This is a bit of a wag, but I do have a BFA, and I remember the general attitude towards painting, and some of my art history classes.
The material prosperity of the last century, especially the latter half, in the first world, has allowed a lot more people to pursue art. It’s never been a better time to try to be an artist: there are government grants, there are parallel gallery systems, there’s more money than ever (private and corporate) being thrown at art.
With the increased money available, commercial pressures have decreased. It’s not so necessary these days to sell through a gallery to make a living. Artists have day jobs; they’re professors at universities; they live on welfare or grants or short-term jobs at public galleries, and show in parallel venues. There’s far less pressure to make saleable art. While it’s always nice to sell a piece, because it’s both money and recognition, that’s not imperative anymore.
The rise of non-commercial artists who aren’t dependent on pleasing a non-critical audience coincided with and reinforced the expansion of what was considered art. The flowering of various short-lived “schools” of art in the twentieth century effectively destroyed homogenous orthodoxy in the art world. There has also been a movement against technically demanding art, like naturalistic painting or drawing: they’re viewed as enforcing the tyranny of skill. Talent in art is less about artisanship and more about marketing (Lichenstein, Warhol and Koons deliberately built their careers on this).
The effect on painting was, as Willem de Kooning put it, that painting “lost its purpose, and therein found its freedom”. In other words, the traditional, convservative form of art was rejected, and has come to stand for what isn’t current. To say, in art school, that you want to paint like Michelangelo is to stigmatize yourself as unimaginative, politically obtuse, with ambitions to be a technician.
While there will undoubtedly be artists from our generation remembered as great artists, the best analogue to the great artists of history will probably be filmmakers, for whom commercial pressures are still intense, and who are still forced to strike some balance between artistic vision and popular acceptance by their audience.