James Hassall considers the contemporary relevance and potential of abstract painting.

Hassall asks: "rather than establishing that painting is dead, the true outcome of postmodernism should be that everything is alive. If medium doesn’t matter, if fetishising painting is passé, then it just allows us to focus on the ‘proposal’ that each work makes as opposed to the examination of its chosen medium’s limits. The real question is whether this proposal is external to the artwork itself, or immanent to its sensible properties. If we reject [Ad] Reinhardt’s desire to establish and work within the inherent limits of a medium, must we reject ‘painterly’ problems and ‘painterly’ truths as beside the point? As the idea is privileged, do we necessarily lose the sensible object?"