Joseph Beuys met Francis Bacon once, he told Bacon that he was an artist from the past, he (Beuys) was the future.
I can see what he was getting at, figurative art being superseded by conceptual art and so on, but he hadn’t seen the internet, he was still thinking in straight lines, this leads to this, and then this leads to this, etc.
There is no straight lineage anymore, no clear progression, if you want to immerse yourself in 16th century Russian icons, or 20th century abstraction, or any other subject under the sun from the past, you can – the past is as much a part of your present as cell phones or air travel.
Borrow a complete skeleton of a Neanderthal from the Natural History Museum, sit the skeleton at a desk in front of a working computer, with it’s hands resting on the keyboard as if typing, on the screen will be a Neanderthal family group, sitting around a fire eating dinner.