I think the invention of photography, and of moving pictures, had a profound effect on artists.
If you look at the picture “Nude Descending a Staircase,” by Marcel Duchamp, you can see he’s just superimposing a bunch of individual frames from a film of a woman descending a staircase, although he puts an abstract expressionism spin on each frame.
Perhaps modern art was born out of a desire on the part of some painters who said themselves “photography has made realism obsolete, so why not go in the opposite direction, from hyper-concrete to hyper-abstract?”
I’m connecting this in my mind to the case of trombonist George Roberts. When he came to Hollywood in 1947, after serving in the Navy, George Roberts dove into the LA music scene.
He quickly realized that “going high” on the trombone was territory already well-explored by Urbie Green and others.
So George Roberts decided to “go low.” He proceeded to make himself into the best bass trombonist in the business, and became a favorite of numerous band leaders and singers.
Artists have to try to find a competitive edge, a niche, if they’re going to make a living doing what they love.
Perhaps “modern art” was just a reaction to the observation that photography and cinema had completely locked up the “land of photorealistic art. So let’s look elsewhere.