The puzzling quality of modern art, in both its complexity and its simplicity, symbolizes a barrier between the student and the elite's privilege of power. Too frequently, students have been taught that art is a secret, a code to which only teachers have the key, and that there is only one correct interpretation of a work, which must be imparted by some authority. This attitude can and should be changed. One strategy is to use an approach from semiotics, the concept of intertextuality. Students begin to see that a work of art is usually more than one simple sign--it is a text, an interwoven fabric of symbols. In many works, these symbols or signs may actually be other texts, hence the concept of intertextuality. A well-known painting, Picasso's "Guernica," is given a semiotic reading. (BZ)