Ever wondered how you can tell modern art from other varieties? Read on: I will show you the way.

Ten Ways You Can Tell if it is modern art:

• It is the single most expensive thing you could possibly buy that you wouldn't want adorning your living room.
• The descriptive plaque underneath the mysterious object uses lots of words ending in `ism' with reference to either society or to a pet dog with a Latin name.
• The pet dog with the Latin name helped its owner to create the object.
• Point 3 above was inadvertent, and this element of randomness, it is explained, cements the fact that this is art.
• It smells (Hint: most traditional art forms don't smell.).
• You are unable to distinguish where the object ends and where its surroundings begin. The artist is similarly incapacitated and tries to sell you the object, its pedestal, the gallery it is displayed in, the street, and a public park some distance down the road. Wouldn't want to disrupt the harmony.
• It looks terribly sexual (careful, this is a trap; it may look like a reproductive organ but in reality it is about lots of isms relating to society and/or that damn pooch).
• You stare at it for fifteen minutes trying to understand it.
• You fail to understand it after staring at it for fifteen minutes.
• A dog with a name you can't pronounce has to explain it to you.

Ten ways you can tell it is regular old art:

• Your spouse says so.
• The person who created it has been dead for over 75 years.
• The person who created it has been undergoing treatment for self-obsession.
• It doesn't come with a built-in fire extinguisher (this would make it modern art).
• You suspect it is art (trust your instincts; traditional art forms are more upfront about their artsiness. Conversely, if you suspect it isn't art then it is probably modern art).
• The dog doesn't have a latin name and it didn't help out.
• There is a flock of horn-rimmed glasses fluttering around it.
• The colors employed have names that will fit on one line (Corollary: if the colors are treated as sentient individuals and have had their characters fleshed out in writing, you are looking - once again - at modern art).
• Someone somewhere is playing elevator music.
• The dog says so.