NY Times -Few modern myths about art have been as persistent or as
annoying as the so-called death of painting. Unless, of course, it is the belief
that abstract and representational painting are oil and water, never to meet as
one. The two notions are related. The Modernist insistence on the separation of
representation and abstraction robbed painting of essential vitality.
Both notions have their well-known advocates. And both, in my mind seem, well,
very 20th century. Pictorial communication — signs, symbols, images and colors
on a flat surface — is one of the oldest and richest of human inventions, like
writing or music.