A chief characteristics of recent art has been its emphasis on content, that is, idea over form. Its closest kinship is to French academic painting of the 19C when idea art was most valued, centering of historical episodes or lessons taught by mythological or antique stories. Landscape was considered less interesting, less ambitious, for lesser talants, as was portraiture. Thus when the Impressionists began doing landscapes and even portraits, they were aggressively attacking that "idea art" paradigm.
I think one reason why Miller is partially right in his objection to museums and the scarcity of contemporary landscape painting is due to today's renewed emphasis on idea over form. It will pass. Art-as-form-as if-idea will prevail...not because that's a wishful thought but because the pendulum swings and no other choices exist. Interestingly, some top art programs are beginning to replace the word art with the word design, fortelling the swing back to form. Right now, it seems almost like an 1860 redux. Form, almost chaotic but not, almost mute but complexly referential, indiosyncratic, aggressively anti-illustrational (story-telling), is seducing the youthful artists everywhere. Look and see. WC
