Tsion Avital poses the question: "Is modern art--art at all?" He argues that the nonrepresentational art produced in the twentieth century was not actually art, but rather the debris of the visual tradition it replaced. Modern art has thrived on the state of total confusion existing between art and pseudo-art and the inability of many to distinguish between them. As Avital demonstrates, modern art has served as a critical intermediate stage between art of the past and the future.