After the WW1 art is not indifferent to the change that the catastrophe had been. A provocative and ironic art, Dadaism was continued by militant leftist artists in Germany. In Russia, the communist revolution attracted modern artists to the fight, believing that they would change society to a fairer world, but they soon saw their utopia failed.

Throughout the work of the Impressionists, Matisse or Picasso, the principle of pleasure and harmony are present in the art of the twentieth century.

The architectural utopia of modernity and its aspirations for change and social improvement and its failure.

Surrealist painters sought extreme freedom through art, exploring the irrational world as well as the world of dreams.

The interior of the mind, the obsessions and the forces that dominate life, form the work of modern artists from van Gogh and Munch, to the American abstract expressionists.

In the mid-twentieth century the symbols of modern culture reflect the power of the media. Advertising, radio and television became the subject of artists. Pop art broke into the scene.

The end of modernity makes Robert Hughes raise the trajectory of art and its surroundings during the twentieth century and doubts about its future and achievements.