Modern Greatness

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I've been thinking about what might endure in modern art---only very superficially, and I have to admit to only a light grasp on the values at play in the type of art below. But here are a handful of pieces featured in Art in America magazine recently:

This painting by Julie Langsam is pretty and even interesting. But even with its modernist band of color blocks at the bottom, it seems too embedded in established tradition to be of lasting interest:






















Then there's this piece by Nayland Blake. This kind of art (not pretty, using everyday objects, especially referencing childhood) is a break from tradition and so can make a claim to furthering art history. But it's really hard to imagine anyone taking an interest in it aesthetically in years to come:
























Then there's conceptual art, like the famous canned feces by Piero Manzoni. This doesn't even seem like visual art to me. It's really narrative art: You write/hear/think the phrase "the artist canned his own s**t" and that's really the artwork. You don't need or want to see the object itself:


























This piece by Sterling Ruby is what I like best in modern art. It's new, it couldn't have been produced in an earlier era, but it's also a truly interesting visual object:



















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