Gallery hopping a century ago Give the guy a break, then, for a moment. Other museums, too, have obsessed over dates. Others have tried to escape modernist biases. The Museum of Modern Art had its own Y2K problem , re-hanging the permanent collection to suggest a decade in transition. Then, too, surely no one creates in a vacuum.
Artists learn from tradition and struggle to escape it.
One of several candidates for first abstract painter, Frantisek Kupka, in fact showed at the 1900 Exposition. He turns out to have known tradition and modernized it well. Compared to neighboring works here, he creates a sharp, delicate, and tangible sunlight among the leaves. No one understands art in a vacuum either. One has to examine the assumptions both of one's own time and the artist's to piece out meaning.