Tom Wolfe summed up my view of the hogwash that is modern art pretty well...he said it is all about separating the elite (who have The Word, and can understand why they should like a certain piece of art) from the masses. You need the Theory to understand it, which is why WE (who have the theory) are better than THEM (who don't).
"A hundred years before, Art Theory had merely been something that enriched one’s conversation in matters of Culture. Now it was an absolute necessity….All we ask for is a few lines of explanation! You say Meret Oppenheim’s Fur-Covered Cup, Saucer and Spoon (the piece de resistance of the Museum of Modern Art’s Surrealism show in December 1936) is an example of the Surrealist principle of displacement? You say the texture of one material – fur – has been imposed upon the forms of others – china and tableware – in order to split the oral, the tactile, and the visual into three critically injured but for the first time fiercely independent parties in the subconscious? Fine. To get the point was to understand….”Any work of art that can be understood is the product of a journalist,” said Tristan Tzara’s Dada manifesto."