Not everyone rejects everything and not everyone even rejects the same things. I even deliberately avoided using the term “rejection” since that’s not even what

Not everyone rejects everything and not everyone even rejects the same things. I even deliberately avoided using the term “rejection” since that’s not even what it is, in many cases. Even someone like Pollock uses paint, uses a canvas. His works are presented in museums the same way paintings from, say, the 17th century are. His paintings are recognizably painting-shaped. So there are some traditions he does not reject. So modern art is not some sort of wholesale rejection of everything that came before. People just allowed themselves to reject different things. That’s the big picture. However, like modernism as a whole, there certainly was a rejection of traditions and among the many approaches there were very dogmatic ones (but a single approach being dogmatic and rejecting things stringently still leads to diversity if other approaches accept those things and reject different things). Postmodernism has certainly been breaking that up, though. So to address your points: * Artists had reasons for picking their approaches. You might not agree with those reasons, but those reasons existed. I think you would be hard pressed to find artists that rejected traditions just because. * A rejection of things that are “aesthetically pleasing” is not a common theme among modern art, though declaring the goal of creating something “aesthetically pleasing” as not a goal or as just one possible goal is certainly an oft rejected tradition.