The tempo of change has been so swift that 21st century man cannot keep pace with contemporary scientists and artists. The span of time between innovations and their understanding, and popular acceptance, is often referred to as cultural lag. Modern art must be understood in terms of its own frame of reference and what the artist is trying to do. He may be trying to achieve disorder rather than order, chaos rather than a cosmos. The act of creating sometimes replaces the importance of the object created. The evolution from Egypt through the Middle Ages and the Renaissance to the modern world is an attempt to grip with the complexities of motivation, interpretation and meaning in behalf of man's human accomplishments for life in our time.