Modern art

I don't know a lot about art. I know some, especially Western art from the 1400-1900 period (I've done the religious and allegorical paintings in my English culture classes, so I can explain The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb but not Hirst's diamond encrusted skull). I know what I like, and what I don't like. I've visited some of the world's most famous museums and art collections, most of which were outside my own country (ironically, I have seen the US's Declaration of Independence in their National Archives, but I haven't visited one of my own countries big museums...).
Because I am aware that I don't know a lot about art, especially recent art,  but that I do have some preferences, and that these preferences may say something about me or about art, I bought What are you looking at?: 150 years of modern art in the blink of an eye by Will Gompertz. This book promises to explain to me what modern art is, why people like it or hate it and more importantly, why some artist's unmade bed is art, while mine is not.
I haven't really gotten very far in it, and I keep mixing up the names of the French pre- and post-Impressionists (Delacroix, Duchamp, Degas...), but already I feel like I know more than I've ever known about modern art. I can see now the influence of the Romantics, how Monet and Manet are different, how Degas isn't really part of the Impressionists, how Van Gogh and Gaugain took the whole thing one step further. These are all names I already knew, styles I am familiar with, so (to speak in educational terms) I have a hook to hang my new knowledge on. However, these artists are all still painting figuratively (albeit a bit blurry at times). I can see what they're doing, and with some explanation, I can see why. I am curious to see what will happen when we get to the Mondrian's and other more stylised things.
Also, it's good to keep in mind that what we now see as radical new art is nothing compared to the stir that the first modern artists made when they appeared on the scene. Whatever we call new and fresh and daring pales in comparison to the bold steps they dared to take, which you can also see in the fact that most of them died pretty young and in poverty.
But most importantly, I think, I can see now that it's all interconnected. I knew this was true for literature, of course, I can trace the line from the Romantics to the Victorian novel, to the Modernists and post-Modernists, and I knew some of their figurative counterparts, but I hadn't really looked at the whole visual arts as a line on their own. Luckily, Gompertz has included a 'map of modern art', rather like a London subway map, to explain it all.
The going can be tough sometimes, as the writing is a bit dense and convoluted and I have to re-read some parts to really get them, but it is very interesting. And after I've finished this, I have a great excuse to visit all those beautiful museums again; now I will actually 'get' what I'm looking at!