Painting has always commanded an authority due to status in the art-historical canon. Perhaps then it was inevitably that once the radical, anti-establishment modernists came along it was for the gallows. Preface The following essay is a condensed version of a longer thesis, ‘What effect has the post-medium-condition had on the continuation of painting’, and includes sections of an independently written essay, ‘Bonfire of the Vanities: The Avant-garde and Modern Painting’.