"Yes, but is it art?" This lucid book by Julian Bell, himself a painter, confronts the uncertainty and suspicion many people feel about art today, and challenges generally accepted ideas while addressing questions such as: What is it that defines paintings? What does the age-old practice of painting amount to at the turn of the twenty-first century? What happened to the idea of representation in modern art? This is a book for everyone interested in understanding modern art, or in making art themselves.