In response to some recent discussions on abLA about collecting what's fashionable, I find this paragraph taken out of an article by the UK's Independent to be key:

There are certainly fashions in art - like the mid-century fashion for abstraction, like the recent fashion for aggro and jokeyness and there always will be. There's not much you can do about them. Fashions promote indiscriminately artists, good and bad, who fit the fashion, and exclude irrationally other artists, good and bad, who don't. The only thing to do with art fashions is to keep your eyes open - neither embracing everything they embrace nor embracing everything they exclude.

This article mainly discussing the competition between conceptual art and figurative painting. But more so that just figurative painting, paintings that are realistic. It's a round-about argument for sure, painting is dead/painting is back, when it just never really goes away. It's ironic to see though, within the broad title of "painting", that there are internal struggles…abstract vs. figurative vs. real. Silly really. Frankly, I'm happy with the diversity of art. Otherwise it would be pretty boring.