There are no real things to be seen there...

I think the nature of modern art resides on its use of a given aesthetic to criticize the aesthetic itself. This is what makes modern art to be often seen as nothing more than pure “entertainment”. The ordinary impression is that most of art works are easily “done by everyone” or just “means nothing”, since there isn't any apparent compromise with “reality” or “nature” and, because of that, there aren't compromises with the old “good taste” for representing real things. Mostly, modern works of art are given the very impression that each form of art “determines” the effects to itself. Or its aim is to be unique to the nature of it´s medium. Saying like that emerges the concept that the unique area of competence of a given modern work of art coincides with all that is unique to the nature of its medium.

Contrary to illusionistic or realistic art, where the goal is to conceal art in favor of representation, modern art uses Art to call attention to Art. What once was only implicitly treated by the masters of “old” painting is now regarded as positive factors by contemporaneous painters: the surface of the canvas, the shape of the support (frame), the properties of the colors are now areas of interest for modern artists. Manet becomes the first modern painter due “only” to his interest on the surfaces where his paintings were painted. Moreover, he started with the destruction of the representation when he became the first painter to reject the visual illusion of dept which since the Renaissance was the most desired painterly object for artists. Meanwhile Cézanne sacrificed the correctness of a given image (human body, mountains, trivial objects) in favor of “fitting them better” into the shape of the canvas. So, from then on, the representation of the object is no longer important. Since then there aren't real things to be seen there, in the modern painting surfaces.

While the “old” painters supposed the aim of painting was to produce the most vivid illusion of three-dimensional space on a flat surface, the modern painters instead are rejecting such an illusion since they become aware of the flatness of the canvas. So, the representation of recognizable objects is no longer important. Moreover, recognizable objects can´t “live” in a space which isn't three-dimensional. Under such a condition the reality of the object disappears.

As for that “lack of reality”, almost the same thing can be said about modern fractal art. Since the space of fractals isn't a real space, how can we figure there real objects (rivers, trees, mountains, girls and bottles) if not by simple association? Or saying it another way: since all recognizable forms exist only in a three-dimensional space, the suggestion of a recognizable form only calls back to that kind of space. And I don´t believe continuing to “see real objects” in a three-dimensional space is the aim of the multi-dimensional fractal art. There is no reason for such a “literature”. To say it very directly - why start from a mathematical formula (or whatever it can be) to “see” a river at the end of the calculation? I think that fractals suffers from a “missing of reality” that becomes nearly unbearable for the artists. But the fact that fractals are created by nearly pure science means that their objects are not translatable into literary terms and must lose their tendency of “being real things” in order to became real Art. After the image importer, Sprite, however, Reality is invading fractals, but that is quite an another story.