Since the essay posted with my September update appeared in Surfacing Magazine, I've had a number of comments - mostly, not surprisingly, from painters. At a recent studio tour (at which I was a viewer, not a participant), I was greeted with, "I saw your article. Surely, painting isn't dead?"

Now, I didn't actually use those words. Even Philip Ball, whom I quoted, only suggested a bias that makes it difficult for painters to achieve good marks in school – and, by extension, recognition in the world of high art.

As it happens, the phrase "painting is dead" can be attributed to Alexander Rodchenko, Russian propagandist and Constructivist artist – while in the pay of Joseph Stalin, I might add. It is interesting that the art establishment of the 'free' west, though not so bluntly, has largely regarded painting as, if not dead, redundant. "Outmoded," as Ball put it.

Naturally, every painter in Canada hopes to have a piece of theirs acquired by the National Gallery or the AGO. Just being a painter did not (and does not) automatically preclude this, although, if one is a representational painter or, heaven forbid, a realist, the chances of this happening where quite remote. There have always been exceptions to the rule of course, as installations tend to leave wall space free and performances (unless canvases on the wall are replaced with television screens) provide nothing at all to see when the performance is not actually in progress. In the contemporary world, anything that hinted at tradition would, almost certainly, have been passed over. Happily, in 2008, this trend began to reverse.

A move back toward realism may have been marked by the acquisition of a portfolio of Jefferson Hayman photographs by the MoMA in 2008 - not just photographs, but classically composed photographs with traditional themes. The recognition of beautiful architecture and nature illustrates a huge shift from the Deconstructive to the Constructive, and from entropy and dissolution to a living world, full of beauty. Last year the AGO purchased two small and highly photo-realistic paintings at the Toronto International Art Fair, and this year, also at TIAF, purchased two similarly refined, representational drawings. The tide, it seems, has turned.

Last year's Toronto Star review of Nuit Blanche, entitled "Ennui-Blanche” inspired commentaries by a number of bloggers (myself included) in which the general sentiment is apparent and reflects a trend that also began in 2008 when the jury of the Turner Prize complained of a lack of innovation in contemporary art. As it happens, I had just returned from a week in Kilarney when I saw the original “Ennui-Blanche” piece and I read about the event at Yonge and Dundas with particular interest. The Star's commentary, having singled out a campfire reenactment, spoke with obvious disdain of the entire event. I remember thinking how pleased I was that I’d chosen to go camping that weekend and that I'd spent that same night sitting around a real campfire with my nieces and nephews, looking up at the stars and telling ghost stories.

There is a fine line between inspired recreation and mundane reproduction, even parody. This reenactment appears to have been an attempt to make art accessible to all, which is a laudable objective in and of itself, but the accessibility here is in the manner of Fluxus. Democratizing art was a key point in the Fluxus manifesto, not just the viewing of art, but also the production of art. This objective has huge implications and is the subject of my next piece. For the time being though, as the review suggests, the object of recreating reality is to create something more than a simple reproduction – and to do this, something more is required from the artist. In this case, that extra something was not apparent. I did not see the event in person, so I can only infer this, but, for anyone who has sat beside a real campfire, it is easy to see how such a piece would seem a pale facsimile. On another level, while 'performance' suffers a setback, realism reveals itself as an essential component of art, something that cannot be suppressed indefinitely.

In an urban, increasingly virtual world, even those who have never spent time in a natural environment, have a need to experience the real world – the way humankind has known it for millions of years. And though probably unintentional in this case, naturalism is taking on new life.

For the past one hundred years, art has evolved (devolved might be more accurate) to such a rarefied state that the "latest things" hold so little to discover, or think about, that they have come and gone with increasing regularity. Anything new seems fresh and interesting, for a while, and this is the essential reality of marketing. Perhaps new art should have been rolled out at fashion week in London, along with the season's exciting new colors, textures, and fabrics, as trends in art have become almost as ephemeral as fashion styles. The consumer world has as little to do with substance as possible. Instead, to mix a metaphor, it is about selling the sizzle. And it is no coincidence that the hottest artists in the world, in recent years, have all been products of Charles Saatchi – of the London advertising firm Saatchi & Saatchi.

Modernism itself only began with the Impressionists and found its purest and perhaps ultimate form between 1915 and 1918, with works such as “White on White” by Kasimir Malevich. Before this (with the one notable exception of later incarnations of Islamic art where it was decided that representation of actual figures should not be allowed) all imagery, from the stylized representations of cave paintings and religious iconography to the ever more refined levels of realism, from the renaissance through to the late nineteenth century, and most of the modern period, were representative of the physical world. As modernism raced along – though minimalism could not have been more thoroughly realized than in the work of Malevich – the reductionist methodology came up with some wonderful and exciting distillations of reality. However, in time, even these were cast aside in favor of the completely non-representational.

The emotional response of the viewer has become the be all and end all of art, but, without content, the inherent qualities of a painting become very boring very quickly, not only for the viewer, but for the artist too. While the modernist experiment began as legitimate inquiry, a quest to better understand art – from Roger Fry's "Significant Form" to Analytical Cubism – the intuitive and the emotional gradually replaced the rational, intellectual approach to art. A new formalism was introduced by the art critic Clement Greenberg, based largely on the pure expression of the formal values: line, shape, value, texture, form, color, and space. Abstract Expressionism and the works of Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, and others exemplified this new ideal. Ironically, as art was 'freed' from previously understood values and expectations, it was simultaneously restricted by the form of art which came to represent American individualism and freedom of expression.

Greenberg actively promoted all of the notable artists of this movement and, if painting can be said to have died, it was with this movement. Immediately on the heels of Abstract expressionism came Fluxus and, with Fluxus the 'happenings,' performance art was born. (See the previous pieces to read a little more about Fluxus, performance art and minimalism.)

Fifty years after the groundbreaking work of Malevich, painting was again reduced to its most basic form, but this time the splashes of paint and color fields conformed to parameters laid down by America's foremost art critic, and the works of Abstract Expressionists were acquired by America's foremost art patrons and others. These artists became household names. But things are quite often not as they appear in the world of art, and the really story behind this movement, the reason for its spectacular ascendancy, is very different. (I will touch on that story next time.)

But what of painting today?

When it was no longer possible for artists to do anything more than evoke emotion with their art, most moved to adopt other mediums. Some found installation, others, performance, all in an attempt to be free of the restrictions placed upon them. Some were simply following the fashion of the day, in hopes of higher grades and the acknowledgment of a newly reshaped art establishment.

Fashions come and go, but art is (or should be) concerned with eternal, universal, truths, as the artists see them. Nevertheless, art too fell victim to Marshall McLuhan's, "The medium is the message." The message in art became inextricably tied to the medium or method by which it was presented – no longer was the message to be conveyed literally, or even in a symbolic language. However, some artists held to what they felt to be true. Pietro Annigoni, the preeminent portrait painter of our times, said, "It is the destiny of all artists to attempt to say something new, in an old language." This is an important point because if we are always preoccupied with the next new thing, we will be diverted from the actual meaning. And while we are distracted by the glitter of novelty of the next 'new' medium, the artist's traditional means of communicating a message becomes supplanted. In the world of non-representational art, the message is not that of the artist, but of the medium. More to the point, the message belongs to those who control of the medium.