John F. Kennedy was born more than a hundred years ago, which means he lived closer to

Abraham Lincoln than to now.

That's sort of stunning to think about because when I think about Abraham Lincoln, I'm thinking

about somebody who lived a really long time ago. But when I think about JFK, I think about him in color as part of the

modern age. It turns out that modernity is not just fun to say.

It's important to understand.

Hey, it's Arove, and this is a special archived episode of a Kimbo.

What does it mean for something to be modern, to be of our time.

I think that we can agree that if you went back in a time machine to 1961

to meet John F. Kennedy at the White House, you would fit in.

You could go to Brooks Brothers before you left and buy the same shoes and the same suit as

the President would be wearing. You could use language that

would probably fit right in. If you knew how to drive a standard car you'd have no trouble

driving there down Pennsylvania Avenue.

And if you took the bus, it wouldn't be difficult at all to figure out. But if you

headed back in time to Abraham Lincoln, you wouldn't know what to wear, you wouldn't

know how to speak, you wouldn't figure out how to get there, the world was dark and danken, sort of weird. Certainly it was in

black and white. What happened? How is it that more than 50-60 years ago we had the modern age. But just a hundred years

before that the world was totally different.

It turns out that modernity is fueled by several factors.

Let's think about art.

We think about art on the wall, paintings, conceptual art, things

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