those idiots, cluttering the fields with their easels. Had I the authority of a tyrant, I'd order the police to shoot them all down.”This was Edgar Degas, speaking less about the then-contemporary rage for landscape painting than about the ideals of the Impressionists. He was, to understate the case, unimpressed with, for example, Claude Monet’s blathering about "sincerity" and "spontaneity.” To Degas is attributed: “A picture is something that requires as much knavery, trickery, and deceit as the perpetration of a crime.”
“Painting is easy when you don’t know how, but very difficult when you do.”