Is Modern Art Really Art?

Dead animals, elephant dung, unmade beds and rice all seem like everyday objects but should we be calling them art?
When we were growing up we were taught that art was a beautiful painting - like Van Gogh's Sunflowers, or a perfect sculpture of a human - like Michelangelo's David, but we were never really taught that conceptual and contemporary art were 'proper' forms of art, even though it was established in the sixties. It made us think and challenge our own assumptions of what art should really look like.
People didn't understand the idea of cows cut in half (Damien Hirst), wire mesh lockers (Mona Hatoum), rubble (Richard Long) or rubbish (Tomoko Takahashi) being called art unless you could frame it nicely on your living room wall. …