Sentence:  And it is thought by many who think about such things that Quasimodo <WSD>is</WSD> the logical culmination of a school that started with Monet , progressed through Kandinsky and the cubist Picasso , and blossomed just recently in Pollock and De Kooning . 
Meaning of the word marked with <WSD> tags:  have the quality of being; (copula, used with an adjective or a predicate noun)