Whilst the greatest effort has been made to ensure the quality of this text, due to the historical nature of this content, in some rare cases there may be minor issues with legibility. After surviving more than half a century of attacks as nonart or anti-art, various styles of modern painting continue to flourish despite their ambiguity of form and content. Yet, aside from conferring social prestige and serving as a commodity for investment, or as a decorative appendage to homes or public buildings, painting seems to have little place in our technological twentieth century except as a font of psycho logical discontents and fulfillments.