ABSTRACT
The present is complex because of all the unsettled issues. In a few years we shall know if ecological art made a difference to public art, leading to organic systems rather than more hardware, trees instead of corten steel. In a few years we shall know if feminist iconography could compete with other ideologically-based image-systems or if art will return to a unisex configuration. In a few years it will be clear if the realist revival of the separate genres, of portraiture, landscape, and still life has fundamentally diversified art beyond the subsuming “oneness” of Abstract painting. For the moment these issues, and a host of others, are unresolved.
