Modernist design, that radical and iconoclastic break with the past, is now itself a thing of the past. Perhaps sufficiently so that over the last few years, artists have been treating modernist designs as icons themselves, and incorporating them―sometimes literally and often conceptually―into their own work. These recombinations and modifications result in an entirely unique mix: a meta-modernism in which the original source is changed, self-referential, abstracted. Using classic elements in new configurations, artists from across the world are making original works of art that comment on the claims of the past in light of the complexities of the present.…