Dark clouds have silver linings. An incidental consolation of the shift that has occurred in the visual arts in recent decades— the triumph of preconceived form over achieved form—is that the old battle between abstraction and representation has ended. Not because one side defeated the other, but simply because the theater of war moved on as it does in real war when technology changes. Nowadays, to paint or sculpt at all expressively in an art world where painting or sculpting must be done ironically—better still, deconstructively—is to ally oneself, as an artist, with a project diminished in its intellectual respectability. Yesteryear’s arguments now seem like futile civil strife. Nonetheless, among the brave few, the most common way such painters describe themselves these days is “somewhere between figuration and abstraction,” which is where, with sensitive hindsight, all great painting always was anyway.

And yet ...

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