LEGO Art

Modern Art

The rare LEGO set where the box is a starting point, not a finish line.

Brick Rated Score

3.6/5

Set 31210 · 2023

Pieces805

Minifigsn/a

Year2023

Set number31210

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The verdict

Modern Art is the oddest LEGO Art set I have handled, and I mean that as a compliment.

Instead of a fixed mosaic, you get a white frame and a heap of colourful shapes with instructions that suggest rather than dictate, which means the real building begins after the box is empty. I loved that freedom, but I will be honest that it lives or dies on how much you enjoy arranging things yourself. Confident tinkerers and anyone who treats a shelf like a canvas will get their money back tenfold. If you want a clear model with a right answer, this one will frustrate you.

Best for: Playful arrangers who see an empty frame as an invitation

The full review

What it is

Modern Art breaks the LEGO Art mould in a way I did not expect. Where the earlier Art sets hand you a portrait to tile in one fixed pattern, this one hands you a white backing frame and a generous pile of coloured rectangles, triangles and circles, then more or less steps back. The printed guide is not a set of orders, it is a mood board of aspirational images meant to nudge you toward your own composition. My first reaction was a little suspicious, then I clicked a few shapes onto the studded frame, slid them around, and suddenly an hour had vanished. That is the trick of this set. The building of the pieces themselves is minor, but the arranging is where it comes alive.

The catch

I do have to be straight about the caveats, because they are real and other builders raised them loudly. The structural build is short, roughly half an hour to assemble the frame and the elements, and one of the four suggested layouts is clearly meant to read as a face that ends up looking swollen and slightly off. The palette is bold to the point that some people find it garish, and if your shelf leans toward muted classic LEGO tones this will shout over everything near it. The bigger divide is philosophical. A chunk of the Brickset crowd looked at it and saw a mess of parts with no display value, and I understand that reaction even though I do not share it. At around fifty dollars at retail it was priced fairly, but you are paying for possibility, not a finished showpiece.

Who it's for

So who should bring this home. If you are the kind of person who rearranges the art on your walls for fun, who enjoys the design half of LEGO more than following numbered steps, this is a quiet gem and a set you will keep coming back to for months. It also rewards anyone who buys for the parts, since as raw material it is excellent. Skip it if you want a model with a satisfying click of completion and a single correct result, because that feeling never arrives here by design. Now that it has retired it sits in a strange spot, still findable and still a strong parts value, so grab it for what it actually is rather than what a normal set promises.

What works

One of the best value parts packs LEGO put out that year, loaded with plates and tiles in shapes and colours that are genuinely hard to source in these quantities
The frame hangs in portrait or landscape and you can rearrange the whole face any time the mood strikes
Endlessly replayable in a way almost no other set is, since there is no wrong final build

Worth knowing

The core build is over in about half an hour, and the guided face variation looks a bit swollen and awkward
The colour palette runs loud, and several builders found it too garish next to a classic LEGO look
If you freeze up without step-by-step instructions, the open-ended format can feel like a bag of loose parts rather than a set

Sold? Grab it.

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The parts story

What the build is actually like, and the pieces worth knowing about.

Building Modern Art is genuinely unlike a normal set. You start by assembling the white frame, a slab of 20 by 32 studs two bricks deep, mostly capped in 1x4 tiles that leave exposed studs so shapes can be attached and pulled off at will. Two hanging panels clip to any of the four edges, so you decide portrait or landscape at the end. After that the instructions stop instructing. You build up a bank of small coloured elements and then compose, reposition, and second-guess yourself for as long as you like, which is the whole point.

As a parts haul it is the strongest argument for the set. You get plates and tiles across a wide spread of shapes and sizes, several in colours and quantities that are hard to come by elsewhere, which is why so many AFOLs treated it as a bargain bulk pack rather than a display piece. There are no minifigures and no printed showpiece tiles to speak of, so the value is entirely in the loose elements. For MOC builders raiding it for circles, triangles and coloured plates, the per-piece price at retail was hard to beat, and that reputation is the main reason it still moves after retirement.

Fun facts

01The building instructions deliberately do not tell you what to build. They offer aspirational images and suggestions instead, treating the guide as inspiration for your own composition rather than a step-by-step manual.
02The frame is designed to hang either way up. Two panels attach to any of the four sides, so a single set works in both portrait and landscape orientation.
03It is built to combine. LEGO intended owners to buy multiple Modern Art sets and connect their artworks into one larger wall piece.
04It had a short shelf life, released in August 2023 and retired at the end of December 2024, with an original price of 49.99 dollars for 805 pieces.