modernism and object

the object of modernism: is it something' out there' in the external world( a river, a mountain, a haystack); or is it something 'in here'( either the artist's personal vision and his emotional reaction to the external world, or the work of art turned in on itself, focusing on its own properties and processes); or it is something having no visible substance and/or no direct cause-effect relationship to physical reality( a philosophic proposition or similar idea)?
Cubism: one of the fundamental points about cubism: not only we try to displace reality, reality was no longer in the object. Reality was in the painting.
illusionistic or retinal art( the impressionists, cezanne and that great body of landscape painters......
仔细想想，现代主义有时候是站在一种过度的上帝视角，过度自信。