Modern Art

So we had a discussion in Art class today about art (weird right?). My teacher likes to give us example of art that follow along the guidelines of our next asignment, which happens to be abstract. A psychedelic picture came up with lots of flouresently colored circles and everyone immediatly thought of the sixties, which moved us on to the topic of culture and its effect on art and vise versa. The argument came up of wether art was influnced by culture, or as my teacher said, art changes first.. and change in culture follows. She said even change in music comes after art. So this made me really wish that I knew something about art. You could stick something from Picasso in front of me and I wouldn't know the difference between that or something painted yesterday. It's not so much I wish I knew art but I wish I understood the cultural effect it had. I love looking back on the history of music and directly relate events of history to certain songs, but in art.. it's just whether or not i see a fish or a bunch of squiggly lines. The more abstract idea I conceived from this whole conversation is how art is changing now, modern day art, that will somehow change and influence the culture later. So now I am looking up modern art on Google Images hoping to be better informed on the modern day art of our culture.
Ugh. I hate wanting to be sophisticated and full of knowledge. Such effort.

-rae