Through the lens of two similar, recent exhibitions The Forever Now: Contemporary Painting in an Atemporal World at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) and Variations: Conversations in and around Abstract Painting at LACMA, Lilly Lampe asks: "Is the supposed crisis in painting a product of the medium’s own neurosis? Perhaps it isn’t that painting is dead but that, like many of us, it suffers from anxiety about death? Maybe painting is depressed, a sentiment I dare say many critics would validate, or narcissistic (undeniably), or irrationally obsessed with the threat of other mediums. Obsession of some sort seems the most likely diagnosis, with the result being compulsive inward-looking as well as an unhealthy fixation on what painting or sculpture or video might be doing."